Maxance Vincent
As Sauron’s (Charlie Vickers) identity is fully revealed at the end of the first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, one wonders where the show will go next in its second season. Naturally, it had to be about the forging of the Rings of Power with Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards), which sets the events of the Second Age in motion. Celebrimbor, who does not know Halbrand is Sauron, is manipulated by the Dark Lord, who poses himself as Annatar, Lord of Gifts, to create rings for Dwarves and Men that secretly carry a corrupting influence in them.
The rings that were created for Elves in the first season with Elrond’s (Robert Aramayo) Mithril were not influenced by Sauron and are restoring Lindon from an evil growing in the region once Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), Círdan (Ben Daniels), and Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker) put them on. However, new rings that are now created in Celebrimbor’s forge do not have the same effect and are slowly poisoning the minds of the individuals who carry them.
Representing this era of the Second Age is crucial in the development of Sauron’s rise, and it was important for showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, who spoke to Awards Radar during a virtual Zoom press day, to nail the fall of Eregion right, as Celebrimbor slowly realizes the rings he is currently creating are evil.
This psychological descent into madness for Celebrimbor was crucial to get right, as explained by J.D. Payne:
“I remember thinking this, even in season one, before we started writing it. And just it was like a thing in my head that was just saying again and again, “Eregion, Eregion, you have to get the story of Eregion right.” This is the reason why we wanted to do a second age story, because there’s this amazing, epic story of the forging of the Rings of Power that, becomes so hugely influential both for this age and also for the Third Age.
That chance to get into this intimate relationship between Celebrimbor and Sauron, show what it would be like to work with that character and what the psychological descent you would go on as an artist with these world-shaking ambitions that Celebrimbor has. What would it entail to let him in when you had your suspicions about him, and then how would the process of that psychological descent be? You embrace his offer to help you unlock the hidden genius within you and make your great master craft work? I think anyone who’s worked in any kind of artistic endeavor can feel that Faustian appeal, where someone says, “I can make you the greatest X ever.” And you’re like, “Oh, wow, that sounds pretty good. Watching Celebrimbor embrace that deal, and then seeing what it does to him, we knew it was something we had to get right.”
For Patrick McKay, the relationship that Sauron and Celebrimbor would have was heavily reminiscent of how showrunner David Chase mapped out the fallout of the marriage between Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) and Carmela (Edie Falco) in the fourth season of The Sopranos:
“That’s the magic of serialized television, and this new form. You could really say that emerged in the last couple of decades, where you’re mapping out the arc and changing relationships over every season. I think about one of the earliest shows that did this is The Sopranos. There’s this great season of The Sopranos, actually, probably my favorite season is the fourth season, which, in retrospect, when you come to the finale, it’s all about the marriage. In the whole season, there are tons of twists, turns, adventures, mafia, murder, and all those things, but running through it, the emotional throughline is but about [Tony] and Carmela.
For season two of The Lord of the Rings, it’s about Sauron and Celebrimbor. From the earliest stages in the writer’s room, we are, episode by episode, charting out the ups and downs of their relationship. When are they coming closer together? When are they breaking apart? When does Celebrimbor seem to have the upper hand, but it’s actually Sauron? Celebrimbor is breaking away from his influence. So how is Sauron going to pull him back in? That’s the throughline of the whole season, and that’s the joy and fun of it. But I think we can only take a small amount of credit. We have two actors who are delivering a master class.
The nuance and the complexity of that relationship lives on the stage with those two amazing actors, Charlie Vickers and Charles Edwards. At the end of the day, we just became spectators.”
There was, of course, so much to talk about in our ten-minute conversation, seen below. We also discussed the corruptibility effects of the rings in King Durin III’s (Peter Mullan) arc, how they grounded the show in the emotions of the characters as massive of a production as it may get, and what was the most rewarding aspects of developing this part of Tolkien’s Second Age to the screen.
You can watch my interview with J.D. and Patrick below, and see all episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power on Prime Video today:
[Some of the quotes in this article have been edited for length and clarity]
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