THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER Director Says Season 2 Will Be "Darker" and "Edgier"
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 is deep in development, and I’m excited to see where the creative team takes the stories for these characters in Middle Earth next. Yeah, I’m one of those fans that enjoyed the first season.
Season 2 director Charlotte Brändström recently talked about the series and said that it will continue to lean into more boundary-pushing themes and give fans a "gritty" and "edgier" take on the Middle Earth than what we saw in Season 1. Brändström said:
"What I know and what I can say for a fact is that it's going to be darker, and it's going to be edgier and more character-driven. I still think that we have some very interesting episodes coming up. I watched all of them over Christmas, just the cuts. I think it's going to be a very good season. We tried to make it more gritty, a little bit more dirty I guess. And not in the image, but to make it as authentic as possible. We have some very surprising twists and turns in it as well."
The series is being developed by showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, and it’s previously been explained that Season 2 is ramping up the pace of storytelling and the scope of battle scenes. Producer Vernon Sanders shared:
“We now get to have the fun of seeing the story ramp up as Sauron is revealed. And I think audiences can look forward to a show that, while it feels true to itself, feels like the stakes are ever higher and now that the rings are in play, seeing what they can do and seeing how the various factions within the world deal with those implications. I think it’s going to be really compelling.”
When talking about the pacing and scope of the upcoming season, he went on to say:
“We’ve never done anything like this. So the whole production model, how to produce a show like this, the scale work, all that were things that we needed to learn for the first time in the process of making the show. We are going to be faster. We are going to be able to put more money on screen, just in terms of the scale and scope of what we’re doing now that we know how to do it. And I also think the pace of our story is going to increase in part because the story is demanding that now that everyone’s been established, the stakes are established, that we’re going to watch some characters in some lands go to war.”
He also teased even bigger battle sequences, saying: “Yes, I can say you will see bigger battles in season two including some iconic moments from the appendices and the books.” It’ll be interesting to see those moments play out!
The series is based on the appendices from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of Rings books, and the story is set in the Second Age of Middle-Earth, “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.”