The Rings of Power season 2 will be “absolutely mind blowing”
Production of season 2 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is underway! In a recent conversation with Deadline, star Sophia Nomvete (Princess Disa) said that things are “going beautifully.”
This will no doubt come as a relief for fans; it was recently reported that The Rings of Power would continue filming without the showrunners present, as they are unable to work during the current Hollywood writers’ strike. That could bring down the quality of the new episodes, but according to Nomvete, things are going forward as planned. “I cannot tell you how excited I am,” she said. “Because there’s just more of everything.”
Season 1 returned us to the world of Middle-earth, several thousand years before the events of The Lord of the Rings. Season 2 will expand on that, and feature more of Charlie Vickers as Sauron. “How does every single world navigate his time, his reign and his force?” Nomvete asks. “And it is absolutely mind blowing. I hope I’m allowed to say that but it’s so desperately exciting.”
Sophia Nomvete on her role as Disa in The Rings of Power
For Nomvete, playing Disa has been a blast. “Disa is currently being described as a kind of joyful Lady M at the moment, which is amazing and really exciting to play,” she said.
As the first female dwarf we have seen on screen, and the first dwarf of colour, Nomvete understands the weight of the role she plays. “This is a moment for history and a moment for so many people that will, I hope, stand the test of time. It was something that was so important to the show, I think, and so important to Tolkien. […] I know how important it is for the world. I know how important it is for the world of fantasy and for the world of the walking Tolkien to see the first dwarf princess, and to be a part of that as a mother, as a woman.”
Changing the look of Middle-earth for a new Age
While The Lord of the Rings takes place during the Third Age of Middle-earth’s, a time production designer Ramsey Avery says is “all about decay,” The Rings of Power takes place during in the Second Age. Middle-earth look different.
“Everything about the Second Age should be about the epicness and about the power and about the vibrancy and the very clear engagement and tactfulness of the worlds,” Avery said. “What we wanted to make sure that we did is that our world had that same type of specificity and the same type of reality that you could actually feel like you would enter into the space that the environment where that song takes place. Everything about that was based on the idea that dwarfs are of stone and of flame. That’s what Tolkien says. […] to look for that grandeur and that sense of actually being in the stone and how much the stone shapes that dwarf and looking for that type of characteristic for each culture and each race going through that, finding those individual notes of reality that we can craft into the broader world.”
One way we see the unique relationship between dwarves and stone is with Disa’s job as a stone singer, someone who communes with the mountains themselves to find the best places to mine. The stone song we hear in season 1 was a collaboration between Nomvete and The Rings of Power composer Bear McCreary. “It’s the only sound in the soundtrack that was recorded on the set,” McCreary said. “Because actually, when we re-recorded a lot of it afterward, it just didn’t have the same magic. […] I think that’s a great example of where all the different disciplines on the show come together and make something that can be bigger than then the individual pieces are on their own.”
Nomvete weighed in as well. “I think what is so special about it is that I got to be in the space and use a section of my craft that I never thought I would use on the screen in this way,” she said. “And to simply use everything I had, to just improvise and craft something amazing. And then, of course Bear came in and extended his magic all over it. But it came from a really authentic special, creative and quite spiritual place.”
The Rings of Power season 1 is available to stream on Amazon Prime. Expect season 2 sometime in 2024.
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