The most recent episode of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, entitled "Doomed to Die," is an action-packed affair. Adar and his army of orcs are attacking the Elven city of Eregion, while Sauron manipulates the city's leader Celebrimbor inside its walls. The fighting is brutal, and there are a couple of minor character deaths. At one point the eld Mirdania (Amelia Kenworthy) falls off a wall and splatters on the ground.
We didn't know Mirdania particularly well, but that's a rough way to go. And we didn't see the half of it. As stunt coordinator and second unit director Vic Armstrong explained to SlashFilm, Mirdania's original death scene was way, way more brutal. " said, 'Give me some really gruesome bits!' So I said, 'OK.'"
"So I had [Mirdania] thrown off the roof, you see her go down and hit the ground, there's a really good shot, and you see this orc chop her. And then he holds up her whole shoulder and arm and starts drinking the blood. But they deemed it a bit too gory, which, I can't understand why, of course. [laughing]"
When all I knew about this story was that there was a death scene that had been watered down for TV, I figured The Rings of Power was pulling its punches. 'C'mon, give us the blood!' I thought to myself. But having Mirdania's torso chopped up so orcs can drink her blood from the bottom of her open sternum? Good God. That might be too much for a show like House of the Dragon, let alone the more family-friendly confines of The Rings of Power. Probably best to cut pare that part back.
"If were sitting at the next table in a cafe about what I was suggesting — 'Yeah, have her fall off the wall and then hack her, have the whole shoulder come off, complete with the dress on her sleeve, and the blood's coming out' — people would think you're completely bonkers," Armstrong laughed. "But that's the mind of us people who do these sort of things."
How Morfydd Clark uses her athleticism on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
When Armstrong isn't contemplating ways to dismember elves, he's working with actors like Morfydd Clark (Galadriel) to make sure their performance is as convincing as possible, particularly in the action scenes. Apparently Clark is a natural. "It was fabulous, because in season 1, as I say, she was growing into a woman like Galadriel. And in season 2, it starts off with that wonderful horse chase I did, where she's chasing to try and get the ring and everything else, which we shot in Windsor Great Park, just underneath the Queen's castle there, and right across all of Berkshire there," Armstrong told ScreenRant. "She's great now."
"We taught her to ride on season 1, and she's really confident on a horse now, and she looks very queen-like on a horse. And then, into the battle scenes and the fight scenes, she flows, she's a wonderful athlete. She won't believe it, and I keep telling her this, but she is an incredible athlete. She's got great body control, great balance, got a dancer's balance. You can turn and do things and still keep in character and deliver her lines.
She's an absolute joy to work with, and anything you want to do action-wise, she's up to do it. Training on season 1, we had her underwater, dragging her on her back with cables underwater for 15-20 minutes with a breathing apparatus in between shots. And she's up for everything like that, and a real team player. So, it's wonderful to see her developing as the show's going on, into a really great queen."
The version of Galadriel presented in The Rings of Power is pretty different from the calm, ethereal queen we meet in the original Lord of the Rings books and in Peter Jackson's movies, but the show is set thousands of years before that story; elves are immortal, so I guess Galadriel still has a lot of room to develop.
Clark and the rest of the cast of The Rings of Power will have one more chance to strut their stuff before the second season ends and we enter another interminably long wait for more episodes. The season 2 finale of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power airs this Thursday, October 3 on Prime Video.
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