After much speculation, fans of The Rings of Power have finally discovered the identity of the Stranger. The character's identity was revealed in the season finale of the Prime Video series, which aired on October 3. However, according to series creators and showrunners Patrick McKay and JD Payne, several other options were considered before the Stranger's true identity was determined.

In the season finale of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series, it was finally revealed that the Stranger is none other than Gandalf, a member of the Istari Order and one of the main characters in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings novels. However, McKay and Payne revealed in a recent interview that they looked at other possibilities for the Stranger's potential identity before settling on Gandalf, who was born with the name Olórin in the ancient land of Valinor.

“Nobody’s going to believe us, but this was a journey of discovery for the character and the characters around him, and it was a journey of discovery for the writers,” McKay explained in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “We wanted this to be an origin story of a wizard coming to terms with who he is and what he’s meant to do.”

Payne explained: "Deep down in the history of Middle-earth, part 12, he confirms that Olórin had already visited Middle-earth. So Tolkien left it open that Gandalf might have come before the Third Age. But there were also things that we discovered in the story that really seemed to fit the character as you meet him later."