New Image of Sauron From THE RINGS OF POWER Season 2 and Details on His Story Arc

We’ve got a new image to share with you for Prime Video’s The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2. The photo offers a look at the Dark Lord Sauron, only he’s not so dark in it.

Sauron is played by Charlie Vickers in the epic fantasy series, and we also have some new details to share regarding the character thanks to showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay.

Season 2 of the series will tell the story of Sauron’s ascendancy, and when talking about that with Empire, McKay said: “If you had to pick one reason to make this show and set it in this era of the mythology, that’s it.

“From minute one, we talked about Milton’s Paradise Lost, Walter White and Tony Soprano, and how Sauron has the potential to be like these great villain-heroes – hero meaning protagonist. That’s the great untold story on the screen.”

In Season 1 of the series, Sauron was sneaking around in the guise of Halbrand, but after being discovered, he takes on a new persona, the elegant Elf, Annatar.

When talking about his reinvention, McKay said: “He was hiding amongst our story. The opportunity now with Season 2 is: the audience is in on the con. We know who he is. We have a pretty good sense of what he wants.

“The fun is watching other people get ensnared in the web. As the season unfolds, the plan starts. One hammer after another starts to fall until, by the last couple of episodes, you realise the level and extent of how evil he is and how deeply he’s strategised this whole thing out.”

McKay goes on to explain: “All our stories start to become one story and the one story is the way the re-emergence of Sauron touches everybody and threatens the whole world.”

Vickers also talked about his character, saying: “I was so excited to get to this point of the story, because this is the canon of this time period. You have Sauron and Celebrimbor working together, making rings.

“Everything Sauron does is to serve other people, to appeal to someone else. In the same way the whole Halbrand thing was for Galadriel, this new look is for Celebrimbor.

“This is the best way to get him to do what he wants him to do: make a bunch of rings that’ll dominate everyone else.”

I like everything that I’m hearing and I’m excited to see how Sauron’s story arc continues to play out!

The series takes place “thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien's pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness.

“Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth.

“From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone.”

In Season 2, “Sauron has returned. Cast out by Galadriel, without army or ally, the rising Dark Lord must now rely on his own cunning to rebuild his strength and oversee the creation of the Rings of Power, which will allow him to bind all the peoples of Middle-earth to his sinister will.

“Building on Season 1’s epic scope and ambition, Season 2 of Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power plunges even its most beloved and vulnerable characters into a rising tide of darkness, challenging each to find their place in a world that is increasingly on the brink of calamity.

“Elves and dwarves, orcs and men, wizards and Harfoots… as friendships are strained and kingdoms begin to fracture, the forces of good will struggle ever more valiantly to hold on to what matters to them most of all… each other.”

The series is being developed by showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay. The Rings of Power Season 2 premieres August 29th on Prime Video.