Exclusive: ‘We wanted to do a classic, epic, and rip-roaring Tolkienian battle’

The Rings of Power season 2’s forthcoming tentpole battle sequence is the “most ambitious undertaking we’ve ever attempted.” That’s according to co-showrunner Patrick McKay, who left me in no uncertain terms about the size, scale, and scope of this season’s action spectacle.

Speaking to TechRadar ahead of season 2’s launch in late August, McKay opened up the amount of work that went into bringing the Siege of Eregion to life. An era-defining battle, the bloody and devastating conflict is arguably the most significant of The Lord of the Rings‘ iconic fights. Indeed, not only does it kick off the War of the Elves and Sauron that spans much of Middle-earth’s Second Age, but it also shapes events in the Third Age, the biggest of which were covered in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings movie trilogies.

Some of the battles depicted in those films, such as The Two Towers‘ Helm’s Deep and The Return of the King‘s Siege of Gondor, clearly influenced elements of The Rings of Power‘s take on the Siege of Eregion. During our chat, McKay and co-creator J.D. Payne didn’t elaborate on what inspirations they took from that duo that informed the Prime Video show’s latest big-budget battle.

Nonetheless, McKay and Payne wanted to honor the multi-stage action-set pieces that Jackson and company adapted for the big screen and how the Siege of Eregion is described in Tolkien’s literary works.

“The Siege of Eregion is the most ambitious undertaking we’ve ever attempted on this show,” McKay admitted, “Which is really saying something, because everything on this show is ambitious.”

“We wanted to do a classic, epic, and rip-roaring Tolkienian battle with not just two sides, but with multiple armies and multiple races colliding. Also, sieges don’t take place over one day or night, but over a matter of weeks or months, so we want you to feel that time. We want you to feel the phases it moves through. We have an aerial bombardment, destruction of the city and the natural environment, [and] then there’s a horse charge and a ground assault. By the eighth episode, it devolves into hand-to-hand street fighting, like [the Battle of] Stalingrad.”

Adar leads his Uruk and orc forces towards Eregion as he attempts to kill Sauron once more (Image credit: Prime Video)
That sounds like a lot to pack into the Amazon prequel series’ last two episodes – and that’s before you even account for season 2’s other storylines in Númenor, Pelargir, Khazad-dûm, and Rhûn that also need some form of resolution before The Rings of Power departs our screens once more. It’s a good job, then, that McKay, Payne, and the show’s thousands-strong cast and crew prepared thoroughly to ensure that filming the Siege of Eregion went as smoothly as possible.

“It took a year to prepare,” McKay revealed, “And it took weeks to shoot. We had hundreds of extras, and an immeasurable amount of prosthetics made by Barrie and Sarah Gower. Then there’s the stunt work performed by our amazing stunt team, the pyrotechnics, our CGI troll, and then our producing director Charlotte Brandstrom and second unit director Vic Armstrong who captured it all on camera. It’s all of the things, all of the time, but we’re really proud of the result.”

The Siege of Eregion will aim to rival similar tent-pole battles seen in The Lord of the Rings movies (Image credit: Prime Video)
So, we can expect an episode or two akin to the ‘Battle of the Bastards’ and ‘The Long Night’ episodes in HBO’s Game of Thrones, right? Not quite. As I mentioned, there are other narratives running concurrent to the Siege of Eregion, so one of the best Prime Video shows’ second season won’t end with an episodic pair that’ll leave audiences drained by its conclusion.

“It’s not wall-to-wall action,” McKay admitted. “You’re moving in and out of sequences of very tense action and emotional character-driven moments. The Siege of Eregion is not just the big bang at the end of the season. It is that, too, but it also the knot that binds all of these different story threads involving Galadriel, Sauron, Adar, Celebrimbor, Elrond, and Durin – it ties them together. So, you’re not just getting narrative explosions; it’s also emotional character explosions, epiphanies and huge changes to the course of Middle-earth’s history.”

As Galadriel observed in season 2 episode 4, then, you’ll need to “prepare yourselves” for tragic and heroic moments alike. Before this season’s penultimate chapter arrives, be sure to read some of my exclusives with the series’ cast below, which tease what’s to come in the final two episodes.