The second season of Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power wrapped up with Middle-earth at more of a crossroads than ever before. While the Elves endured the major, two-episode battle in Eregion, their numbers dwindled in the wake of that city’s destruction. Only a rallying cry led by High King Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker), with Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), Elrond (Robert Aramayo), and Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) by his side, seems to have given the Elves the strength they need to keep fighting — and based on Sauron’s (Charlie Vickers) renewed drive to destroy them, they’re going to need it. Meanwhile, the Númenoreans are more divided than ever on their isolated island, and in Khazad-dûm, a terrifying threat lurks beneath the mountain.

In the wake of the Season 2 finale, Collider had the opportunity to speak via Zoom with showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay about some of the most spoiler-filled moments we couldn’t discuss ahead of premiere time. Over the course of the interview, which you can read below, the duo expand on some of our most lingering questions about Season 2, including who Ciarán Hinds may actually be playing, that subtle Goldberry reference, whether they ever planned to bring Sauron and Galadriel together before their finale fight, and which Season 1 moment inspired the romance between Elendil (Lloyd Owen) and Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson). They also tease the current status of Season 3, hint at the appearance of other big characters without an initial season-long mystery, and more.

How Did ‘Slow Horses’ Jack Lowden Get Cast as Sauron for ‘The Rings of Power’ Season 2?

Image via Prime Video

COLLIDER: In our last conversation, we spoke about that flashback opening. We see a new face for Sauron, but I was wondering about the choice to make him different, visually, from the Halbrand version of the character in Season 1. What about Jack [Lowden] made him the right choice to play this Sauron 1.0?

PATRICK MCKAY: We’re fans of him. I feel like it was in Dunkirk that we first were like, “Who is this amazing leading man?” Then, our amazing casting director, Theo Park, was like, “What about Jack?” We got a call with him and pitched him, and we’re like, “You get murdered.” He’s like, “Sounds great.”

J.D. PAYNE: He has a very angelic vibe about him.

MCKAY: Cherubic.

PAYNE: Yeah, and we think that First Age Sauron is still possessing some of that grace and dignity from his inherent nature. Charlie [Vickers] is obviously a very, very handsome man, but in a different way. We see him a little more rugged and sort of worldly as his incarnations continue. We also know, eventually, after the fall of Númenor, he’ll go through another incarnation, so we wanted to chart and connect the dots about what that descent would be like for him.

MCKAY: But it’s also about character, right? Jack Lowden’s Sauron is essentially describing a proto-version of what will become the rings, his dream. “We’re going to control everybody. That’s how we’re going to win,” and he’s betrayed. That dream is with him all season, but you’ve watched how low he was brought. He had to eat bugs and crawl out of the mountain over hundreds of years, and I think that sends you into Season 2 understanding how Sauron sees himself.

One of the big questions from Season 1 is, “How did he end up on a raft?” Well, hopefully, now we’re answering that. From very early on, we loved the idea of starting the season that way, and Season 1 starts that way, as well — you’re telling the story of Galadriel. Maybe that becomes a thing we keep doing in the future. We’ll have to see.

Something we knew going into Season 2 was that we were going to meet Tom Bombadil, but we get another figure that’s very closely connected to him, whose presence is somewhat teased. We hear a voice, but we don’t actually see a presence. I was wondering about the decision to hint at Goldberry. Was there ever a plan to debut the two of them as a couple, or was that moment as far as you were allowed to go with her?

PAYNE: It’s interesting. You look at the mythology, and she’s a river spirit, like a river nymph, and the idea that maybe her spirit would be here, but maybe her physical presence wouldn’t be felt, like it could make sense for the legendarium. We felt we had to stretch a little bit even to get Tom Bombadil out of the Withywindle. We felt like we found a pretty good justification for why he may have ranged further and wider during his Second Age days. He might, later on, when he’s a little more geographically-centric in the Third Age. But with her, we felt like that was as far as we were comfortable going.

MCKAY: Also, the Tom Bombadil section of the novel — they’re not three novels, they’re one — is dreamlike. He’s lulling the hobbits to sleep. There’s something other about Tom Bombadil, about his entire environs and his house. Thinking about adapting aspects of that, we wanted to keep a light, gentle surrealism and whimsy to it, and the idea that there’s a disembodied voice. We’re just trying to subtly lay in that something is not quite all as it seems. There’s something other about Tom and his world and his house and where he’s coming from. He’s always coming at things from a slightly oblique angle. So, part of that is just the ambiance of strangeness we wanted to bring to the screen.

Last time we spoke, you couldn’t really share who Ciarán Hinds was playing. We still don’t know, really. You two have since gone on to say it was never really the plan for him to be someone like Saruman. Can you tease if it’s somebody that’s established, or if you’re aiming to go with an amalgamation of different characters?

PAYNE: He is not Saruman. We can say that we do know who he is.

MCKAY: But it’s all part of the journey. Good things come to those who wait.

Future Seasons of ‘The Rings of Power’ Will Introduce Major Characters Without a Mystery First

Image via Amazon Prime Video

That leads into something else I wanted to ask about, which is that there have been two seasons in a row now that have been a journey of breadcrumbs around two major characters’ identities. Season 1 was, “Who is Sauron?” And Season 2 was building to the reveal of Gandalf. It felt like you could put the pieces together if you were paying attention to those nuggets that were being dropped along the way. You two have also said, in the past, that it’s never your intention to pull a fast one or be tricksy with the audience, but would you ever consider diverting from that formula and introducing somebody from the jump, rather than spooling out that breadcrumb mystery?

PAYNE: The answer is yes. We have new characters that will be coming along down the pike, who… you will know who they are almost from the moment you meet them.

MCKAY: I think it’s nice when stories make you ask questions, but no, I don’t think we want it to become a bad habit of the show.

Was there ever a plan to bring Sauron and Galadriel together sooner than the finale fight? Was there ever thought given to bringing them together ahead of that rematch that they have in the finale, or did you decide it was better to really build up to that?

PAYNE: There was one moment earlier on in the story process where Sauron was going to come to Adar’s camp when Galadriel was a prisoner there.

MCKAY: In the early writing stages, we wondered if there was another… But I think very quickly it felt like, “No, no, no.” We looked at sequels we admire. That’s what you do. And one of the things we really thought about tonally is Empire Strikes Back, and that whole movie is about Luke and Vader coming back together on a collision course. But if they collided early, it would rob some of the power of that final meeting. So, I think in the end we felt like, for that and many other reasons having to do [with] character and proximity, they were going to be ready only then.

I talked to Lloyd Owen while Season 2 was on, and when we spoke about the unspoken romance between Elendil and Míriel, he mentioned that it might not have been initially planned for, but it grew out of the two of them having these moments that organically happen in Season 1. I wanted to follow up with the two of you about building that into their story for Season 2, because it really does feel like that relationship takes a step forward in that way.

PAYNE: It was in Season 1, Episode 8, where they’re in the hull of that ship. Even on the page, it hadn’t necessarily been planned, and then we started seeing the dailies, and we were like, “Oh my gosh, is there chemistry?”

MCKAY: It was the day of shooting. The director of the episode, Wayne Yip, and also, weirdly, some of our Amazon friends were like, “Maybe there should be a little vibe.” And it just played really beautifully. Then that became one of the low-key subtexts of Season 2, where Elendil and Míriel are having a rough go of things, and they’re an anchor for each other. There’s been a vibe there.

Why Does ‘The Rings of Power’ Season 2 Delve Into the Tragedy of Adar and the Orcs?

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The story really leans into, especially in Season 2, the humanity of the Orcs. People were surprised to see younger Orcs and the implications of a family unit. What did you want to emphasize about the tragedy of them as a race, and how they feel like pawns in this bigger chess match between Adar and Sauron at some points?

PAYNE: Watching characters suffer is always hard because we are human beings, and we have this empathic ability to project our own consciousness into others. I think at the same time, Adar, like Celebrimbor, really made a Faustian bargain, a deal with the devil. He has a scene with Galadriel — “He offered me an army. What’d he offer you?” Adar says, “He offered me children.” So he has gone into partnership with Sauron.

MCKAY: Whatever he wanted has been perversely fulfilled and wasted on him. It’s the monkey’s paw, right?

PAYNE: Yeah, exactly. And the Orcs, while they have things that echo family structures like the Elves, we love exploring the similarities. You see it throughout Tolkien — they’re not just monsters, even though etymologically the name means “demon.” They still have humanity.

MCKAY: Sam [Hazeldine] is always over here talking about, like, “Man, wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to have a big, bad boss anymore?” There’s a world of story underneath there that we’ve had the benefit of exploring. Tolkien really grappled with this. He’s got Orcs being mowed down as cannon fodder, but he had conflicted feelings about that. “I guess they’re a species. They’re not quite animals. They’re more than that. They have minds. They must multiply the way that creatures of Ilúvatar do.” So, we felt that there was this little gap of maybe before Sauron was really at his height, maybe there was another way things could have gone for Orcs, and that could potentially be the source of tragedy.

We feel that Adar’s story is a tragic one. He’s a monster and a villain, make no bones about it, but he aspires to something more, and I think it’s hard as people not to get caught up in that and weirdly root for him a little bit. Or at least we feel that way. We find when they betray him and kill him, it’s brutal. It’s a patricide.

PAYNE: What I was trying to get to earlier is [that] even though they’re complicit in their own fall, it is still painful to watch them falling.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask about the status of Season 3. What can you share about where you are in the writing-development process?

MCKAY: We, unfortunately, can say nothing other than we are prepping another season. That’s really all we can say. We’re very excited.

That’s fair. I actually saw today that the show continues to linger in the top ten [on Prime Video’s streaming charts].

MCKAY: Cool!

PAYNE: That’s good.

I feel like that’s something that we don’t always see with shows in the streaming area, this longevity. What do the two of you feel like it says, that the series continues to do well?

MCKAY: That makes our day to hear. A lot of people have worked very hard to make this a show that, hopefully, there’s lots to sink your teeth into. There are so many different characters and worlds and so much imagination is poured into every frame. It’s really an act of love, making this show on behalf of hundreds and hundreds of amazing artists. We’ve all worked very hard to make something that’s hopefully worth your time. If you like the show, we feel that there’s stuff to see in a second viewing.

PAYNE: We’re not demographers or people who are going to really get into the data and be able to explain why streaming trends go the way they do, but anecdotally, from what some people that we respect have told us, and friends and family, is that oftentimes when people are looking for things to watch with people in a different generation or in their family, whether it’s their parents or with their kids or whatever else, or they’re teenagers, it’s hard to find something that a 17-year-old girl and a 45-year-old man will be interested in both watching, or a 65-year-old woman and a 30-year-old man, or whatever. But Lord of the Rings has that transgenerational appeal, not just in The Rings of Power, but we think in the source material itself, and we’ve tried really hard to honor that as we come up with the stories. What is something that is going to be able to speak to the entire human experience, and where will there be something for everyone? If we have succeeded, then that may explain why, especially around the holidays, people are sitting around having their turkey or whatever and wanting to figure out something to watch together. Something everyone can agree on, hopefully, is, “Gosh, let’s sit down and go to Middle-earth!”

MCKAY: I also think, just as viewers, the show gets better the more you sit with it. Because there are so many threads and so many characters and so many stories, it almost takes a second viewing just to take it all in. We would only be so lucky if people are rediscovering it or discovering it for the first time. We’ve tried to build this thing to last, so touch wood. [Laughs]

Both seasons of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power are available to stream on Prime Video.