How Long Can Elves and Dwarves Live in ‘The Rings of Power’?

The first two episodes of Amazon Prime Video’s The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power premiered on September 1, 2022, and introduced two familiar fantasy races—Elves and Dwarves. Fans of The Lord of the Rings universe will be familiar with both Middle-earth occupants. Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy gave us such Elves as Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), Elrond (Hugo Weaving), Arwen (Liv Tyler), and Gal-galad (Mark Ferguson). Meanwhile, Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy centered on a band of 13 dwarves.

Lord of the Rings author J. R. R. Tolkien depicted the Elves as one of the wisest and fairest races in Middle-earth. They are drawn to beauty and have deep curiosity and love of learning. Meanwhile, the Dwarves are a hearty race who have a love of jewelry and weaponry, and who are stubborn and loyal in nature. As The Rings of Power progresses, we are bound to see more familiar Elves. After all, in the first two episodes, we were already introduced to Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), Elrond (Robert Aramayo), and Gil-Galad (Benjamin Walker), all of whom appeared in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

However, viewers will notice that all of these characters have been recast since The Lord of the Rings. This is because The Rings of Power takes place thousands of years before the events of The Lord of the Rings. Hence, Galadriel, for example, looks very different in this series, because it will take thousands of years for her to transform into who she is in the original trilogy. Familiar Dwarves are missing from the series, although we do see Durin III (Peter Mullan), who is a very distant ancestor of Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) from The Lord of the Rings. So, how long can Elves and Dwarves live?

How long do Elves live?

Elves in The Rings of Power are immortal. They do not physically age once they have matured, with full maturity coming between the ages of 50-100. While Elves cannot die of old age and are immune to illness, they still can be killed by injury, or even despair. In all of the great battles in Middle-earth, Elves have faced heavy causalities, being killed by weapons and fatal wounds. Additionally, some Elves can also die of despair, as they slowly begin to decay after centuries if they lose the will to live.

How long do Dwarves live?

Unlike Elves, Dwarves are not immortal, though they do have longer lifespans than Men. Also, their lifespan depends on what clan of Dwarves they belong to, too. For example, the Longbeards lived a bit longer than the average Dwarf, usually living to age 250 – 350. For the average Dwarf, though, their lifespan was about 200 – 300 years old. As a result, we’ll be sure to see many ancestors of the Dwarves from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit in The Rings of Power, but we won’t be seeing the Dwarves from those trilogies themselves.

(featured image: Amazon)