Exclusive: Maxim Baldry teases a "very physical" season of The Rings of Power for Isildur

The second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is almost here, which means we're about to catch up with the long line of characters we met back in 2022. One of them is Isildur (Maxim Baldry), a young man from the island nation of Númenor who finds himself stranded in Middle-earth. Númenor is a pretty fancy place, a kingdom of men granted long life by the divine Valar. How will Isildur fare now that he has to fend for himself in the much more humble confines of Middle-earth?

Well, based on trailers for the new season, we know he'll be fighting giant spiders at some point, something a lot of Lord of the Rings characters from Bilbo to Frodo tend to do. "That was the only day that I was shooting in studio, but it was with a with a rugby ball," Baldry told reporters at San Diego Comic-Con. "With two guys in morph suits holding sticks for the legs of the spider. But yeah, that was a really claustrophobic, dark, wet, muddy [day] — muddy is the operative word here. And it was just kind of bizarre, because it was so small and somehow they had to get my horse Beric there, so I don't quite know how they got a horse into that set. So claustrophobic. So the poor horse must have been, like, 'damn, it’s tight in here.'"

You can catch a glimpse of Isildur fighting spiders around the 2:48 mark in the trailer below. Beric the horse better be okay.

As for having to pretend to fight giant spiders when it's really guys waving sticks around, Baldry admits that sometimes the absurdity of it all gets the better of him and he laughs on set. "I'm really bad," he admitted. "I laugh a lot on set, and I think the directors get a little frustrated because they're like, ‘time is literally money on this set.’"

It sounds like fighting spiders will be only one of many scrapes Isildur will get into. "I tried to do as much [of my own stunts] as I can, and I learned how to ride a horse as well. I was doing a lot of riding this season, which was so much fun," he said. "For the first time, I had to go into this sort of stunt gym ...And then I got sort of stuck in some wires, and I was like, 'How do you do this?' I hope I don’t break my back. I just really enjoyed being kind of active and in nature...I was always outside, and I just found that kind of very Tolkienian."

"It was a very physical season for him, for Isildur. He was just constantly thrown around in the mud. I felt like I embodied Isildur a bit, and I was thrashed around and thrown around, and I think that just reflected his sort of desperate state. It's a story of survival for him. He's abandoned in Middle-earth and he has to find a way to get home and in the process finds people that he has to learn whether to trust or not. Maybe he falls in love, I don’t know. He has to make that decision and and come to that realization. So I found it to be a big progression in his character and my understanding of him as well."

Isildur might fall "in love" in The Rings of Power season 2

As for the bit about falling in love, we know that Isildur will meet a woman named Estrid (Nia Towle) in season 2, since we've seen her in trailers and in images like the one above. We also know that Isildur has children because The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien has told us so in his books. I don't know exactly what's going to happen, but I don't think it's hard to do the math on this one.

We'll see for ourselves what lies in store when The Rings of Power season 2 premieres on Prime Video this Thursday, August 29. The first three episodes of season 2 will drop all at once, with the remaining five coming out one per week afterward.

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