If Rings of Power’s first season was all about paving the way for the return of Sauron, season two will be all about watching the returned Dark Lord’s major plans for the Elves fall into place–not just the forging of those titular rings, but the fallout of the discovery of Sauron’s treachery, and the brutal battles that come in the wake of it. Battles that will, apparently, span a lot of the season’s chronology.
“We love a good battle,” Rings of Power co-showrunner told Empire Magazine in a new interview, teasing that the Lord of Rings prequel’s sophomore season will focus on bringing a major conflict from Tolkien’s works to life. “The plan with season two would be to do something much bigger, on a much grander scale that would take place not just overnight, but over multiple days, weeks, months, and episodes.”
That conflict, of course, is something we’ve seen teased in the little footage we’ve seen from season two so far: what was simply called “The War of the Elves and Sauron” in Tolkien’s works, the clash of the forces of Mordor and the combined forces of the Elven kingdoms of Eregion and Lindon after Sauron’s ruse as Annatar, the Lord of Gifts, is discovered. In the original chronology, this conflict–which leads to the establishment of Rivendell, Sauron’s discovery of the true power of Númenór, and radically rebalances the face of Elven power across Middle-Earth with Eregion’s near-eradication–takes place over half a decade, with multiple major sieges and battles along the way.
The Rings of Power is already doing a lot to condense the timeline of the thousands of years the Second Age took place across, but this is a conflict that can’t really be condensed into a singular clash between the Elves and the hosts of Mordor–and thankfully it won’t be, it seems, when The Rings of Power returns to Amazon on August 29.
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