#patrick mckay

[halbrannatar]

THE DARK LORD SAURON IS HERE 🔥

"The first day I walked onto that set, I cried."

Charlie Vickers looks amazing ❤️‍🔥

[moonlitdark]

Jamie Campbell Bower attends the 2026 Comic-Con International: San Diego Prime Video's "The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power" press line at Hilton Bayfront and Prime Video's "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" panel during Comic Con International in San Diego on July 24, 2026.

[leotanaka]

No offence but, did anyone actually read the Nerdist interview with McPayne back in 2024 when they said this? Because, they were pretty damn clear about what was going to happen with the show moving forward. That different characters would be in the role of protagonist (for anyone who doesn't know, protagonist means the character the story is about or is following, it doesn't mean "hero") across the show and that certain characters would become more or less prominent as the show moves forward as others take centre stage.

I understand people are worried about Galadriel being sidelined despite the fact there's literally nothing to suggest that's even going to happen and is a concern based solely off the Sauron/Gandalf SDCC promotion and the reveal that Celeborn will be in season 3, two things that **some** people have clearly taken issue with but, even if it does happen, she's not going to be completely sidelined, none of the characters have been. She's still have screentime and a story and she'll still be part of the main story, it'll probably just go in a bit of a different direction and she won't be as prominent which, isn't actually a bad thing given how many other characters and stories there are and how important they are to the show as well.

[ringsofpowerdaily]

Charlie Vickers as Sauron in Empire's Exclusive Look at The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power Season 3

"There are very few TV series playing on the scale of The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power. Prime Video’s fantasy epic is a canvas on which to explore the Second Age of Middle-earth, long before Frodo went on his epic trek – a time that saw its own major conflicts of good and evil. But everything you’ve seen so far in Season 1 and Season 2 is just the beginning. The Rings Of Power Season 3 is fast approaching – and it’s about to take everything you’ve seen so far and plunge it into darkness. Sauron is rising. Mordor awaits. And the promise of the show’s title is about to pay off.

Yes, a pivotal piece of Middle-earth history is imminent. “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.”

Get ready for a season that will blow Middle-earth wide open. “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."

[mcpayne]

oh it's all coming up Bunni

[the-southlands]

Step into Middle-earth with That's My Entertainment!

[helenvader]

The full SDCC panel.

[hailturinturambar]

Thoughts on J.D and Patrick's interview (PART II)

The year can't end without one more analysis! By the way, I want to do more analysis of the show, but I haven't decided yet, so suggestions are always welcome! This interview is from August, but that's okay. After all, there are so many interviews that I'm almost lost!

Come on, one of the best things about the show, at least to me, is always the prologue. The prologue to the first season has a very well-structured foundation of the Elder Days and the beginning of Arda.

Morgoth's introduction as the First Enemy was brief but still impactful. However, nothing could have prepared me for the breathtaking prologue to season two.

We were all curious about the beginning of Sauron's journey. But the prologue was better than I could have hoped for.

I'm glad they changed it for season 2, I don't think it would have worked very well in season 1. Would they have introduced Sauron mid-season or would the scenes have been cut?

The second season is darker, so I think the dark prologue was ideal. We know a lot about Sauron's past in the books, but not in the adaptations. In the movies, for example, he's just Sauron, the Dark Lord, there's nothing more about him than that.

Well, I couldn't agree more. In episode eight of season one, just like Galadriel, we know that Sauron is the Enemy and that's it. But what do we know about Sauron before his encounter with Galadriel and his path of evil?

I really like that in TROP Sauron is not romanticized, but we are introduced to his past, to the events that shaped him and led him to do everything he did. Only when we know someone's past are we able to understand their actions.

I started rewatching TROP on December 23rd and I'm already at the end of the second season, and they're right. When we watch the first season again, after the prologue of the second season, everything seems different. No scene seems simple or out of place, no word seems meaningless.

We look at scenes in Númenor, for example, and we're like, "Yeah, that makes sense! That's why Halbrand/Sauron behaved like that." It's really interesting. Because I never thought the show would go that way in 2022.

We started and ended the first season with the question, "Who is Sauron?" In the second season, we finally know. Because we get to follow Sauron after Morgoth's defeat and how he tried to rise again. We see how he was betrayed by Adar and spent centuries recovering. And most importantly, we find out how Halbrand ended up on the cursed raft.

Tolkien left some great passages open, didn't he? These long passages of time without information are great for piquing our curiosity. And I don't know if Tolkien thought about them, after all, he had a very long story with many characters, maybe he left that blank period aside.

And I loved how this was worked into the series. Because in the books after Morgoth's defeat and Sauron's refusal to return to Valinor, we don't have much information. I always wondered how he ended up in Eregion or when this idea came to his mind.

I try my best to pay attention to the details in the show, there is always hidden information. And it is extremely satisfying to watch the passage of time in Sauron's transformation. We know from the books that Sauron can return, but we don't know how that process works.

So it's fascinating to watch time pass, the climate change, but Sauron's form also change. From a tangle of worms emerging from a pool of blood, to Sauron's mortal form as Halbrand.

I humbly believe that Sauron does feel pain. When Morgoth fought Fingolfin, Morgoth felt pain and his pain reverberated throughout Middle-earth. Morgoth felt pain because he had been in one form for too long, just as Sauron did. Sauron spent too much time assuming many forms, so why wouldn't he feel pain if a Valar was able to feel it?

In my opinion, the key point in any show or book is the "what if?" What if Sauron felt pain? What if Sauron is capable of having feelings? The what if is the big cherry on the cake that keeps our curiosity and makes us spend hours theorizing about a character.

I think Sauron is capable of feeling everything, whether it be emotions or pain. However, I believe that this feeling is not as we imagine it. It is, as has been said, an ambiguous feeling. We will never be able to understand the extent of Sauron's honesty about what he is demonstrating or pretending to feel.

Now that's a point that keeps me awake! In case you don't remember, I commented on my opinion about the sea monster in my analysis of Sauron and Galadriel.

The sea monster and Sauron is a never-ending question. Because as Payne said, Sauron may have seized the opportunity, or it escaped his reach. Could the Valar be trying to destroy Sauron? Maybe, it would make a lot of sense.

I'll go a little further. The Valar may have sent the monster to destroy Sauron before he could do any more damage. But Sauron is a dark master and knows all beasts, so he may have influenced the monster so that he wouldn't be killed in the shipwreck. So why would the monster attack the raft?

A second attempt by the Valar? Maybe. But I like to play with the idea that Sauron summoned the monster when he recognized Galadriel. That way the humans were eliminated and he had his path clear for deception. I guess we'll never know!

The problem of writing stories as tales of legends is that we miss a lot of things. I say this from experience. Because in my book that I wrote this year, the prologue is a story about more than 200 years about the old times in the history before the first chapter. And a lot of things happened in these 200 years of history. So, if I were to rewrite each passage, a lot of new information would emerge.

This is the big difference between the show and the movies. In the trilogy (or the Hobbit trilogy) the Third Age material is all written, it just needs to be adapted. But in the First and Second Ages, a lot of things are reported, but not detailed.

Giving the Ring to Círdan could involve infinite possibilities, but we don't know them. Personally, I loved the ring story created for the show. All the depth given to the scene and the giving of the rings was a spectacle.

Yes, all adaptations have their flaws and successes. But overall, I am extremely pleased with the adaptation of TROP and the changes or additions made by those involved. An adaptation is never exactly the same as the book, we know that. But what I love about TROP is that we are presented with scenes that make us think, "Oh yeah, that's something Tolkien would have written!"