The evil isn’t coming, it’s here.

Season 2 of The Lord of the Rings: The Ring of Power has been firmly centered on the villains’ journey as fiends like Charlie Vickers’ Sauron and Trystan Gravelle’s Pharazon twist and manipulate their way to power. As evil takes hold, lines will begin to blur, with even the likes of Sam Hazeldine’s Adar doing what can be done to stop Sauron in his own misguided and, yes, relatively villainous way. The darkness of Middle-earth is no longer creeping in, it is here, and the start of the Battle of Eregion is right around the corner.

For now, we know that the Uruk’s siege on Eregion has begun while Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) toils away to complete the rings for men while under Sauron’s spell. But the chaos has only just begun, and the two remaining episodes of Season 2 promise action and despair abound. To get a better idea of what’s to come, we sat down with showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, as well as stars Charlie Vickers, Sam Hazeldine, and Charles Edwards to get the scoop on the impending chaos.

A New Kind of Rings of Power

Before we dove into battle itself, it felt important to take a look at what all of this bloodshed is over — the Rings of Power themselves. But, given that the majority of viewers of the Prime Video series have presumably either read or seen (or both) The Lord of the Rings stories, the showrunners didn’t want to get too bogged down in rehashing the lore — even if some of it was tweaked for modern-day storytelling.

“[The fans] know that everyone’s been deceived,” says McKay. “So you have to go in with that as a prerequisite, which means Sauron has a plan, and everything flows from there.”

For now, though, it seems as if the elven rings appear to go against that plan. In the original lore, the elven rings are made last, but remain untouched by Sauron’s hand. In Rings of Power, those rings are first and already in the hands of their intended bearers, but still untouched by the Great Deceiver. It remains to be seen how the rings will be controlled once the One Ring is forged, but for now that’s some ways off and Narya, Nenya and Vilya remain untainted despite Elrond’s (Robert Aramayo) insistence otherwise. Besides, there is plenty of corruption to be had within the dwarven rings, and it’s only going to get worse.

They are covetous. They are untrustworthy.

“Each round of rings is more corrupted as he becomes more and more central for the project,” McKay teases after acknowledging Sauron’s hand in making the dwarven rings, dropping the last ingot into the forge himself. Before putting on his ring, King Durin was not a greedy man. Now, the ruler of Khazad-Dum is ready to bring down his own mountain on his quest for mithril. If Sauron manages to corrupt the rings of men in another way, Valar only know what darkness will befall them before the history we know falls into place.

For his part, Celebrimbor was reluctant to give rings to men to begin with.

“They are covetous. They are untrustworthy. It would get out of hand. So that is his gut immediate reaction to the suggestion initially,” Edwards says, confirming his character’s concerns about mankind. Tolkien’s writing doesn’t necessarily contradict him either, save a few notable exceptions like Elendil and Aragorn.

Tunnel Vision

Tunnel vision is playing a major part in the downfall of a lot of our key heroes this season. Arondir (Ismael Cruz Cordova) is honed in on Adar, Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and Adar are laser-focused on Sauron, and Celebrimbor can’t see beyond his legacy (and Annatar’s glamour). But for the showrunners, the tunnel vision is more about what everyone’s laser focus is going to lead to.

“How is [Celebrimbor] going to get out of this and find some kind of victory even in defeat,” wonders McKay. “You have Galadriel who is trying to put the genie back in the bottle that she let out, she now essentially has to pass the test again. If she faces [Sauron], will he get the better of her? You have Arondir, who in some ways is out for revenge…”

What will Arondir’s revenge ultimately be? We can’t tell you yet. But you’re definitely going to want to see for yourself as the battle kicks into high gear.

“For us, it’s showing the off-ramps and the things that could have gone a different way and then taking it away,” Payne agrees. “If only this had happened, then that could happen, and this could happen, that could happen. And playing with those what-ifs can drive a person crazy.”

From the outside looking in, it seems as if it is Adar who may end up with the greatest regret before all is said and done, even if it is him leading the charge on Eregion. In many respects, Adar has quietly been the series’ MVP, with his love for his children acting as a counterbalance to his otherwise despicable acts. Much of what we’ve seen of the character, right or wrong, has been in service of protecting those that Morgoth and Sauron saw as a means to an end.

“Unless Sauron is destroyed, he knows that the fate of his children is that they will be enslaved or killed,” Hazeldine says of Adar’s obsession. “They’ll be cannon fodder again. And it’s so unthinkable having killed Sauron, he thought, before and be free of him […] and now Sauron’s back. As painful as it is treating his Uruk exactly how he doesn’t want them to be treated by Sauron, it’s a means to an end.”

Getting to The One Ring and Its Conquests

While the rings for men are not yet finished, the biggest question on all of our minds is when the One Ring will come into play and really start mucking everything up. As we know, Sauron forges the Ruling ring on his own but, where we sit right now, he needs Celebrimbor. Given how far off the One Ring is in the story, McKay is understandably cagey about the line of questioning.

“I think we can only reflect on what the show has shown us so far, which is that Sauron needs Celebrimbor. So how does Sauron then forge a ring on his own? That’s a big question worthy of lots of dramatic exploration,” McKay explains with, perhaps, one of the cheekiest grins of all time.

But dramatic exploration is kind of Sauron’s whole thing, right? If there’s anything we’ve learned about him in these two seasons, it’s that at his core he’s kind of just a messy dude who lives for drama. A god, playing with his ants. Just little bugs that he’s convinced he will save. Provided, of course, they do exactly as he says. But Sauron at this time in his life has one flaw, and it’s that he quite enjoys the game.

Check out our exclusive clip from Rings of Power Season 2, Episode 7 

However, there’s one pest in particular that he isn’t having any fun with at all. From his perspective, Sauron has two foils this season. Celebrimbor may still be a willing participant for the time being, but The Great Deceiver has Adar and Galadriel coming at him from both sides, and he’s still pretty upset over the latter turning him down.

“[Sauron] has bonds with both of them in a way,” Vickers muses of his character. “He shared this power, this connection that he had with Galadriel that we see throughout the first season. And I think in terms of the show, he is never really connected to someone else on his level. Galadriel is the closest thing to that. Similarly with Adar, they have this relationship that goes back hundreds of years.”

“If I had to choose one,” Vickers continues, deciding which of his two foils he “enjoys” tormenting the most, “it would be Adar. I think there’s a slight unpredictability about what Adar will do, but I think it couldn’t be Galadriel because there is a part of him that feels like she has the power to, if not harm him in the future, fully influence his course in Middle-earth. Whereas I think he sees Adar more as someone that he can swat aside.”

Sauron, The Great Deceiver

Speaking of that pesky Annatar, it has to be acknowledged that the greatest gaslighter across the ages really does believe that what he is doing is best for the realm. Of course, believing that they’re trying to help is often the mark of any great villain — but it’s easy to look at Middle-earth’s greatest monster and believe that he is simply evil for the sake of it. When it came to bringing The Great Deceiver to life, Vickers had to approach things from a unique perspective.

“He’s a god, so it’s interesting to approach it from the perspective of an actor, because you look at human nature and all we can bring to it is our humanity, but he is not human,” says Vickers. “I think I have to understand that he operates differently because he’s a demigod. It’s in his nature because he was a pupil of Aulë, who was the greatest smith of the Valar. So, he has this appreciation for excellence and beauty that is inherent, that has been in him since he was Myron, since the very beginning.”

Gods are known for toying with mortals across legend and lore, but there’s something deeper in Sauron’s desires. In Greek mythology, the gods play with humanity and creatures alike simply because they’re petty and bored. For Sauron — or whatever name you choose to assign him — his desire for beauty and elegance is central to all of his intentions. History and fiction alike warn us of those who would seek to cleanse lands in favor of beauty and perfection, but those proclivities are not the only things that drive his wickedness. His evil is also driven by something much more benign — almost human, even.

“I think that there’s that inherent side of him that it’s just like, ‘I’m going to control and heal and fix Middle-earth because it’s in my nature,’” Vickers goes on. “But there’s also an element of… He was under Morgoth, he was Morgoth’s right-hand man all throughout the First Age. And I think he probably just saw — at least my theory is — he just saw Morgoth just destroying shit all the time. Morgoth was a nihilist. If he couldn’t control something, he would destroy it or anything like it. […] I think he’s probably seen the missteps of his master, and that makes him want to do things another way and see that there is another way of doing things, maybe with a more positive end, from his side at least. Positive for him, bad for everyone.”

At the risk of sounding wildly reductive, there’s something delightfully ironic about Sauron essentially trying to break free of generational trauma caused by his master to make something brighter, only to wind up doing it all in an extremely similar way regardless of his intentions. Turns out he and Adar have more in common than either of them think.

The Fall — and Failing — of Eregion

Rings of Power is now in its era of tragedy. Fans are watching The Lord of the Rings history unfold as Tolkien’s legendarium is expanded in ways that, just years ago, we’d have never thought possible. Turns out, that comes with a lot of heartache. But that doesn’t mean that the people of Middle-earth go quietly into the night. We know of the wars, of course. But, like The Lord of the Rings before it, those wars only matter because of the intimate, human moments that precede them.

Of course, in the case of Sauron and Celebrimbor, those intimate moments are deeply nefarious, and will only grow more so with time.

“[Sauron] has to think on his feet, because Celebrimbor does start to smell a rat,” Vickers acknowledges. “I think it forces Sauron to dip into his bag of tricks, to put it bluntly, in the sense that he can really manipulate and warp people’s minds. I think he knows that there may have to come a point where he has to do that to Celebrimbor in order to keep him focused on the task at hand and to stop him falling apart. And Charles does it so beautifully in that you see this man who falls apart at the seams. And I think Sauron has to try and keep him focused.”

But, as we see in the clip above, Sauron’s ability to keep the elf focused is waning. It may be easy to forget in the moment, given Sauron’s vanity and pride, but Celebrimbor is a highly intelligent and incredibly skilled being. Given that, it felt critical to talk to Edwards about his character eventually breaking free of Sauron’s spell.

“The fact that he has been believing that all is well in his beautiful world that he built and then to see that it is not…” Edwards starts. “[Eregion] had everything in it that was just him. The fire and the tools and beauty and the windows… everything was absolutely gorgeous, and that is a personification of him, I think. It held his soul in its walls. And to see that devastated [would be] the toughest, I would say.”

But what would ultimately hurt the high elf more? Is it handing Sauron the key to destroying Middle-earth, or is it failing Eregion, the city he founded and home to the greatest smiths in history? “It has to be failing Eregion,” Edwards says definitively.

Forging Hope

Devastation is not limited to Eregion, even if it is Rings of Power’s most bombastic storyline heading into the Season 2 finale. Still, the core of Tolkien’s stories, of this great epic the writer built, is hope. The Lord of the Rings and anything attached to it is not rooted in despair. It’s rooted in earnestness in the face of that despondence.

“This work was born in the trenches of World War I when the Legendarium first started taking shape in his mind,” Payne explains. “And as he came out of it, he wrote what he likes to call a fairy story. The work is permeated by both those two extremes on the spectrum of light and dark. The light is light because you had to pass through the dark to get there. You end up appreciating it and knowing it … better than if you were just in a bright, happy cheery place the entire time. So we reckon that the dark lows that you’re going to go to towards the end of Season 2 make those moments of lightness and character connection all the more powerful.”

“I would say if anything, the earnestness you have to hold onto even more as shit gets real, so to speak,” McKay adds. “That’s really where the heart of it is. What are they fighting for? We don’t respond even as fans or viewers to stuff that is cheeky or meta or cynical, so we wouldn’t know how to undercut that if we tried.”

But what of Celebrimbor, the character at the very center of Season 2’s greatest pain? Like Galadriel before him, he was a willing participant in Sauron’s game. The Great Deceiver dangled what he wanted most in front of him — the love and respect of his king and his peers — and Celebrimbor gobbled it up. The great irony here is that Celebrimbor already had both of those things, but he was just too wrapped up in his own creations to see it. How do you get past knowing that your own pride is what destroyed your city and the lives of so many who depended on you and your guidance?

“I think a lot of elven hope is represented by light in whatever circumstance they find themselves,” Edwards says. “Look toward the light. Go towards the light. It’s like a guiding star. And I think … whatever hope is left in him is that. There has to be hope. I think that’s the other thing, even if hope is dwindling, there still has to be hope. And I think even if there’s none left, they must find it. And I think that’s what keeps many of the characters afloat.

“Battered though he is, I think there is enough of him left at the end to be able to rouse up some muscle and energy to help in the fight,” Edwards continues, hinting once again at breaking free of Sauron’s spell. “And also, yeah, there is a version where he fights Sauron. But yeah, so I believe he’s got some gumption left in him.”