Kate Winslet's New Lord Of The Rings Character Officially Makes Up For A Rings Of Power Mistake

Published Apr 15, 2026, 10:30 PM EDT

Angel Shaw is a Lead Writer and Critic on ScreenRant's TV team, covering new-release and classic TV shows across all major streaming platforms. She has been a writer with ScreenRant since 2022 and specializes in Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and fantasy. 

Angel holds a bachelor's degree in language interpreting and is passionate about all things culture and communication—especially in how it relates to popular media throughout history (from Shakespeare to Friends to Game of Thrones).

A rumor began to spread last month that Winslet would be playing Sméagol's matriarch in The Hunt for Gollum, and the name of her character suggests this is true. "Marigol" fits right in with the name "Sméagol," as well as "Déagol" (the cousin Gollum murdered to claim the One Ring). It's certainly an intriguing connection, and one that suggests we won't just get a few flashbacks to Gollum's life before corruption. The Hunt for Gollum is assumedly placing the Stoors at the center of the narrative.

In the Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring book, Gandalf told Frodo all about how Gollum had once been a Stoor. These are one of three known ancestors of the Hobbits, and it appears as if Hunt for Gollum will give us an up-close look at their time in Middle-earth. This is pretty convenient, since Prime Video's The Rings of Power just recently introduced its own version of the Stoors.

How The Stoor Hobbits Relate To The Hunt For Gollum & The Rings Of Power

The Rings of Power and The Hunt for Gollum are set at two very different points in Middle-earth's history, and, technically, Stoors would have existed only during the former. By the time Gandalf had Aragorn hunt down Gollum so he could be interrogated about his past and the One Ring (the events at the center of Hunt for Gollum), the Stoors had long ago interbred with other halflings like the Harfoots and the Fallohides, resulting over centuries in the unified Hobbit race. However, Winslet's casting suggests that the story Sméagol tells Gandalf about his Stoor upbringing will be brought straight to the screen.

This makes a lot of sense, since the when and where of Sméagol finding Bilbo's ring was key in Gandalf deducing that it was really Sauron's great weapon. In Fellowship of the Ring, we get a lengthy chapter in which Gandalf dives into the whole tale, filling Frodo in on who Gollum had once been and what the Ring did to him. We missed out on this in Peter Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring movie, so it's completely logical that Hunt for Gollum would fill in the pieces.

Rings of Power, on the other hand, had no real business introducing the Stoors. Sure, they existed in Middle-earth during the Second Age (many thousands of years before Fellowship of the Ring), but they played no part in any of Tolkien's stories set at that time. This made the Stoors' introduction in Rings of Power season 2 extremely unpopular. The idea that they somehow lived in Rhûn or were responsible for giving Gandalf his name only added insult to injury. It's all precisely the sorts of canon changes that Rings of Power has been damned for, and Hunt for Gollum is in a much better position.

Canon Changes Are Inevitable While Telling The Stoors' LOTR Story (But It Can Be Done Right)

Any screen adaptation of The Lord of the Rings that tells a story from the perspective of the Stoors will have to take some creative liberties. After all, these prehistoric Hobbits were only ever talked about second hand. Rings of Power took advantage of the understanding that Stoors would technically have existed in the Second Age, but the trouble is that there was no real reason to bring them into the mix (aside from some misguided fan service). It's just not the right way to take creative liberties.

It's different for The Hunt for Gollum. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf tells Sméagol's story as he heard it from Gollum himself, mishmashing it with other bits of research he turned up regarding the Stoors and where they lived around the time Sméagol was born. We didn't read the story from Gollum's perspective, and only heard Gandalf's version. Screen adaptations have to show, not tell. So, simply having McKellen repeat Gandalf's dialogue straight from The Fellowship of the Ring really wouldn't do.

This is precisely why we got that opening scene of Sméagol killing Déagol in Jackson's Return of the King. It's also why we will surely meet the wretched creature's family, including Winslet's Marigol, in The Hunt for Gollum. The upcoming Lord of the Rings movie will have to do a lot of filling in the gaps, but it wouldn't be changes just for the sake of bringing in Stoors. Once we meet these more faithful versions of Hobbits' ancient ancestors, we can forget Rings of Power's attempt altogether.