WARNING: Potential spoiler for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power below.
Now that the cat’s out of the bag on Sauron (Charlie Vickers), The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has plenty of plans for the famous Middle-earth antagonist in Season 2.
Showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay stopped by IGN’s studio (watch the interview above) at San Diego Comic-Con this weekend to talk about the upcoming episodes and revealed a couple of interesting tidbits, including teasing the identity of Daniel Weyman’s mysterious The Stranger character and how Tom Bombadil will be involved. But back to everyone’s favorite shape-shifting villain, McKay said this season is “really about Sauron, and the focus of Sauron’s strategy to conquer Middle-earth is gaslighting, manipulating, and deceiving Celebrimbor.”
“Anyone who’s got to hang out with the Dark Lord for awhile and try to make something together is going to experience some real problems because Sauron needs Celebrimbor,” Payne added. “And the scary thing about Sauron is that while a lot of villains will exploit your weaknesses, Sauron sees your strengths and exploits those to try to get his evil ends done.”
“We will see Sauron that is not even in human form, and that is in creature form.
As we already knew, Season 2 will see Sauron appear to Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) in disguise, an elf known as Annatar, as he manipulates the elven smith into creating more of those titular Rings of Power. But Annatar won’t be his only disguise, as McKay explained that “we’ve got a few different forms of Sauron this season.”
When asked to elaborate, the showrunners revealed more about what one of those forms will be.
“We’re going to see a Sauron actually – and this may be a spoiler here – but that is not played by Charlie Vickers, interestingly enough,” Payne said. “And we will also see Sauron that is not even in human form, and that is in creature form.”
“There’s a bit of a slimy monster in a trailer,” McKay added. “That’s what we’re talking about.”
Or, as Payne put it: “puddle blob Sauron.”
Based on the showrunners’ tease, we can guess they were talking about this lil guy who appears around the 10-second mark of the first Season 2 trailer, released about two months ago:
The Stranger and Tom Bombadil
Elsewhere in our interview, Payne and McKay also talked about one of Rings of Power’s big mysteries: who is The Stranger and is he actually Gandalf, as just about every fan expects?
Of course, the duo wouldn’t confirm or deny, but they did say they’re not intentionally trying to throw off fans – and we’ll actually get our answer on this soon enough.
“Really for us, this isn’t one of these sort of things where we’re trying to purposely be concealing something or there’s some big rug-pull coming,” Payne explained. “Really, the journey that we want fans to go on is the same journey that The Stranger himself is going on, which is one of self-discovery. He’s landed in Middle-earth, he doesn’t exactly know who he is, what his powers are, how to control his powers, and he has to figure all those things out. And we want fans to go on that journey with him.”
“But we can say that yes, the name will be revealed by the end of Season 2,” Payne concluded.
The Stranger, too, will interact with a Tolkien character that fans have long waited to see on screen: Tom Bombadil, played by Rory Kinnear.
“They have a meeting and they have an interaction,” Payne revealed. “Tom is so old and mercurial and strange that it might be hard to call him a friend because he’s been around for thousands of years, but they definitely get to meet each other. And if I could be a fly on the wall for any pairing in Middle-earth, I would be there to watch The Stranger hang out with Tom Bombadil.”
Payne and McKay’s chat with IGN is only one of the stops the Rings of Power creatives and cast made on their second trip to San Diego Comic-Con. For more, check out what we learned at their Hall H panel, as well as the new trailer. And if you’re looking for more San Diego Comic-Con, check out our roundup of everything announced there.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 debuts on Prime Video on August 29.
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
