The all too early Season Two thread (possible spoilers)

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The all too early Season Two thread (possible spoilers)

Post by Voronwë the Faithful »

A couple of articles with some interesting comments from the showrunners about what we might see in Season Two.

From Deadline:
‘LOTR: The Rings Of Power’ Season 1 Finale: Showrunners & EP Talk Sauron Twist, Tease “Grittier” Season 2, & New Characters From Tolkien Canon

Some snippets, courtesy of cats16 at TORN:
"DEADLINE: You dropped a lot of clues over this season, are we going to get more into Halbrand’s backstory, how he got there on that raft, and set this up?

McKAY: I would say that those are all good questions and questions need answering. So hopefully those are new layers of the onion we can peel back."

--

"DEADLINE: Let’s shift back up the road to the Stranger and the Harfoots in this Season 1 ender What awaits him and Nori? Is he Gandalf? And, most importantly, will we see Poppy again?

PAYNE: Well, we I think we need to be careful about not spoiling the adventure. I would say, you know, one of the goals from the very beginning for us here was to go to uncharted, unseen corners of the Tolkien map, a huge and tantalizing continent that readers and audiences have never been to.

McKAY: And the idea of a Tolkienian journey and adventure with a wizard and a halfling, it seemed to us like a really exciting and enticing new leg of the journey as it is, as it were."

--

"DEADLINE: I guess your life is deep into Season 2 production, didn’t you consider saving some of what we saw in the J.D. and Patrick penned finale for that?

WEBER: It’s funny you ask that, there are things that we saved that were going to be in the final bit of the season that we thought, oh, just it’s too big right now to do, to fit that in with everything else and let’s save it, and we’re actually doing some of those things now in Season 2.

DEADLINE: Really?

WEBER: Yes, and I think it’s really exciting to be exploring them and have the room to do it the way the way we really wanted to, so we weren’t giving anything short shrift.

DEADLINE: Does that exploration include new characters?

McKAY: Círdan will be a part of the adventure moving forward in Season 2 We’ve cast a wonderful actor to play him that we will announce at some future date. But part of the fun of telling a story in Middle-earth is that there’s all these wonderful canon characters that you’ve met Season 1 and then there are additional canon characters that we will get to in future seasons. If you know the lore, you know, anybody is fair game who might have been a part of the world at this time.

WEBER: Season 2 is fundamentally different in that our main villain is out and about and doing his thing. I think in some ways, it’s going to grittier, more intense, maybe a little scarier. Certainly, it has a lot of the same other tonal ranges that you find in the show, which we feel are really sort of fundamental to feeling like you’re in Middle-earth, but once Sauron is openly on the move and working his plans, things get rather interesting."
And from /Film:

The Rings Of Power Season 2 Will Delve More Deeply Into J.R.R. Tolkien's Canon
"There's a lot of canon here, and season 1 is a place where there's an enormous amount of invention happening between tent poles and the canon," McKay notes. "Season 2 is a lot more canon that we're interested in adapting and bringing to life." 
And from the Hollywood Reporter:
‘The Rings of Power’ Showrunners: Sauron Will Be Like Walter White in Season 2
“What’s in the [The Lord of the Rings books] is an all encompassing evil that everyone is afraid of, and is so powerful, it doesn’t even have to be manifested physically,” McKay says. “He’s an image of an eye in [Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings] films, he’s the eye on the tower. We felt Sauron should be a character in his own right. We wanted to study the currents running within him in a way that hopefully would reward audiences as they follow him moving forward as he becomes the Dark Lord. You now know him as a person outside the name ‘Sauron.’ In some ways, we wanted to do an origin story for Sauron. We didn’t want to make a show that was about the hunt for Sauron, but we love the idea of Sauron as a deceiver who could, hopefully, deceive some of the audience.”

Adds Payne: “There’s something that Milton does in Paradise Lost that we talked about a lot. Where he makes Satan a really compelling character. In some ways, he’s the first antihero where he’s compelling and you can’t take your eyes off of him. Milton did that on purpose because he wants you to fall along with Adam and Eve. He wants Satan to be so persuasive that he also seduces [the reader] and you’re unconsciously won over, so that you perceive your own fallenness and your need for redemption.”

Continues Payne: “In Tolkien, Sauron is a deceiver and we know that in Second Age he appears in ‘fair form.’ So what if he sneaks up on you and is able to get you to sympathize with him and get you to be on board with him so that once you actually realize who he is, that he’s already got his hooks in you? So it’s not just as easy as, ‘This person is evil, I’m going to back away,’ because you’ve already formed some level of attachment to him. What if we could get the audience to go through a similar journey?”

Many online had guessed Halbrand was Sauron along the way, which showrunners note is just fine with them — the goal wasn’t to fool everybody with a twist that feels totally out of the blue.

“If you had a sneaking suspicion over the course of an entire season, and then that suspicion is ultimately confirmed, that’s an emotional engagement,” Payne says. “Tragedy is one of the highest art forms. There’s a reason people are still putting on Romeo and Juliet hundreds of years after it was written even though you know what happens at the end. A surprise only rewards you on one viewing.”

“I hope after the last episode airs, viewers watch the whole season again, which is now a different experience,” McKay says. “We hope that, as we get into season two, it makes people like season one even better because you’re seeing it through a new prism.”

Speaking of the next season of the Prime Video series — which has begun filming, yet isn’t expected until sometime in 2024 — the producers hint Sauron will play a major role as he moves forward as an antihero in the model of some iconic TV characters.

“Season one opens with: Who is Galadriel? Where did she come from? What did she suffer? Why is she driven?” says Payne. “We’re doing the same thing with Sauron in season two. We’ll fill in all the missing pieces.”

“Sauron can now just be Sauron,” McKay adds. “Like Tony Soprano or Walter White. He’s evil, but complexly evil. We felt like if we did that in season one, he’d overshadow everything else. So the first season is like Batman Begins, and the The Dark Knight is the next movie, with Sauron maneuvering out in the open. We’re really excited. Season two has a canonical story. There may well be viewers who are like, ‘This is the story we were hoping to get in season one!’ In season two, we’re giving it to them.”
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
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Re: The all too early Season Two thread (possible spoilers)

Post by Eldy »

That THR quote at the end is actually fairly encouraging. 'Course, I'll probably have lots of gripes with whatever they come up with in practice, but I'm down for more (hopefully still sexy) Sauron. I look forward to seeing what backstory they come up with for him, and then needing to tell myself a million times that it's not bad just because it's different from my headcanons. :P
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Re: The all too early Season Two thread (possible spoilers)

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2024! Sigh!
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Re: The all too early Season Two thread (possible spoilers)

Post by Voronwë the Faithful »

I'm going to put this interview with Charlie Vickers here since there is some comments about Season 2, though it also has a lot of interesting stuff about the completed season.

Behind ‘Rings Of Power’s Sauron Reveal As Actor Speaks About Secret Identity & Clues Fans May Have Missed
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
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Re: The all too early Season Two thread (possible spoilers)

Post by Eldy »

Vickers also has a recent NY Times interview which covers much of the same ground, and includes some additional comments about Sauron and his capacity for love which I do not agree with (at least not if we're discussing a repentant Sauron). :P Though as V recently noted in another thread, show!Sauron is definitely not book!Sauron, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

‘The Rings of Power’: Charlie Vickers on That Monster Revelation
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Re: The all too early Season Two thread (possible spoilers)

Post by Voronwë the Faithful »

That was a really interesting read. I'm really impressed at how deeply Vickers went into the lore, and to be honest, I agree with him about Sauron's capacity to love.

I think it is hilarious that he learned about "shipping" from Morfydd Clark.
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Re: The all too early Season Two thread (possible spoilers)

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PHOTO: Rings of Power Season 2 Mordor Set Spotted in UK

It is says "photo" but there are actually a bunch of photos.
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
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Re: The all too early Season Two thread (possible spoilers)

Post by Voronwë the Faithful »

Lot's of interesting stuff in this almost half-hour clip with interviews with the showrunners, the executive producer, Charlie Vickers, and Bear McCreary.

Among other things, they all but confirm that the "ghost people" (e.g., the king of the dead and his people) will appear along with the Witchking and other Nazgûl, that the 3 "mystics" are part of a cult of the Blue Wizards that Gandalf and Nori will be encountering. It ends with Bear talking about how the end song came to be. Definitely worth watching if you can take the time.

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Re: The all too early Season Two thread (possible spoilers)

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Re: The all too early Season Two thread (possible spoilers)

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I haven't seen a link to this (sorry if I've missed one somewhere): https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv ... 235240895/
Hidden text.
I'm intrigued by the explicit reference to "things that I adored reading in The Silmarillion that we’re going to see. Those really famous stories are going to unfold next season." Doesn't that suggest that they have some sort of approval for using material from the Sil? (And of course, I'm even more intrigued about which really famous stories.....)
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Re: The all too early Season Two thread (possible spoilers)

Post by Voronwë the Faithful »

One possible scenario that I think might happen in Season Two is that Galadriel tries to warn Gil-galad and Celebrimbor that Halbrand is in fact Sauron, and that they refuse to believe her.
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Re: The all too early Season Two thread (possible spoilers)

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Yeah, I think that would flow naturally from Celebrimbor's apparent bafflement and unhappiness at Galadriel's declaration that they'll have nothing to do with Halbrand if he reappears.
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Re: The all too early Season Two thread (possible spoilers)

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I'm still baffled by the choice to (at least apparently) have the Three Rings be the first of the Rings of Power to be made. Not only does that clearly contradict what Tolkien wrote (including in the material that they have the rights to), it just seems dramatically to be the wrong choice. We'll see how it plays out.
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Re: The all too early Season Two thread (possible spoilers)

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It's not at all what I was expecting, either. Perhaps, since ROP's version of the Ring project was motivated by the imminent threat of Eldarin extirpation in Middle-earth, that's why they made the most preservation-focused Rings first, and the Seven and the Nine will be presented as the product of a more power-oriented (rather than survival-oriented) mindset. I'm just spitballing, though.
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Re: The all too early Season Two thread (possible spoilers)

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Spitballing (and little drips and drabs of rumors, leaks and inuendo from the creative team) is all we got for the next couple of years.
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Re: The all too early Season Two thread (possible spoilers)

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😔
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Re: The all too early Season Two thread (possible spoilers)

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I wonder if it's just that we haven't seen the making of the other rings yet. At least one of the interviews suggested that there were things they could have shown in the first series but decided to hold over for series 2; there are also suggestions that the second series will focus more on Sauron's story. Putting those together, I wondered if it might mean some revisiting of the same ground from his point of view. They talk about going back to show how he came to be on the raft: perhaps they might also show more of his work with Celebrimbor and we will see the making of the other rings.
Any thoughts on the reference to including well-known material from the Silmarillion in the article I linked above? It's under a spoiler tag so very well hidden!
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Re: The all too early Season Two thread (possible spoilers)

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I agree that is a possibility, though perhaps it is wishful thinking on our part. ;) The implication in what we saw so far is that the Three were the only ones made, particularly with the (I thought fairly silly) talk about needing to make something small and round, like a crown for the "High King" then deciding to make two rings, then changing it to three at Galadriel's advice. But there certainly could be a way to go back and show that there were others made first. I just don't think it is likely.

As for the comment about including well-known material from the Silmarillion, that is intriguing, but it is hard to know what to make of it. Is it more the kind of allusions that we have seen already without getting into specifics, or have they nailed down more rights to allow them to include specific details directly from the Silmarillion (either First Age stuff from the Quenta itself, or stuff from either the Akallabêth or Of the Rings of Power ... . I'm very curious to see, and I sure wish they would go on with it!
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Re: The all too early Season Two thread (possible spoilers)

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The “small & round” conversation makes me break out in giggles. It was SO ludicrous.
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Re: The all too early Season Two thread (possible spoilers)

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Voronwë the Faithful wrote: Fri Oct 21, 2022 4:29 pm I agree that is a possibility, though perhaps it is wishful thinking on our part. ;) The implication in what we saw so far is that the Three were the only ones made, particularly with the (I thought fairly silly) talk about needing to make something small and round, like a crown for the "High King" then deciding to make two rings, then changing it to three at Galadriel's advice. But there certainly could be a way to go back and show that there were others made first. I just don't think it is likely.
Absolutely it's wishful thinking! The story flows so much more naturally if the other rings turn out to have been made first, while Sauron was with Celebrimbor. Otherwise it's hard to work out how they'll bring it in. Finrod's dagger produced far more metal than they needed for three rings, so it could be that the elves will make them, but why would they make rings for men and dwarves - and how would Sauron know about it.
And yes, the 'oh dear, we've only got a small piece, what shall we make?' did become a rather daft. Reminds me a bit of the films deciding not to show Galadriel presenting Gimli with the three hairs, because what works on the page might look a bit odd acted out.
As for the comment about including well-known material from the Silmarillion, that is intriguing, but it is hard to know what to make of it. Is it more the kind of allusions that we have seen already without getting into specifics, or have they nailed down more rights to allow them to include specific details directly from the Silmarillion (either First Age stuff from the Quenta itself, or stuff from either the Akallabêth or Of the Rings of Power ... . I'm very curious to see, and I sure wish they would go on with it!
Again,there's an element of wishful thinking here on my part. I know they don't have film rights to the Silmarillion but I wondered if they may have had specific permissions - just as you can obtain permission to quote from a book or to use copyright archive material in print. Otherwise they're almost inviting the rights holders to intervene. And if by chance they do have permission to use something about Sauron from the Silmarillion, there are some appealing possibilities there - one in particular... ;) I know it's unlikely, but we're going to have to wait so long for more!
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