It was the moment so many of us were waiting for. After spending the bulk of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 apart — though never far from the other’s mind — Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and Sauron (Charlie Vickers) finally came face to face for a climactic cliffside duel. The fight, which was teased in the Season 2 trailer and sent Haladriel shippers into a veritable flurry, was a lengthy sequence full of brilliant choreography and intense character moments for both Galadriel and Sauron, moments that have us already eagerly anticipating Season 3.

In a new interview with Vickers, Collider’s Carly Lane got the chance to ask the Dark Lord himself about that final fight, and his thoughts on where the Sauron/Galadriel dynamic is left by the time the credits roll. For Vickers, there’s been a major shift in Sauron’s approach towards Galadriel — someone jumping off a cliff to escape you will have that effect — but the two of them will always share some sort of connection. As he explained:

“Even though he stabbed her with the Crown of Morgoth, he’s underestimated her too many times. He knows that she’ll survive in some capacity, that she’ll find a way. And again, it is unfinished business. They’re the forces of good and evil, and it’ll endure as long as the show does, that they’ll have this kind of connection. It’s no longer, ‘I can get you to join me.’ I feel like that door is now shut, because he says the door is still open and then she says it’s shut and then roundhouse kicks him to the face. [Laughs] But I think it’s now, ‘How am I going to defeat you guys?’ That’s the new mission. He hates the Elves and it’s like, ‘How can I exterminate, get rid of all of them, so then I can just really control and order Middle-earth?'”

The Many Faces of Sauron

One of the most visually exciting moments in an already visually exciting duel is when Sauron, a man with many names and aspects, changes his appearance mid-fight, alternately appearing as his Halbrand form, as Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) and even as Galadriel herself. Vickers really enjoyed the experience of getting to return to his Season 1 character, describing it as “really cool,” while also weighing in on what the choice meant for the character:

“It was Halbrand with slightly less stubble because I had to switch between Annatar and Halbrand in a day — although I think maybe I had a weekend to try and grow some stubble, which I pathetically attempted to do, and then we jumped back to Annatar on the same day. But it was nice. It was nice to try and push [Galadriel’s] buttons in that way and almost show to her, ‘This is what could have happened had you joined me , and now look at the power that I have over you, and I will always have this power.’ It was a really long scene that Morfydd [Clark] and I worked on together. It was really fun to develop the physicality of it, and the action had to be grounded in the emotion.”

His appearance as Halbrand was followed quickly by Sauron assuming Galadriel’s appearance to really throw the Elf off her balance. Clark did a phenomenal job capturing Vickers’ particular energy, but how much of that was the result of coaching from Vickers himself? None, as it turns out:

“I think I left it up to her because she’s such an amazing actor, so I just let her do her thing, but it was really because I hadn’t seen it. I watched it for the first time last night, and I was like, ‘Okay, nice. That’s your imitation of me.’ It was really cool. I think she had a lot of fun doing it, but I left her up to her own devices. It was great to see.”

Shooting the extensive sequence also came with some particular challenges for director Charlotte Brändström, as she told Lane in a separate interview. The sequence took several days to film, not purely because of the fight choreography, but also because the logistics of getting both Vickers and Clark changed and prepped to play multiple roles. As she explained:

“It was five, six days or something that, I think. Also, it took a long time because of makeup, and the prosthetics , and stuff like that. Or when I had to get Morfydd clean and to be the other Galadriel, you couldn’t be done on the same day because she would need to go and get made up, and changed, and everything, and we would’ve lost hours in the day. So we had to schedule it. I also wanted to shoot that scene as chronologically, as much as possible. I almost did, except for these problems. And also, obviously, changing Charlie, because he had to have a beard when he was Halbrand. But he was very shaved when he was Sauron, so that was something else.”

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 is streaming on Prime Video now. Stay tuned at Collider for Lane’s full conversations with Vickers and Brändström.