The first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power aired back in 2022, and Amazon Prime Video is finally ready with a follow-up. Season 2 will take us back to Middle-earth during the Second Age, thousands of years before the likes of Bilbo, Frodo or Aragorn were born. During this time, Saruon is just getting his sea legs as a dark lord, and hatches a plan to control the races of Middle-earth through the construction of magic rings.
Disguised as a man named Halbrand (Charlie Vickers), Sauron started in on that plan in season 1, although his true identity was unmasked. In season 2, it looks like he'll come back in another disguise. In J.R.R. Tolkien's book The Silmarillion, Sauron appears to the elves as a benevolent being calling himself Annatar. It looks like season 2 will take that route:
"This time, Sauron’s agenda sets everything in motion," showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne told Total Film Magazine, per Games Radar. "Adar and his army of orcs; Galadriel, Elrond, and Gil-galad and their armies of elves – all of which will come crashing together in the most ambitious battle our show has seen yet, a battle from which many big players may not make it out alive."
"We like to say that Season 1 was primarily about our heroes. But Season 2 is all about the villains."
McKay and Payne hinted at a further shift in perspective when they said that Celebrimbor, who in The Silmarilion works with Sauron to forge the Rings of Power, will be "the principal protagonist" in season 2, saying that his relationship with Saruon becomes the "central relationship." In season 1, you would probably say that Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) was the principal protagonist. Will that change?
The show is pretty different from the books, so it's hard to say how Celebrimbor and Sauron will reunite. In The Silmarillion, they forge all of the Rings of Power (save Sauron's One Ring) together when Sauron is pretending to be Annatar, before his true identity is discovered. On the show, Halbrand helped forge the three elven rings before he was unmasked, which means they've still got to make rings for the dwarves and for mankind. So I guess Sauron will come back in this new disguise, and Celebrimbor will either be fooled or know it's Sauron but go ahead anyway.
Things are mixed up. We'll see exactly how they go when The Rings of Power season 2 premieres on Amazon prime Video on August 29.
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