Season 2 of The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power is shaping up to be a wild and dramatic ride.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay discussed the reveal of Sauron in the Season 1 finale, which premiered Friday morning. Payne and McKay had Sauron in plain sight as Halbrand, a drifter who led Galadriel to believe that he was a long-lost king of the Southlands. Even actor Charlie Vickers, who plays Halbrand, admitted he didn’t know he was Sauron when he was cast.
McKay compared Sauron to two other iconic television characters: “Sauron can now just be Sauron, like Tony Soprano or Walter White. He’s evil, but complexly evil. We felt like if we did that in Season 1, he’d overshadow everything else. So the first season is like Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight is the next movie, with Sauron maneuvering out in the open.”
Rings of Power premiered on Sept. 1 with 25 million viewers worldwide, making it the biggest premiere in Prime Video history. The epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings books.