Charlie Vickers as Sauron in ‘The Rings of Power’ season two finale. Ross Ferguson/Prime Video
[This story contains major spoilers from The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season two, episode eight.]
Spoiler alert… Sauron and Galadriel’s long-awaited battle in Amazon Prime Video‘s The Lord of the Rings prequel series finally came to fruition Thursday night.
The Rings of Power‘s season two finale didn’t end well for the elf, played by Morfydd Clark, who battles her frenemy fiercely. After a sharply choreographed sword fight, she is stabbed by the crown of Charlie Vickers’ Sauron, but not before he offers her a chance to become Queen. She shuts him down with “a roundhouse kick to the face,” as Vickers describes it, and he drives the weapon into her chest. He finally rips from her body the nine rings he was in search of. It’s the pure evil form of J.R.R. Tolkien‘s villain that audiences have been anticipating.
Thankfully, after resisting Sauron’s mind-controlling powers, Galadriel falls to the ground below and is revived by Elrond (Robert Aramayo) and Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker). This takes place after the Dark Lord has tortured Charles Edwards’ Celebrimbor, filling his body with arrows in an attempt to find where the elven-smith had hidden the aforementioned rings.
Celebrimbor goads him, explaining how Sauron has become a slave to his magic. He is answered with a final and fatal arrow to the heart. Sauron seizes power over the Orcs, who betray Adar (Sam Hazeldine), by pouncing on their leader and stabbing him to death. It’s a busy finale — not only for Sauron and Galadriel but the rest of Middle-earth, too. (The show also finally revealed who the Stranger is and yep, it’s exactly who you think it is.)
Vickers spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about Sauron’s trajectory from Halbrand to full-blown bad guy, why his character is not in love with Galadriel (or Celebrimbor), and what the Aussie actor knows about Amazon’s season three plans.
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Congratulations, first of all, on a wicked season. Why don’t we start by you telling me your initial reaction when you read the script for this season finale?
The thing I was really excited by was the mind prism thing — that’s what the showrunners call it. And Celebrimbor trying to fight against it. But in the finale, that particular scene where Sauron kills Celebrimbor, I was really excited to do that because it’s an iconic Tolkien image: Celebrimbor’s body being full of arrows and then hoisted high on a spear. Both [Edwards] and I, when we read it, we were just like, “This is going to be really cool.”
We see that Sauron is emotional in that scene — killing Celebrimbor is not easy for him. What does that tell us about his character?
It’s funny, it’s one of those things where I did the scene and I wasn’t expecting to get emotional. It’s not like it was a planned thing. It just happened. And then when you talk about it, you have to go back and try and unpack why, and sometimes there is no explanation for these things. But in thinking about why he might have been feeling like that, there’s a lot of different things. I think you do see him kill people in this show, and he often kills them quite matter of factly, let’s say. It’s different with Celebrimbor because he has been a partner in crime and someone [Sauron] really respects and someone he could have used.
There’s also this huge anger in himself in this moment that he’s been defeated because Celebrimbor has hidden these rings. Sauron needs the rings, yet Celebrimbor wants to die before he tells Sauron where these rings are. And Sauron says, “There are many ways of keeping you alive,” something like that. So he clearly wants to torture him until he finds out, but it’s just like the way Celebrimbor tells him that he’s now a slave to these creations. I think it probably hits home for Sauron, and he loses control and kills him. And I think that makes him really angry and upset, because it’s so un-Sauron to be out of control. It is more interesting to watch than him just dispatching everyone.
It really is, and makes him much more sinister. Villains are more intriguing when there is nuance to them, that gray area. With Sauron, he does say he wants to heal Middle-earth. He thinks he’s doing good.
Yeah, I think in his mind, he’s doing what’s best for everyone else — as well as him, obviously. But he says he wants to create a beautiful and lasting peace for Celebrimbor and Middle-earth, and it’s going to be awesome. It’s just the caveat is that … everything is under his rule. (Laughs.) So he is the hero of his own journey… It’s just unfortunate that there’s a bit of collateral damage.
Some fans have read into Sauron and Celebrimbor’s relationship as having some romantic undertones. What’s your take on that?
That’s interesting. We certainly didn’t play into any of that intentionally, but if people read into it like that, I think that’s cool. It’s not our job to dictate what people should and shouldn’t take from all these things. If someone’s watching it and thinking that perhaps there’s an element of that… Us as performers and the creators of the show, it wasn’t our intention to make it like that. But there’s a great sense of mutual respect for each other’s craft. Sauron really respects Celebrimbor and vice versa, but the chemistry I think came from [Edwards] and I just loving the working environment and working together.
We finally see this battle with Galadriel — which had been brewing for a while. First things first, is Sauron in love with Galadriel? He talks about making her his Queen.
I don’t think he is in love with her in the human sense of the word. I bring my humanity to the role and everyone watches it through this prism of humanity. So you see characters with chemistry, and you see there’s a romantic thing there, and that’s how we watch things because it’s part of our lives. I think that’s great for people to feel that way about the show, or about different relationships. But I think for Sauron and romantic love… It isn’t something he goes around thinking, “Where’s my girlfriend at?” Because he’s an angel, and I think it’s probably the same for Galadriel. So I don’t see it as romantic love. I see it as this kind of connection that is on another level to anyone else that he’s walked past on the street. He sees this high elf, and he’s like, “Oh, she operates on a similar plane to me where I can connect with her on things that I couldn’t connect with Joe Bloggs on the corner in the blacksmith.” But I think it’s fun, if people want to read into whatever they want.
Morfydd Clark and Charlie Vickers as Galadriel and Sauron in The Rings of Power season two, episode eight.
How was filming that battle with Morfydd? It was so well-choreographed.
It was really fun. We shot that over a couple of weeks, really, and rehearsed it for months in the lead up, because it was tricky and because it went through so many different locations. They were falling off things and jumping off things, there was a lot of pieces to put together. So it was working out the actual physical fighting side of it. But we couldn’t do that until we had the emotional arc of the story. Because ultimately, I think battles can be a bit boring if there’s no connection to the world behind it. We worked out the journey of these two characters seeing each other again and being like, “Oh, so this is what you’ve been doing.” And he says to her the door is still open, and then she finally says no, it’s shut. And I think he gets the message then and tries to kill her after she roundhouse kicks him to the face. (Laughs.) But it was all about working out the emotional arc of the scene — then the action comes from that.
Do you think Sauron knows Galadriel isn’t dead?
Yes. When he stabs her, he knows it’s going to be a pretty serious wound, particularly with the crown. But when she jumps off, I think that’s her way of getting away from it. He is too smart to think that she’s not going to survive. [He knows] she will find a way to heal that wound, even though, for many people, it would be a mortal wound. So yeah, I think he knows she’s probably still alive.
And as you said, you enjoyed exploring the mind prism element with Sauron.
Yeah, it’s cool. We saw a bit of that in the first season when he did it to Galadriel, and I think it’s a cool manifestation of the the magic of Tolkien’s world, because Tolkien was so not specific in magic. He went into such detail with the languages and the alphabets and the world building, but then there’s bits of magic in his world he never really works out. There’s no formula for the magic. And what I like about the show is that it doesn’t — particularly with the ring — it doesn’t go into huge detail of, “You need one ounce of copper and one ounce of mint” and all these minerals to then make the ring. The ambiguity of the magic is one of the things I really liked about Tolkien. Having said that, some of the devices that the show uses to show Saurons power, like this mind prism thing, is really cool, because once he gains their trust, he can alter their reality and be the Deceiver.
Do you consider yourself quite a Tolkien-head now, in terms of your understanding of his world?
I’ve learned a lot doing this and I really try to read and become as knowledgeable as I can. A lot of [my knowledge] is geared towards Sauron, all the things that he’s involved in. I know quite a bit now. But when we travel around, we meet people that are involved with the show in an informal capacity, often they’re just really influential people in the Tolkien community, and they are like Encyclopedias. It puts my knowledge to shame. (Laughs.) So I love learning from them and asking their opinions on things. But I know a decent amount.
Ah, that’s a really good question. It all depends on what we get to do, really. There’s something about the combination of the two, of Annatar and Halbrand, that would be really cool. It all has to be specific so I would want to see what I’m doing in the third season, because at the moment I literally know nothing. But once I see that, then it can be like the look would be for this purpose or to deceive this person or to command respect, whatever it is, because that’s the method I’ve followed so far.
Can we expect a season three? I’m assuming you can’t say, but there are hopes for another season. (Editor’s note: At the time of the story’s publication, THR reported that the series is on the verge of a season three renewal.)
Yeah, I think people are really hopeful. I know some things that I can’t say, but I think there will be something formal coming at some point. But I don’t even know when, genuinely.
So what was your favorite moment for your character this season, as an actor? Maybe that scene with Celebrimbor in the finale?
Yeah, I think actually shooting him with the arrows was my favorite bit, because I did a bit of training to do that, which was cool. But then I don’t think you actually see me let go of the arrow. It’s Celebrimbor with an arrow in his chest and it cuts to me holding it. So all the training, maybe it was for the pose? (Laughs.) But that was my favorite bit.
There’s some big things that this show is going to do for the Tolkien fans and the anthology of events, and that was the first one. [Makes a box-checking motion with his hand.]
Charlie Vickers Charlie Gray/Prime Video
Do you consider yourself a bit of an archer now?
Oh, my God, terrible. Moryfdd is actually really good at archery. She sent me a photo after her session where she got, like, 10 in the bullseye. Mine were going all over the place.
I feel like so much happens in the finale that audiences will be so excited about. The Stranger reveals himself as Gandalf, for example. What do you think the best moment is in terms of fan service?
I think the people talk about the banner of Celebrimbor, where he’s actually paraded as a war banner on top of a pike and filled with arrows. In our show, we don’t do it in this episode. I genuinely don’t know if they plan to wheel him out at the start of next season and parade him around on the banner. There’s certainly a possibility of that happening. But him being hoisted up on the spear, and the image of him filled with the arrows, I think that is the biggest fan service moment in the season.
Have you been daunted at all by the pressure of such a huge fanbase of this beloved world?
Yes and no. To be honest, when you’re filming it, you don’t think about that. You understand that so many people care about it, and it means a lot to so many people, and it means a lot to us so you feel privileged to be there but you don’t really think about the people who are going to watch it. We take the work really seriously and the privilege of doing this really seriously. But on the other hand, we’re dressing up as elves. There’s something childlike about it that’s really fun. I don’t want to undermine the seriousness of the work because it has such huge resources and we all care and love it so much. But when you’re dressing up, sword fighting, that alleviates the pressure.
Has it been weird for you going from being a relatively unknown actor to being on a global stage like this?
Life hasn’t changed that much. The only experiences have been good experiences. It’s certainly not at the point where it impacts my day to day. When people come up and they want to talk about the show or give their thoughts, 99.9 percent of the time they’re all really nice and it’s really nice conversations. So life hasn’t changed so much for me. The other things that have really changed is my ability to be more relaxed in my career. I feel I can have a bit more control, which is nice as an actor. Also I have a wife and son now, so my life is very different because of that, more so than anything to do with my professional career.
I have to ask, if there was a season three… What would you like to see? Is it all guns (or swords) blazing now?
I’ll caveat it with: I don’t know anything about the season ahead, or what their plans to announce anything formally are… But as a fan and as someone involved in the show, there are things that I would love to see if we get the chance to do them. The War of the Elves and Sauron, the Fall of Númenor, the War of the Last Alliance, all these things. The forging of the actual ring, what all these amazing novels are borne out of. So this is the tip of the iceberg. There’s so much I’m looking forward to, but I feel like when I watched episode seven and eight, I was thinking: “Is this what the show is now, full throttle from here on?” And that’s a really exciting prospect.
What about Sauron’s own motivations going forward, what are we going to see from him as a character?
I think he is now at the point where he’s been reconsumed by the darkness, but still needs to get the rest of Middle-earth under his control. This is where it begins and he needs to conquer all the different parts of Middle-earth, be it númenóreans, elves… I mean, he fucking hates the elves. (Laughs.) That’s probably the logical place to start. And he has these nine rings that he’s just got from Galadriel. I think task number one is probably: who am I going to give these nine rings to, to then enslave them? He’s got a big to-do list.
Rings of Power season two is now streaming on Prime Video.
