In a few short days, Prime Video will debut the third season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and the era of Sauron will begin. The first two seasons of the streamer's Lord of the Rings prequel series were sprawling affairs that spanned the length and breadth of Middle-earth, but as co-showrunner Patrick McKay told us in a recent interview, the Dark Lord's quest to forge the One Ring will drive events in a much more focused way this time around.
And really, how could it not? Sauron forging the One Ring to rule them all, which is such a central focus in the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, is the most iconic piece of this source material that is being adapted by The Rings of Power.
All this means that we'll be seeing more Sauron than ever in The Rings of Power season 3 — and that means more of Charlie Vickers, the actor who portrays him. We had the chance to speak to Vickers alongside his season 3 co-star Jamie Campbell Bower (Celeborn) at a recent press day for the series, and he took a moment to reflect on how things have changed for Sauron this season — and even more intriguingly, how they haven't.
Sauron's circumstances have changed, but his drive remains the same
Vickers has been a chameleon on the series thus far, with each season representing a different aspect of Sauron. The first saw him in disguise as the human Halbrand; the second, taking on the mantle of Annatar, the Lord of Gifts. Now at last, he's fully in his glory as the Dark Lord of Mordor, and as we've been able to see from the trailers, posters, and images coming out of season 3, he looks the part.
From Sauron's very first moments in season 3, it's clear that Vickers has taken the assignment to portray the Dark Lord fully to heart. In terms of the ways he tried to differentiate season 3's Sauron from the previous iterations, he said there's, "the acting things in terms of like, moving slightly different, or you know, he looks very different."
However, when I asked Vickers about how Sauron has changed, to both of our surprise he was drawn much more toward the ways the character is still carrying all his complicated baggage from previous seasons. "But the performance...it's funny, when I reflect on it, he has the same internal drive, right? It just changes because he's in a different place now," Vickers said.
"I think this season, right from the off, you see him kind of in this place which is a hangover from the end of last season, a place of instability," he added. "He lost control at the end of last season, but perhaps this season he's still trying to regain that control. You see how he's haunted by Celebrimbor. So like, I wanted to kind of explore that and go on the journey to him, being able to make the One Ring."
Sauron's failures at Eregion loom over him still
The Eregion "hangover," as Vickers put it, is real. While this will be the season where Sauron finally crafts the dreaded One Ring, it won't be an easy road. In a recently released clip, we see Sauron forging what looks like an early attempt at the One Ring, which does not seem to go well for the Orc who serves as his guinea pig.
Sauron is a character who does not have many other beings he truly views as equals, which is probably part of the reason he is so fixated on Galadriel (Morfydd Clark). This was true as well for Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards), the great Elven smith who Sauron manipulated into forging the Seven and the Nine Rings for Dwarves and Men, respectively. Their relationship was a core part of the show's second season, so while the lingering feelings of Sauron's perceived failings at Eregion may be continuing to plague the Dark Lord, any remnants of that storyline and his time with Celebrimbor "haunting" him sounds like good news for viewers.
The Rings of Power could have treated Sauron as an omniscient evil with no weakness. Insead, it is giving him a much broader story. By starting in a place with a bit more vulnerability because of Eregion — five years ago to a mortal, but a mere eye-blink to one such as Sauron — the show gave Vickers more room to explore the character's journey.
"It's really well constructed because in him starting there, it gives him a really interesting arc to play throughout the whole season," Vickers said.
Catch Charlie Vickers playing Sauron in his delightfully evil prime when The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 3 premieres this Wednesday, November 11 on Prime Video.
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