Return of the King countdown: six days

When they were some fifty paces off, Éomer cried in a loud voice: “Halt! Halt! Who rides in Rohan?”

“Halbarad Dúnadan, Ranger of the North I am,” cried the man. “We seek one Aragorn son of Arathorn, and we heard that he was in Rohan.”

—The Lord of the Rings, Book V, “The Passing of the Grey Company”

The Rangers of the North are the coolest, buffest, ass-kickingest minor characters in The Lord of the Rings (with the possible exception of Elrond's twin sons, who appear with the Grey Company).

Too bad we won't be seeing them in the movie.

I've written some about the Númenóreans and their Third Age remnant, the Dúnedain, here. In brief, some six millenia before the War of the Ring three Houses of Men joined with the Elves in their struggle against Morgoth, the first Dark Lord. As reward for their sacrifice they were granted the island continent of Númenór, and other great gifts besides: skills in craftsmanship and the arts; greater physical stature and prowess; and a lifespan three times that of other mortals.

Of course, they screwed it up. As their long generations passed, the Númenóreans grew envious of the Elves, and after the their last king fell under the sway of Sauron, they invaded the Uttermost West in an attempt to seize immortality by force. They lost. Númenór was drowned, and after its ruin was given the epithet Atalantë, the Down-fallen. (And yes, Tolkien intended that name to seem vaguely familiar.)

A faithful remnant fled Númenór before its end, and founded in Middle-earth the realms of Arnor and Gondor, under the kingship of Elendil and his sons. This royal line eventually failed in Gondor, and the Stewards ruled in the king's stead. Arnor suffered a different fate, becoming progressively depopulated until the northern Dúnedain were left a wandering people: the Rangers, Aragorn's kin.

Thus far, Peter Jackson's interpretation has not made much room for the Dúnedain. “The blood of Númenór is spent,” Elrond tells Gandalf in Fellowship…and that's about all there is, at least until the Extended Edition of The Two Towers, which includes a very interesting scene between Éowyn and Aragorn. She coaxes him into revealing his true age, after he admits having served Thengel—King Théoden's father—many decades before.

In this scene Aragorn says that “a few” Dúnedain remain. True enough: in the North, the Rangers could likely only muster a few hundred men-at-arms; the Grey Company, as described by Tolkien, was comprised of only thirty. But there were still some folk of unmixed Númenórean ancestry in Gondor—the line of the Stewards in particular—and it will be interesting to see if Jackson includes any mention of this in The Return of the King.