Charlie Vickers and Charles Edwards have opened up on what to expect from Sauron and Celebrimbor's mentally taxing relationship in The Rings of Power season 2.
Speaking to TechRadar before the popular Prime Video show returned today (August 29), the pair revealed that the Dark Lord and master elven-smith's dynamic won't play out like many viewers expect. Indeed, Vickers and Edwards stressed that their relationship won't be defined by Sauron, who's now disguised as Annatar, simply manipulating Celebrimbor to forge more of the titular rings. Instead, their power dynamic will play out with a greater degree of unpredictability.
"It's not just puppet and puppet master," Edwards told me about the respective roles Celebrimbor and Sauron portray in their relationship. "They're both brilliant minds who pursue this [creating the other rings] with honorable intention initially. But, they're also vying for control, so there's creative and domestic friction and, as we progress through season two, he [Sauron] starts to make me [Celebrimbor] question my very existence."
"I come with a proposal to 'heal' Middle-earth," Vickers added. "And, with that, I tell Celebrimbor that he can be better than his grandfather [Fëanor]. So, it starts off with these great intentions, but then slowly becomes more of a power struggle, especially when I pitch the idea of making rings for me, which Celebrimbor pushes back on because men are so susceptible to corruption. That's when the conflict starts to emerge and, as a consequence of the growing levels of disagreement, I need to enforce the law."
Well, that doesn't sound good! Understandably, teaming up with The Lord of the Rings' legendary villain isn't what Celebrimbor consciously signed up for, but it's clear he gets duped into making more of the magical artefacts in The Rings of Power from episode 4 onwards. Indeed, Edwards previously told me that he had a crash course in ring-making ahead of filming the hit show's sophomore season, so I'm expecting to see the other 17 rings – seven for the Dwarf Lords, nine for the Kings of Men, and even the One Ring itself – to show up in the series' latest chapter.
Unfortunately for Celebrimbor (and Middle-earth as a whole), the rings are crafted before anyone in Eregion realizes that Annatar has played them like a fiddle. When his true identity is revealed in the Amazon high fantasy show, then, you can expect a melodramatic powderkeg to go off – something that Vickers and Edwards can't wait for audiences to see, especially once Celebrimbor grasps the enormity of the situation and how he was tricked into playing a massive part in it.
"Towards the end, it gets so meaty and so dark," Edwards teases. "With every scene, there's a new challenge and a new method of mental torture. It just grows and grows, and eventually boils over in the most dramatic and shocking way possible."
"There are two battles going on once we hit that point [in the season]," Vickers said. "There's the Siege of Eregion going on outside, but there's also the siege of the mind as these two brilliant individuals lock horns. That's what made filming those sequences so fun. One day, you're walking along Eregion's walls as things are exploding around you, and the next you're locked in a room as you engage in this battle of wills. Those things happening concurrently is what makes the end of this season so special."
It sounds like, then, that one of the best Prime Video shows is going all-out to cement itself as the one Amazon TV Original to rule them all. And that's exactly what I said of The Rings of Power season 2's three-episode premiere, which you'll want to read first before you return to Middle-earth on one of the world's best streaming services.
The Rings of Power season 2's first three episodes are out now on Prime Video. New episodes arrive weekly until October 3.
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