“This is the season,” co-showrunner Patrick McKay confirms to Empire, “where Sauron makes the One Ring in the volcano.” Charlie Vickers’ menacing Sauron is no longer in disguise, done with lurking in the shadows. And as he gets on with the business of corrupting Men, Elves, Orcs, and anyone else who steps his way, the stakes of The Rings Of Power are raising considerably. “We have a full-on villain this season, in a way that was quite different before,” says McKay’s fellow co-showrunner J.D. Payne. Sauron’s emergence “changes the tone of the show,” McKay adds. “This third season is darker, more dangerous. No-one is safe.”
For Vickers himself (pictured in the exclusive image above as Sauron, in his stronghold Barad-dûr) the chance to enact such a core moment in the Legendarium was not taken lightly. “The first day I walked onto that set, I cried,” he tells Empire. “What an amazing privilege and honour to be able to tell that story.” The forging of the scene was as epic as the forging of the Ring itself. “We were doing the Ring across two weeks, because the sequence is so long,” says Vickers. The result is, McKay promises, “the single most ambitious, technically challenging sequence we’ve ever done on the show. Charlie’s performance is absolutely staggering. We never could have prepared for it.”
“The first two seasons were all about building out this world,” says McKay. “But throughout that time, we’re lighting all these fuses and setting all these stories in motion. The third season is when all those bombs are starting to explode.” Sauron’s time is coming.
The Middle-earth drama is about explode in its upcoming season – with Charlie Vickers' villain plunging things into darkness. Read more at E