Showrunners of Prime Video's The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Patrick McKay and J.D Payne, reveal why Sauron has not appeared in recent episodes and explain that they are happy for fans to continue to speculate regarding his identity.
In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, McKay and Payne confirm that the Second Age’s version of Sauron, who has supposedly returned to Middle-earth, will emerge in his "fair form" as a deceptive character. Whilst fans of the Lord of the Rings movies originally know him as the flaming eye on a tower, they are now left theorizing as to which characters might be Sauron in disguise. As McKay explained, this is exactly what the writers had hoped for. "It would be very tempting to make the first season of this show 'The Sauron Show,' very villain-centric." He said. "But we wanted that level of evil and complexity of evil to emerge out of a world that you’re invested in — not because evil is threatening it immediately."
Elaborating further as to why the writers decided not to include Sauron straight away, McKay added that the creative team wanted audiences to become comfortable in the world. "We wanted you to fall in love again with Middle-earth," McKay said. "We wanted you to understand and relate to the struggles that each of these characters are having before we test them in a way they’ve never been tested before."
With many theorizers believing that the Dark Lord is either The Stranger (aka the Meteor Man) or Halbrand, Payne confirmed that the ongoing mystery is an essential element of the Tolkien world. "It’s another Tolkien thing where when a shadow spreads — which is part of what is happening in our show — it affects everyone’s relationships." Payne said. "So having an audience suspect this person or that person could be Sauron is drawing them into that thing where the shadow is overcoming all of us and making us suspicious of each other."
First-time showrunners, McKay and Payne met in junior high in Northern Virginia and later moved to Los Angeles together to pursue a career in screenwriting. Long-time Tolkien fans, they landed Amazon’s billion-dollar high fantasy because of their passion and in-depth knowledge of the Tolkien world. "The people we were up against have résumés that on paper would be more suited to the gig," McKay admitted. "We were the dark horse candidates."
The Rings of Power premiered Sept. 1 and, despite an initial negative reception, filming of the second season began on Oct. 3 with promises from the two showrunners that it will be even "bigger and better" than the first. The show is reportedly the most expensive yet for Amazon's Prime Video - the first season alone costing the streamer $465 million - and with the change of location from New Zealand to London, it is expected that the additional seasons will cost considerably less.
Episodes 1 through 6 of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power are available to stream on Amazon Prime Video, with new episodes premiering on Fridays.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter