At Nerdist, we loved season two of the The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. In fact, it was one of our best TV series of the year. And so, it was our pleasure to sit down with showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne to look back at everything that happened this season on The Rings of Power, dive into the future of the series in season three and beyond, and address some burning fan questions, like “Where is Celeborn?,” “Has Celebrían been born yet?,” and “Was the One Ring secretly forged off-screen by Sauron?” To get the scoop on these questions and many more, check out our full interview with The Rings of Power‘s showrunners below and relive the magic of season two.
Nerdist: Patrick, before the season aired, we chatted about how the question of whether Adar’s children were orcs or Uruk would be explored this year. And it kind of seems like the answer after season two is that they’re just orcs, but is there space in the series to continue to explore the nuance of the Uruk?
Patrick McKay: That is a great question. And a fitting one from the Adar stan. But I don’t think we can say anything more because that would spoil some things… Good things come to those who wait.
Perfect, because that leads me to my propaganda question. The idea of resurrection does exist for The Lord of the Rings‘ elves. Is there any chance of an Adar’s resurrection on The Rings of Power?
McKay: I think highly unlikely.
Well, I had to ask!
In The Lord of the Rings, the One Ring was forged before the siege of Eregion. Why did the timing of that end up changing for the show?
J. D. Payne: We ended up going with the order of Rings as they’re depicted in the Ring poem, “Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, Nine for Mortal Men, doomed to die.” And 3, 7, 9, 1 is the way that it’s shown in the poem.
McKay: We figured probably that’s the order that most fans of the material and readers and people who’d watch the films, that’s more what they’re expecting than the actual order, which is in texts that are maybe not as well known. But I think generally, we felt like the story of the One Ring is a story that is so potentially big and epic on its own. That to tie it into this, it would almost… They would battle.
Payne: And there were versions where we talked about sort of tucking it in here or there in this season. But eventually, we thought, you know what, it feels like it wants its own canvas.
So, there was no secret forging of the One Ring off-screen in The Rings of Power season two?
Payne: No, no.
McKay: The One Ring has not been forged.
Payne: We’ve seen chatter online about that. But no.
That makes total sense. And it does seem like in the Tolkien lore, that the forging of the Rings just happened all at once, and that’s not really great for a series.
McKay: Well, you know what I would say, too. A lot of these things come down to character, right? Sauron needs Celebrimbor for season two. He needs his expertise to forge the Rings. He cannot make them alone. It would be cheating for Sauron to all of a sudden be able to make a Ring. He’s on his own journey of craftsmanship, and without Celebrimbor, now having to make a Ring is a potentially really interesting challenge for him.
So he hasn’t learned enough to make his own Ring of Power yet?
McKay: We can say no more about this subject. We’ve already said too much.
Very interesting.
The idea of Morgoth being Sauron’s abuser was a really interesting series edition in The Rings of Power. Why was that important for you to convey in the story?
Payne: So we talked about this, we talked about what that relationship would be like. And on the one hand, Sauron was Morgoth’s most devoted disciple. And so we talked about that one moment [when Sauron speaks about Morgoth to Celebrimbor] being like, “Well, wait a minute, is this a place we can go given what we know from canon?” But we also said, “Well, if you were the most devoted disciple amongst the two most evil beings in all of Middle-earth, that would be a twisted-to-twisted relationship.”
This wasn’t sunshine and rainbows with the two Dark Lords kicking it, having a dance party. This would be a thing where it was a snake pit with two people who had a constant desire for sort of conquest and dominance and undercutting. And so that “friendship,” or if you can’t call it that, that relationship, we knew was going to be filled with pain.
McKay: It is hard to imagine Sauron ever being satisfied being someone’s number two. And also, it’s Sauron you’re hearing this from, so you always have to keep in mind. There’s always a little bit of a distorted Sauron point of view here. He might’ve seen himself as the victim of this relationship. Maybe Morgoth would’ve described it in a different way.
Payne: And also, who’s he talking to? He’s talking to Celebrimbor. When is he telling him?
McKay: He’s trying to manipulate him.
Payne: He’s trying to get Celebrimbor to do something something.
Seeing Sauron shapeshift in the final battle with Galadriel was a ton of fun. Were there ever any other Sauron forms that you’d considered him changing into during that sequence? Or was it really clearly those three?
Payne: I think there was one more.
McKay: Did we? No, no. That was season one where he became her brother in season one. I don’t think we talked about doing that again…
Payne: I think there was one more…
McKay: I think it might’ve come back as her brother, and then we felt like, “No, no, no, we did this already in season one, we shouldn’t do this again.” That’s a storyline that played itself out, and the people he transforms into are germane to the story of season two of The Rings of Power. The Halbrand form that she was closest with, put it that way. Galadriel facing down evil Galadriel. We love Morfydd Clark’s performance there. It’s like she carries herself in a totally different way. And Celebrimbor, who she feels responsible for victimizing because she is the one who let Sauron in. I think we talked about her brother making an appearance, but it’s really not germane to that particular season.
Is Galadriel totally healed from the corruption of Morgoth’s crown, or will we see any lingering after-effects of that injury?
McKay: We can’t say anything.
Celeborn is an oft-discussed topic of conversation; as I’m sure you know. We didn’t see him in season two of The Rings of Power, but did we see any hints of him or his journey that fans can hunt for if they watch really carefully?
McKay: All we can say is pointing back to Galadriel’s story season one to Theo, and he says, “Oh, did you ever lose anybody?” And she’s like, “Yeah, my brother, all these people. And also, I had a husband once, and I lost him too. He went off to war, and he never came back. Essentially, she says, “I never saw him again after that.” So we still have to see.
And there’s also a lot of talk, especially after Galadriel, kissed Elrond, of Celebrían and that story and romance. That story does seem to straddle the Second and Third Ages of Middle-earth. But do you generally think that Celebrían and Elrond’s tale fits into The Rings of Power, or do you see that as kind of not in the project of the Second Age?
McKay: Celebrían? We will have to see. We’ll have to see. It’s early days, early days. But I think certainly in our minds, Galadriel and Elrond are dear, dear friends, almost family, sometimes they’re frenemies where they’re both holding two different principles that they have to find a way to learn from one another about. Certainly, that’s true in season two, but they always love each other.
Payne: And certainly in a Back to the Future kind of way. Where Marty kisses Lorraine, the idea that Elrond is kissing his unbeknownst future mother-in-law felt like very delightful.
McKay: I mean that’s what we should talk about, Back to the Future. That’s really what it is. It’s not supposed to be that Marty and his mother are now going to have a relationship. No, the whole point is, “Wouldn’t it be crazy if you were in a circumstance where this was the thing to do to distract the orcs.” That’s at least what we thought.
Can you clarify if Celebrían has or has not been born?
McKay: No, Celebrían has not been born yet.
Payne: She has not been born. Which would also backfill to answer some of your earlier questions, although I won’t say which ones.
Relatedly, Tolkien’s vision of time passing and time between events isn’t something we can always fully align with in a show we’re making in our reality. Do you imagine we’ll see any time skips in the future of The Rings of Power?
McKay: I think the aspiration from very early days in envisioning what the multi-season arc would be is that there could very well be some significant gaps. We’re great admirers of shows that have done that. There’s a Halt and Catch Fire episode where all of a sudden, eight years have gone by, and you’re like, “What?” It’s so cool. Battlestar Galactica did that famously, I think 13 years went by.
Payne: If you think about where the Second Age is going, what you know is going to happen with Númenor and The Last Alliance. You have to have entire cities built before you can have the Last Alliance.
McKay: If Celebrían is in everybody’s future, she’d have to be a grownup. Theoretically. But I mean, these are all very early days. We’re just talking speculatively. But season one and two almost are one roaring train. I think the aspiration would be that there might be some big gaps in time later.
What has your favorite incorrect The Rings of Power fan theory been so far?
McKay: Well, I feel like there was lots of chatter about maybe Adar is actually Celebron. Or was Galadriel’s brother or Adar was somebody important. No, no, Adar was just Adar. He just happened to be one of the oldest orcs. Adar was tortured and sort of became one of the earliest Orcs. He would have been alive for potentially thousands of years. And that in and of itself makes him special. He doesn’t need to then also be Steve from the lore… He’s not Steve or Celeborn.
He earned the name Adar and became bigger than whatever that elf was called. The name itself would’ve been some name you’d never heard of. “I was Steve the Elf.”
Given that this might be the last round of interviews where Adar could be the focus, I’ll just ask. In season one, Adar says to Sauron, “Did I cause somebody you love pain, a woman, perhaps a child?” What, in the end, was that line trying to convey between them?
McKay: So Adar is somebody who has killed lots and lots and lots of people. So he just in that stage of his development, right, he has leveled villages, right? The orcs are on a march. They’re enslaving people and making them dig a hole that goes to Mount Doom so he can put water in. And then he blows up an entire region. He is a warlord at that point. And so when this human-seeming guy is very angry and very upset with him, he’s like “Well, gosh, I’ve killed tons of people. Who did I kill of yours?
What has pissed you off so much?” He genuinely doesn’t know who he is, but he’s suspicious. And if you watch over the two seasons, his suspicion of Halbrand grows. I think in our minds, there is a shot of Sam Hazeldine when Halbrand leaves the camp after having turned the warg against Waldrag. And he’s like, “That’s kind of the confirmation. I’m 90% sure that’s him. I thought it might’ve been.”
Payne: And to go a little deeper into your sort of, “Who’d I kill? Is it a woman? A child?” I think there’s also a flickering sense of “Our paths have crossed before.” I don’t know exactly how I’m sort of grasping for it. I’m thinking like, “Maybe did I kill someone you know?” It’s that person whose face you see in the elevator, and it’s like “I know you, I don’t know, did we go to college together?” And then what it really is, is a sort of spiritual recognition that this was Sauron, but he’s three degrees removed from being able to acknowledge it.
McKay: He’s suspicious back in season one. And then I think when he comes to the camp, he’s like, “Oh boy, this guy’s really… What is going on here? It’s really going to be him.” And I think by the time Sauron leaves the camp at the end of the first episode, I think Adar is pretty sure. And then, when he talks to Galadriel in episode six, he’s like, “He’s Sauron, isn’t he?” And then she confirms it. But think his suspicions were there from the very beginning.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power seasons one and two are now streaming on Prime Video.