THE RINGS OF POWER Season 2 Showrunner Shares New Insight on the Rise of Sauron

Thanks to The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power co-showrunner, J.D. Payne, we have some new insight to share with you regarding Season 2 and the story arc for the Dark Lord Sauron.

While talking to Collider, Payne shared: “You remember in Season 1 how it didn’t end exactly as he would have hoped; Galadriel cast him out, and he’s left with basically nothing.

“She has the three rings. He has no friends, he has no army, he has no allies, no weapons, basically no resources except for his own cunning. Season 1 was all about the heroes and about setting the table with Galadriel, with the Dwarves, with Númenor, and with Southlanders.

“Season 2 is gonna be all about the villains, and specifically all about Sauron. We’re going to watch as he uses deception, manipulation, lies, coercion, cunning to start to set the chess pieces in motion.

“He’s gonna go to this person over here and sort of set this group against that group over there and start using people’s inherent trusts and mistrusts and fears against them to start to set up the situations that are all beneficial to him.”

I like that Season 2 is going to explore, in-depth, the origin of Sauron. The character is played by Charlie Vickers and this next chapter of the story will tell the story of Sauron’s ascendancy.

Showrunner Patrick McQuaid previously talked about the story of Sauron, saying: “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.”

McKay continued: “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 realize the level and extent of how evil he is and how deeply he’s strategized this whole thing out.”

He 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.”

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 Rings of Power Season 2 premieres August 29th on Prime Video.