The second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is upon us, transporting fans back to Middle-earth with some new faces bearing familiar names.
Australian actor Charlie Vickers, who was relatively unknown before joining the Rings of Power cast, is stepping into some big shoes as Sauron, the eponymous Lord of the Rings. Except that Season 2 shows us the lord before the rings, a Sauron before the crafting of the One Ring that would eventually rule them all.
Hardly the all-powerful Eldritch being that director Peter Jackson depicted him as, Vickers’ Sauron is flesh and blood (mostly). He’s charming and persuasive, and Vickers’ performance lends the Dark Lord some glimpses of humanity.
“It’s nice to develop a different side of Sauron,” Vickers told Global News. “I found it more interesting to approach it from the sense of like, he is trying to achieve this goal of healing and rehabilitating Middle-earth. And he’s trying to bring everyone else along for the ride.”
Sauron with a moral streak may seem bizarre to some fans, but in the lore devised by J.R.R. Tolkien, Sauron is a similar kind of primordial spirit as Gandalf, servants of higher beings called the Valar. Sauron is corrupted towards evil — a familiar narrative in the Rings universe — but he did start out as “good.”
The Rings of Power nods to this tension by giving Sauron some mysterious motivations, as those who watched the end of the first season will know. But just like show’s characters, the audience can never be quite sure what is real and what is deception when it comes to Sauron. Season 2 certainly delivers on this with a healthy dose of trickery and surrealism.
Despite all the smoke and mirrors, fans can at least feel certain knowing that dwarf Durin’s beard is not some clever CGI effect.
Actor Owain Arthur talked to Global News about the trials and tribulations of eating on set while in full costume as the dwarf prince. Check out the video, above, to see how Arthur managed to keep himself nourished while sporting a yak-hair beard the size of a newborn baby.
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Season 2 of ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ premieres on Aug. 29 worldwide on Prime Video.