Villainous Sauron comes into his own as The Rings of Power returns to Middle-earth for a second season
There were viewers watching the first season of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power who received the shock of their lives when they discovered that Galadriel’s (Morfydd Clark) partner for the entirety of the season was not actually Halbrand, the one-time King of the Southlands driven away by the Orcs, but in fact Sauron, the greatest evil of all. And then there was Charlie Vickers, the jovial Australian actor who embodied the great bait-and-switch. “It’s funny because, when I got to New Zealand, I had a hunch that there was more to Halbrand than met the eye,” he says. “I’d auditioned with a monologue from Paradise Lost where I was literally playing Satan. I thought, maybe that’s a bit of a clue to the character.”
The cards are on the table now, which means neither Vickers nor his character have to play theirs close to the vest. “It was honestly a relief when I was told I was playing Sauron,” he reflects. “I had done a bit of cheeky background work on Sauron, so it was like, now I can really jump into it headfirst.” In his research for Sauron, Vickers dove into LoTR author J.R.R. Tolkien’s letters to get a sense of how to play this particular version of the villain. “It’s a very different thing playing an original character vs. a canon character,” he says. “I needed to work out what Tolkien imagined. If he was to have Sauron on the screen, what would he want from him? What purpose does Sauron play in his story? Tolkien wrote these amazing letters, which have all been compiled into a book, and he talks about Sauron a lot.”
When we rejoin the series — and before the real battle between good and evil begins — we first flash back in time to a part of Sauron’s origin story. “We start with him in a very low place,” says Vickers. “At the beginning of the Second Age, he was completely brought to his knees, lost all his power and became incredibly weak. That’s what we see when the show begins in this season. It’s a redemption story, not in the sense of coming back to good, but in returning to strength. Then you see him, not quite at the peak of his powers, but he’s having a good time.”
After a season of closely collaborating with Elven warrior Galadriel, whose brother died hunting Sauron, the ruler of Mordor is currently a little peeved that she wants nothing to do with him — other than wanting him dead, of course. “He’s pretty pissed off that she has rejected him, not in any kind of romantic way, but more in a king and queen power dynamic,” says Vickers. “They could have ruled the world together. The things that he knows he lacks — because he’s very self-aware — she could have brought to the party. The fact that she said no, I think, has meant that he will forever hold this grudge. He’s thinking about her.”
Although the two are not in close proximity, at least not at the start of this second season, there is still that undeniable chemistry they shared. “It’s like two people that meet for the first time, but they feel like they know each other on a level beyond that meeting. They are both so powerful that they operate on a different level to everyone else,” the actor explains. “In her, whether Sauron wanted to, he saw the light. I think that their dynamic and the chemistry was based off how closely linked the two are. If it’s a coin, both sides are really close together and you can flip quite easily, particularly from good to evil.”
This season, the tension in Middle-earth is palpable across the board, even if Vickers’ scenes revolve mostly around his character in disguise conversing with unwitting Elven accomplice Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards). “When I looked at Charlie, as we were filming our scenes, we were kind of like, ‘Is this going to be entertaining?’ But when we’ve watched it back, we could feel the stakes and how urgent it is,” says Vickers. “We’re getting to the point of the story now where this is the first big box to tick in terms of the canon. It’s the creation of the Rings. It’s Cate Blanchett’s monologue from the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring. It’s implicit that the fate of Middle-earth is on the line and every second that passes is crucial.”
Vickers believes fans, both those who are diehard Tolkien enthusiasts and those who have joined the journey more recently, are in for a treat. “There’s been a lot of talk about this season being darker and grittier and faster-paced, and that’s all true,” he says. “But I think what we get this second season is some really in-depth character development, compared to the first season, which set everything up and set all the chess pieces on the board. Now you can watch the characters start to really struggle.”
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, streaming Thursdays on Prime Video