Although new episodes are a ways off, Amazon has renewed The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power for a third season. That means we'll see more of the adventures of Galadriel, Gandalf, Elrond, and everyone else trying to deal with the rise of Sauron during the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before The Lord of the Rings story most of us know.
If you're at all familiar with The Lord of the Rings, you know that, on the show, aspiring dark lord Sauron has yet to do something that he is very famous for: forge the One Ring, which he uses to try and take over Middle-earth. Charlie Vickers, who plays Sauron, doesn't come right out and say that will happen in season 3, but it certainly sounds like he's hinting at it.
“I’m incredibly lucky that Sauron in this time period is very specific to what he does," Vickers told Deadline. "We get to go through so many exciting beats that I think fans will be really excited to see. I mean, he has made nearly all the rings now, but there’s one more that he [needs] to finish the collection, which he’s determined and has had in his mind for centuries. So, I’m super excited to see him go on the journey and hopefully take over Middle-earth…I’m sure everything will be great for everyone else.”
Vickers also talked a little about the relationship between Sauron and Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), which has been very contentious over the course of the first two seasons. “When it comes down to it, I think he sees her as a useful tool to achieve a means to an end,” Vickers said. “We called it a ‘cosmic connection’ in the first season. And that’s a good way to describe it because she’s one of the wisest, most powerful beings in all of Middle-earth. And he has spent, when he first sees her again, a lot of time by himself hanging out with himself. So, he sees this being that he connects to on another level. And I think they have this connection that will endure for as long as time will go on in Middle-earth. In that final scene, he’s trying to reopen the door a crack to see if she’ll join him, but ultimately, I think that joining [would be a mistake]. He says, ‘You could be my queen,’ right? But I think she would [become] more of his assistant.”
Gandalf will go through "errors and failings" in The Rings of Power season 3
In season 2, it was "revealed" that the tall bearded magical man who crashed to Middle-earth in a meteor was, in fact, Gandalf, even though he has lost his memory. Actor Daniel Weyman explained that he did not base his performance on Ian McKellan's performance as an older Gandalf from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies.
"I think the joy of the piece is that I was given a character who knew nothing at the beginning when he landed in Middle-earth. All I had to do was play each scene as it came,” Weyman said. “I didn’t need to worry about what was coming later. [He’s] not the same character, it’s thousands of years before he’ll get there, I’m not playing that part. So, the joy has been just to work with great actors who I’m put on set with in these amazing locations, work with a fantastic crew who are uber talented, wear the costume, hair and makeup and listen to the directors [and] showrunners’ story, and just be on set and trust that it’ll all come out. I’m really pleased to do it.”
I don't know if it was possible for Weyman to base his performance on McKellan's, since Weyman wasn't even sure he was playing Gandalf until near the end of filming on season 2, so deep was his character's amnesia. That's one of the weirder choices The Rings of Power producers have made with the lore; J.R.R. Tolkien never wrote anything about Gandalf wandering Middle-earth as an amnesiac. Based on how Weyman is teasing season 3, it sounds like the show will go well off the beaten path when it comes to this character.
“I’m excited for this plethora of possible pitfalls, errors and failings that young Gandalf can learn from," Weyman said. "Literally anything could happen because the only way we’re going to see a wise being later on is if he does some pretty horrendous accidental things and puts his foot in the wrong places and has to pick it up and learn again. So I’m hoping for lots of that kind of action just so that we can see him develop and learn how he gets to be the wizard that we all love.”
We'll see it all at...some point. I don't see new episodes of The Rings of Power dropping anytime before 2026.
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