Aragorn Lord of the Rings: Actor, Story Arc and Fate

Aragorn is a ranger who guides the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), directed by Peter Jackson, and who turns out to be the man destined to claim the throne of Gondor. Viggo Mortensen plays him in The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King, and he is billed third in each film, after Elijah Wood and Ian McKellen.

He is one of the nine members of the Fellowship, alongside the four hobbits, Gandalf, the elf Legolas, the dwarf Gimli and the Gondorian Boromir. The films credit him simply as Aragorn.

He is known by more than one name. The hobbits first meet him as Strider, the guarded wanderer who offers to guide them, and the name Elessar is the one Tolkien's books give him as king. The books also place him among the Dúnedain, the long lived rangers of the North, and make him a descendant of Isildur, the man who cut the Ring from Sauron's hand in the prologue of the first film. That ancestry is why his claim to Gondor carries weight, and why the choice to take it up is the center of his story.

So, who was the original Aragorn? Mortensen, who plays him in all three films of the Jackson trilogy from 2001 to 2003, and no other actor has taken the part in these films. If you are new to the saga, the full run of films is laid out in lord of the rings movies in order, and the wider cast is on the lord of the rings cast page.

Aragorn fell in love with Arwen, the elf who carries the wounded Frodo to Rivendell, and the two marry at the end of The Return of the King. Arwen is played by Liv Tyler, billed sixth in the first film, fourteenth in the second and fifteenth in the third.

Did Aragorn have elf blood? In the films he is a man, and his tie to the elves comes through Arwen. Why does Aragorn age slowly? The films offer no explanation, so that question stays open on screen.

His closest bonds are inside the Fellowship. Legolas and Gimli travel at his side through Rohan, and the trio shares most of the action in The Two Towers. Gandalf joins them in Rohan as Gandalf the White, while Boromir, the Gondorian of the Fellowship, dies defending Merry and Pippin at the end of the first film. Théoden and Éowyn, played by Bernard Hill and Miranda Otto, fight beside him in the later films. For Frodo and the other hobbits, he is first a guide and then a king who buys them time.

Did Aragorn wear a Ring? The films never show him taking the One Ring: the council at Rivendell judges it too dangerous to keep or use, and Frodo volunteers to carry it to Mount Doom.

In my opinion, Aragorn matters because the trilogy lets him earn the crown on screen rather than inherit it. Why was Aragorn so special? Perhaps because the films pair his lineage with real reluctance, and because the people around him (Frodo, Théoden, Éowyn) keep forcing the choice.

The first moment I would pick is the escape from the Black Riders in The Fellowship of the Ring, where he helps the hobbits get away even though Frodo is stabbed at Weathertop. It establishes the practical, guarded ranger before any talk of kingship. The second is his decision, after Boromir's death, to set off with Legolas and Gimli to rescue Merry and Pippin while Frodo and Sam go on to Mordor alone, which in my opinion shows him accepting that the quest is bigger than his own command.

The third is the Paths of the Dead in The Return of the King, where he faces the ghostly army and wins its loyalty, a set piece that turns the Pelennor Fields. It could be argued that the march to the Black Gate is the more telling choice, since he leads the western armies there purely as a diversion to buy time for Frodo. As such, the coronation lands as the close of a trilogy that treated power as a burden.

If you want the clearest view of him, watch The Two Towers and The Return of the King back to back, then place the Hobbit films against them in the lord of the rings timeline.