Middle Earth is different The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power second season. The first season ended with a bang, both literally and figuratively. The Southlands became Mordor in an instant of fire. Galadriel learned that she had helped bring Sauron back. Darkness is creeping in. this darkness and the appearance of villains came up often during nerdyvisit to the set of The rings of power second season We spoke with a group of journalists The rings of power showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay about the second season. Here's what we learned about Sauron, Galadriel, the Stranger, new locations, and more.
The Psychology of Sauron
Sauron walked Middle-earth and Númenor as Halbrand for almost the entire first season The rings of power. But now Galadriel knows who she is and we, the audience, know it. McKay said: “We saw in the first season in Galadriel, who in our estimation is one of the great heroes of Middle-earth, her pride and her PTSD was a crack that she could go into and manipulate her to get everything he wanted. Now he will do it. And the joy of the second season is that we know who he is. And so, instead of the first season, where Sauron's [identity is] in the dark, we talk about understanding his psychology and how he works.”
Payne said of Galadriel, she thought, “I thought my compass pointed north. I was the truest fairest elf in all of Elvendom. And I was literally so down that I was helping the Dark Lord “.
But this is Sauron's specialty. It will influence all the peoples of Middle-earth and beyond. “We know that Númenor has big things to do with Sauron along the way,” McKay noted. “Just like the dwarves of Khazad-dûm and elsewhere. We know that the southerners who had a home in Mordor, which has been completely devastated and destroyed, are now essentially refugees. How does this play out? We know men are weak. We know men eventually take rings. And what's going to happen over the course of season two is that each of these societies and heroes that we established in season one are now facing serious cracks in the foundation that Sauron can exploit.
And really, it's about the evil that each individual has to deal with as things change. McKay said: “In Tolkien there's good and evil. That's very important, we feel. Which side you're fighting for is something that everyone has to wrestle with in Tolkien. And that for us is like… evil is not something over there it is something else, evil is in here.
The stranger's visit to Rhûn
The last time we saw the stranger, a currently unnamed mage, and Nori the Clawfoot, were beginning a long journey to Rhûn. McKay said: “We're really excited about it. We've never seen deserts on screen, in Middle Earth. And we're really excited to go there. We think deserts are beautiful and amazing, and we're making our own Lawrence of Arabia Tolkien. And one of the things I've enjoyed is that Rhûn is really a blank canvas.”
He continued, “There are little hints. There's talk of magical cults and there's talk of the stars being strange, and there's rumors of wizards having adventures in Rhûn that may or may not have gone well. And we take advantage of all of that, of all these seeds, to continue telling a story that seems worthy of the other canonical stories here.”
McKay noted that at the time of the set's visit, they had just spent five weeks shooting on location for spectacular views. As a viewer, he sees Nori and the Stranger and thinks of ET and Elliott or the Iron Giant to a similar sense of wonder in his journey. Payne added that going through the experience with the characters keeps the story grounded.
As for the stranger's identity, Payne explained, “The wizard doesn't know who they are. If they did, it might look a little cheap. It would be like we're holding back, just for the sake of holding back, but the wizard is on a journey of self-discovery and learned a couple of key things about himself at the end of the first season, learned that he is an Istar and learned that he has a destiny in the Orient. So now, we are on this journey of self-discovery with him, where he's learning to control his powers. For us, it's really delightful to see a character who could eventually become a superpower, not yet, and then have to figure out, “What are the mistakes they'll make along the way?”
Although the stranger used a line from Gandalf The Fellowship of the Ring in the first season, this wasn't necessarily meant to be a clue. “Despite what some people might think, we're not really talking about a game, we're not really talking about a puzzle,” McKay noted. “But we don't want to take for granted where the characters will end up. We want to see them grow and change along the way. And hopefully, in the end, you look back and it seems inevitable. But for now, hopefully… Yes, I'm trying to say but not say.
Payne added: “We also try to make it delicious that there are multiple possibilities of what that could mean. That could mean that the stranger is Gandalf, and that 'He says this, then he'll say it later?'” It could definitely mean that. That could mean the stranger is Saruman?And that's something you'll realize later Saruman said that to Gandalf.There's always ways to do it from the legendarium to the story, and there could be delicious paths that could come out of either eventuality. We like to keep those doors open.”
Hope in a time of darkness
While the stakes are high and very real in JRR Tolkien's works, the story also has a kind of comfort to it. Even though the second season is inherently darker, they try to be conscious of not going too far and just doing what makes sense for the story. McKay said, “The journeys have to go to darker places as they go. Every saga that we love, that's kind of a classic structure. I think when we think about Peak Bleak, it's not necessarily about the level of the stakes or the fear, or whether people might die. It's more about “There's a…”
“It's the central ethos at the center. It's bleakly nihilistic…” Payne said.
“Or cynical,” said McKay.
“Or cynical where people are just screwing each other for their own gain without any sense of redeeming quality at the center? And in Tolkien, even the villains often have something redeeming at the center. Even Sauron , in his own twisted way, he thinks he's healing Middle Earth. So I think that's one of the ways, is that there's always a core, that it's not just darkness for darkness' sake,” Payne explained.
McKay added: “There's a seriousness to Middle-earth and the stories in Middle-earth, and we happily accept that. It's really modern to be cynical and roll your eyes, to be postmodern and wink, and we're just not going to play to this game.”
Release seasons faster
The rings of power's first season debuted in 2022. The second season will debut in August 2024. The showrunners have mentioned a five-season plan, and at the current rate, that finale would be a long way in the future. McKay said: “We took on this crazy ambitious project because we had a story we wanted to tell and we felt it needed to be told, and we were willing to give our lives for a long time to tell it. The plan hasn't changed. There are opportunities all the time. When you meet an actor who inspires you, there's always room for that. That was always the plan, to continue telling this story for five seasons the sixth inning to do, maybe the fifth inning to do, depending on how you count it, the second piece.”
McKay continued: “We have all kinds of ideas for the third, fourth and fifth [seasons]. But there is a long way to go, in terms of actually developing them. As for the chronology…”
Payne said: “Some things are sped up in season two, because we've aired so much of the show. So that process is a little further along this time. Some of the things have been designed in terms of costumes to in the world. There will also be many new things that you will do. A part of the machine, it is time that you save a little.
McKay noted, “What the production machine is, how we physically perform the show.”
They noted that they didn't have COVID halfway through the second season, so at the time of the interview, they thought it would take about half as long to make as the first. What this means for release dates for season three and beyond is still unclear.
New locations a The rings of power second season
First season of the fantasy series traveled through Middle Earth and beyond the borders of that land. And the second season will expand the locations of the show. McKay said, “We've talked a bit about Rhûn, it's definitely a big opening. The southerners go to Pelargir, an old Númenórean colony. We know this is a place that has an important destiny in the legendarium, and how the colonies of Middle-earth relate to the motherland, in Númenor. So this is a story that begins. And we love the idea of an ancient colony of Númenorea that had now adapted to Southlander life, and what that might look like, and it's pretty rugged as this world tends to be, and I'd say it's very well designed.”
Then there are more locations that we already know about. Payne said: “The dwarves will go deeper and go to new parts of Khazad-dûm that we haven't seen before. There will also be journeys through lands we know, but new parts of those lands, and seeing new creatures. There are a lot of creatures this season”.
“There's the Gray Havens in Lindon. That's expanding that,” McKay recalled. “In Númenor, a lot of the story this season… It's a very exciting Númenor story. We're doing the old quarter of the capital in Númenor, and really getting into the ethos of the faithful and starting to set up what mythology lovers know is a civil war and a battle of ideologies, and what the what did their faith mean to them, and what did old Númenor mean to these people, versus what did it mean to the more Pharazôn-y people? That's all we're exploring. So hopefully this will be a whole new face of this world.”
Filming moved from New Zealand to the UK for the second season, and they've leaned into it. Payne said: “We're filming in some of the same woods and fields that inspired Tolkien and really gave birth to Middle-earth. And so we're making the most of it. We're shooting in these woods that have trees of over a thousand years.We are able to bring the forest of Eriador to life in an absolutely spectacular way and see the strange and wonderful things that might be lurking there.
The rings of power the second season premieres Prime Video on August 29.
