In Season 2, Episode 3 of The Rings of Power, an eagle appears during Míriel’s coronation while Númenórean society is already in political upheaval. The show does not establish that the bird is there to endorse Pharazôn. The eagle carries an existing symbolic meaning in the series, and Pharazôn is the one who seizes the moment and shapes how the crowd reads it. The eagle itself never settles who it is for.
What happens in the scene
The eagle arrives at a tense point in Míriel’s coronation. The court is divided and the crowd is restless, so the appearance of a large bird at that moment is charged with meaning for everyone present. Pharazôn is the character who turns the arrival to his advantage: he steps forward, leads the chant, and sets the tone so the crowd takes the appearance as a sign in his favor.
The scene is easiest to understand as two layers working together. The first layer is what the eagle means to the people in the story. The second is what Pharazôn does with that meaning. Keeping these separate prevents the most common mistake, which is to treat the bird as a deliberate choice.
Why the crowd reads an eagle as royal endorsement
The episode builds on an earlier event. An eagle had also appeared at the coronation of Míriel’s father, and the Númenóreans treated that appearance as an endorsement of the new king. Because the audience has already seen that precedent, the second eagle carries weight without needing much explanation. Pharazôn does not need to invent the symbol; he only needs to act on it.
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This is why the scene works dramatically. A ruler’s legitimacy in Númenor is partly a matter of how the people interpret omens, and the show uses an animal that has already been read as a sign of approval to put pressure on the succession.
How Pharazôn uses the moment
Pharazôn’s actions are the decisive part of the scene. Three things happen in sequence:
- The eagle appears during the ceremony, at a moment when the crowd is looking for a sign.
- Pharazôn approaches and positions himself close to the event.
- He leads the chant, which turns a spontaneous sight into a shared public reaction that favors him.
The sequence shows opportunism rather than prophecy. Pharazôn is not shown receiving a message from the bird; he is shown recognising that the crowd is ready to read the bird as a sign and acting before anyone else can frame it.
Did the eagle choose Pharazôn?
The actor who plays Míriel, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, addressed this directly in an interview with TV Insider published August 29, 2024. She described the arrival as “just the beginning of the chaos that ensues in Númenorean society,” and explained the moment this way:
“It’s meant to be appearing for the person who presumably takes that power position, and so he seizes the moment. It’s not necessarily clear that that eagle is there for him, but it’s like, ‘Hey, it’s here and I’m just going to lead the chant and get it going.'”
Her account leaves the bird’s intention open. The eagle is not presented as a messenger who picked Pharazôn, and the interview does not claim that it did. If you want a precise answer to “was the eagle choosing Pharazôn or Míriel?”, the honest reading is that the show does not say, and the scene is built so that the question is unresolved.
Is this scene from Tolkien?
The palace coronation with an eagle is an adaptation, not a passage from Tolkien. A 2025 doctoral thesis on fan reception of Tolkien adaptations, by Michał Jastrzębski, states that no such palace scene appears in Tolkien’s texts and notes. The same discussion says that Manwë’s Eagles were present in Númenor, but in a different manner from the one shown in the series.
The distinction matters for how you describe the episode. The Eagles of Manwë are part of Tolkien’s mythology. The specific beat of an eagle landing at a Númenórean coronation and being turned into political leverage belongs to the television series.
| Element | In Tolkien’s texts and notes | In The Rings of Power, Season 2, Episode 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Eagles in Númenor | Present, but in a different manner (per the 2025 thesis) | Present, as a royal omen |
| Palace coronation scene with an eagle | Not found (per the 2025 thesis) | Central event of the episode |
| Pharazôn leading the crowd’s reaction to the eagle | Not found (the scene itself is absent from the source texts) | Political turning point |
Because the scene is an adaptation, you should not present it as something Tolkien narrated. Using Tolkien’s Second Age as background is accurate; attributing this particular episode to his writing is not.
What the scene foreshadows
The episode is ominous, and the showrunners have said that the larger collapse is still ahead. In the same TV Insider interview, Patrick McKay said, “We’re not there yet. Down the road.” J.D. Payne added, “There’s still a lot of things that have to happen before Númenor falls.”
So the eagle belongs to the buildup of political chaos, not to a prophecy of the island’s destruction. The interview frames the scene as the start of unrest and Pharazôn’s rise, and it does not treat the bird as a sign of the final fall.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Where the series and the sources stand
- Established in the show: an eagle appears during Míriel’s coronation; an earlier eagle at her father’s coronation was read as endorsement; Pharazôn leads the chant and exploits the moment.
- Established by the cast: the eagle’s intention is not clear, according to Addai-Robinson’s 2024 interview.
- Established by the scholarly source: the palace scene is not in Tolkien’s texts and notes, though Eagles were present in Númenor in another form.
- Not established: that the eagle chooses or rejects any character, or that the bird foretells Númenor’s fall.
For verification, the series explainer on Amazon’s site, dated to the Season 2 launch, describes the show as set in the Second Age, thousands of years before The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, with eight episodes in Season 2 that premiered August 29, 2024. It also states that the season is available exclusively on Prime Video at the time of publication. Regional availability can change, so check your local listing before watching.
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The sources cited in this article are: TV Insider’s episode 3 explainer, Amazon’s official Season 2 explainer, and Jastrzębski’s 2025 thesis on Tolkien’s fan reception.
The short answer is that the eagle appears because the series wants a sign of legitimacy to be contested, and Pharazôn is the one who takes advantage of it.
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