Sauron actor breaks down the shape-shifting with Galadriel in The Rings of Power finale

The second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power wrapped up the other week with an eventual, action-packed finale. King Durin fights the balrog! The Stranger's identity revealed! And of course, the Siege of Eregion raged on, with Sauron killing the elven smith Celebrimbor before crossing swords with his former friend Galadriel in a fun fight where Sauron changes his appearance several times to throw his opponent off her game, appearing as the divine Annatar, the grounded Halbrand, Celebrimbor and even Galadriel herself. As established in author J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings mythology, Sauron is basically a god and can do stuff like that.

It was a jolt getting to see Halbrand, the earlier incarnation of Sauron from the first season, even for a moment. But for actor Charlie Vickers, switching back and forth came with challenges. "I think I did the Halbrand stuff on a Monday morning. So they gave me the weekend to try and grow some stubble, and it was pretty pathetic," he told CBR. "My beard’s really patchy and I grew just enough, but they still had to color it in.”

"It was like Halbrand, but it was slightly different. Like his hair’s a bit curlier, and he’s not quite as stubbly, but it kind of works, because he looks like a more shiny memory version of Halbrand."

Keep in mind that because Sauron appeared as Galadriel, that means that Galadriel actress Morfydd Clark actually got the play Sauron for a minute, adding another layer to an already loopy scene. “For Morfydd to come back as the other Galadriel...her performance needed to be very different," said director Charlotte Brändström. "She was harder. She was Sauron…and she came back clean. So she had to go and change and become a different person."

The Rings of Power actors happy after a "really wonderful" second season

So that was a particularly difficult scene to film, but the whole finale was challenging. Take what I consider to be the best scene of the episode, and maybe the season (hell, maybe the series): Sauron torturing Celebrimbor before being goaded into killing the elven artisan. This scene at once shows Sauron at his most magnificently evil but also puts his weaknesses on display; he's prideful enough to think that he should be in charge of all Middle-earth, and pride goeth before a fall.

“I was incredibly excited to tell this story,” Vickers told Gold Derby. “It sounds a bit biased, but the story of Sauron and Annatar and Celebrimbor is such an iconic story in Tolkien’s work. We’ve become massive Tolkien fans just doing this show, but there’s a whole community of people that have had images in their mind about this story for so long. So for us to bring that to screen, and kind of put our own stamp on it and be the gatekeepers of the story at this time, has been very cool.”

Charles Edwards, who played Celebrimbor, also chimed in: “The big thrill about it was that it’s never been told on the screen or in any adaptation. We knew that there would be a story [about the creation of the rings], but we didn’t know how close to Tolkien it would be. Once that was all in place, we knew we were going to have a really wonderful season, and we did.”

I thought the second season of The Rings of Power had its highs and lows, but it ended on a strong note, and I hope the cast and crew have a chance to continue to tell this story. A third season has yet to be confirmed, but everyone involved sounds optimistic that we'll get news any day now.

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