In a surprising scene clearly meant to evoke Biblical tales of angels coming all the way down to Earth, Sauron transforms earlier than a mesmerized Celebrimbor’s very eyes, turning into a brand new, extra Elven-like type: Annatar, the Lord of Presents, an emissary despatched down by the Valar (i.e. gods) to ask for the Elven smith’s assist in therapeutic Center-earth. Longtime J.R.R. Tolkien readers after all know what’s meant to occur subsequent, however we caught up with actors Charlie Vickers and Charles Edwards in addition to showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay to get their insights on how Annatar adjustments every thing in season 2 and units up the arrival of extra Rings of Energy…
Annatar Is a Very Completely different Aspect of Sauron
Though Vickers didn’t initially know he’d been forged as Sauron—till episode 3 of the primary season he thought he was simply enjoying some man named Halbrand—as soon as he knew he was really the Lord of the Rings, the actor started planning for the day Sauron would rework into what Tolkien described because the sorcerer’s “truthful type.”
“I knew this was coming in some unspecified time in the future and I knew precisely what I needed to do,” Vickers says. “Whereas it was a problem, I had plenty of concepts earlier than we even started, which was fairly completely different from Halbrand—I used to be sort of making that up as I went alongside. However there have been plenty of issues that I needed to strive with the Sauron of this season.”
Even if Tolkien established Sauron’s Annatar type as enjoying a significant function within the forging of the Rings of Energy, he didn’t write extensively about this a part of Center-earth historical past, as is the case with many of the occasions of the Second Age. However what we do know from The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales is that Annatar was the shape Sauron took to trick Celebrimbor and the Elves of Eregion to create the seven rings for the Dwarves and the 9 for Males. It ought to come as no shock, then, that Sauron’s primary focus in season 2 is to make use of Annatar to get contained in the Elven smith’s head with the intention to make the remainder of the rings he wants.
“All the pieces he does now—the best way he seems, talks, walks—every thing is now for Celebrimbor,” Vickers says of Annatar’s manipulations. “What would this nice Elven smith reply to? What would make him belief him? He has to current as somebody actually educated and actually clever to get this particular person to be like, ‘Okay, properly, I’ll do that with you.’”
Annatar is, after all, meant to be fairly completely different from Halbrand, not solely bodily however in the best way the character acts—the best way he carries himself, his mannerisms, how he reacts to issues. Primarily, Vickers needed to play a very completely different character in season 2 whereas additionally remaining Sauron.
