In an epic season 2 that managed to win over many vocal critics, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power kept cunning Sauron front and center, as multiple plotlines converged at the Battle of Eregion.¹

Most fans seem to agree this eight-episode cycle worked thanks to a stronger reliance on Tolkien source material—a focus on Numenor splintering, conflict in Khazad-dûm, and Annatar’s cunning deceit of Elvish craftsman Celebrimbor. The visually stunning series felt like it had moral stakes, a hallmark of Professor J.R.R. Tolkien’s mythos as presented at length in my recent review.

“Tolkien has a lot to say about good and evil, and that’s something timeless that everyone can identify with,” said series co-creator Patrick McKay in an exclusive interview alongside co-writer J.D. Payne.

Critics may be surprised to hear The Rings of Power showrunners reference C.S. Lewis and John Milton as two major influences in season two. And lest anyone think the show deserves no criticism, we’ve included five questions at the end that haven’t yet been answered.

In a brief video call, the showrunners address moral themes of the prequel TV series. When my friend Kate O’Hare asked them some similar questions (full interview here), it rounded out my three questions, so an excerpt from that interview is also included below.

When evil whispers

1. In this second season, Sauron has been elevated to protagonist. Why is that?

Patrick McKay: From our very first meetings with Amazon, when we said we wanted to tell a story in middle earth set in this era of Tolkien’s mythology, the number one reason was because this is when Sauron is a physical being. He’s deceiving and manipulating. His tentacles are everywhere, and he is deeply, complexly evil. And the depiction of that character was absolutely paramount from our first story conversations of: This is the reason you do this. How do we get this right?

Part of that is casting an incredibly talented and lovely human in Charlie Vickers. And part of that is telling a story where Sauron has the room to Sauron. Season one was all about letting him fool the viewer the way he’s fooling our hero. But now season two, he’s out, and that shifts the balance of the entire show in a way that we hope people find very engaging and sometimes a little disturbing.

J.D. Payne: We’re not the first people to make the bad guy, the protagonist. This has a long, glorious tradition going back to (John) Milton and probably earlier on, where Milton’s Satan (in Paradise Lost) is this compelling character you can’t take your eyes off of. Milton did it to show his readers their own fallenness by showing how interested they were in the devil and in evil. As you find yourself interested in Sauron, you’ve got to be careful because he’s a bad guy and he sees everyone, maybe even the audience.

2. This expression of evil is very different from the shadowy, powerful version of Sauron that audiences know from the films. What is this saying about the nature of evil?

McKay: We see ourselves as stewards of this material. And so we never claim credit for any themes, ideas, or values that the show is espousing. We are hopefully unearthing and bringing to life the themes and values and ideas that obsessed Tolkien. What’s very interesting about The Lord of the Rings—sometimes it can be painted by viewers or critics with a broad brush as being expressive of a black and white world, where there’s pure evil and pure good.

But that’s really not what Tolkien was writing about. He’s writing about the fall, he’s writing about temptation, and he’s writing about good and evil as absolutes. But the people who dwell in the world are not absolute. So sometimes good characters fall to evil, or evil characters are capable of potential good. And we try to, with every season of this show and every episode, bring that to life in the most engaging, hopefully thrilling, complex way possible.

Payne: One of the closest places [Tolkien] ever comes to articulating a sort of ethic and morality for his legendarium is in the mouth of Saruman. Saruman articulates a utilitarian value, right? We’re going to achieve the ends we need to, and we’ll condemn certain evils done along the way and lament them. But ultimately, it’s all because we’re going to do good things once we’re the ones in power. Tolkien implicitly condemns this utilitarian ethic. And I think Sauron follows in a very similar kind of mold as Saruman, whom he eventually puppets.

(Sauron) sees you so completely—not just who you are, but who you want to be. He’s able to present himself in such a way that he can be the answer to all your wishes and all your problems. So he’s able to not shape shift in terms of like, a sort of superpower. But he’s able to present in different forms that would be appealing to people.

Other villains will exploit your weaknesses. What’s scary about Sauron is that he exploits your strengths and is able to take your desires to do good and twist them to his own ends. It’s scary to think of a villain like that.

3. It’s close to like The Screwtape Letters kind of idea. (Kate O’Hare refers to C.S. Lewis’s classic work of religious speculative fiction.) 

McKay: Oh, that’s like one of J.D.’s favorite books.

Payne: I absolutely love it and have (often) reread it. There’s an audiobook where John Cleese reads all of The Screwtape Letters, and it’s amazing. I listened to it while preparing to write season two.

Adding dimension to good and evil

4. One thing that people have had split opinion about is humanizing, if you will, the orcs. But I always thought that having a mindless evil you could just slaughter without compunction is kind of a weakness. Kate asked, where did that come in?

McKay: In the same way, Tolkien had very mixed feelings about the orcs. When he treated them as mindless zombies to be slain, he felt conflicted and he wrote about that. And orcs are pretty evil in this show. But in our experience and in Tolkien’s writing, even evil characters do not believe they are evil and they might be fighting for something that seems to them good, even if they’re using evil means for it. So we’ve tried to add some dimension to our villains, I would say.

Payne: Just to emphasize: it’s not to water them down or to say that they’re any less evil. It’s to say that they’re complex. Ideally, it makes you lean in so that the evil that they do is more impactful as a viewer.

5. When it comes to characters on the good side, like Elendil and Durin IV, how do you write their arcs so that their choices feel real and relatable?

McKay: Another thing we talked about from very early on, in the very first writers’ room is that we wanted the show to be about complexities of good and the difficulty of choosing good. Hopefully our heroic characters, whether it’s Durin or Elendil, they’re in their own ways, trying to find the light—sometimes literally. I think the question is, can they stay true to themselves when the temptations of power and the world is pressing back on them?

Certainly this second season, Durin is struggling with an existential crisis and in some ways, the dwarves are cutting corners to solve it—and Durin’s exploring really where his values lie on that. For Elendil, his entire society is turning against him and he’s holding on to those values. But what sacrifices is he going to make to do so?

So both of these characters are very much trying to hold on to the good in a world that is pushing them more and more away from it.

The nerdy questions we’d like to ask them

When you have five minutes for an interview, you have to choose questions wisely. It’s tough, because the subtle and significant ways that The Rings of Power reinterpret Tolkien’s myth is at times baffling and frustrating.

If you see Payne and McKay get on an AMA on Reddit or X, here are a few questions to ask them:

1. In retrospect, was it the right choice for Galadriel and Elrond to share a kiss?

I get that it was a ruse and had a plot purpose. Still, it’s well-established that Elrond later marries Galadriel’s daughter, and they’re related by other familial connections. I do think Corey Olsen, a.k.a. “Tolkien Professor,” laid out these issues well and urged the snark to calm down a bit.

2. Some viewers were rooting for a blue wizard reveal regarding the Stranger. Any response about this long-gestating story thread?

Count on a lot of chatter about the reveal of Gandalf, which even casual viewers saw coming from the first episode. The mystery-box plotting is an odd waste of time, especially if the answers aren’t interesting, I’ve said before. Worse, it prevents the drama and dialogue from going into more depth.

3. Season two ends with Elrond and other Elves establishing Imladris, better known as Rivendell. Why are various heroes brandishing swords in this haven of peace during the closing shots?

This was another odd creative choice. If the Elves were celebrating a newfound peace, even temporary, then lifting high their swords seems anachronistic to the situation.

4. Some viewers have a real dissonance about Amazon, a cutthroat player in several competitive industries, backing this series, considering Tolkien’s views on greed and industrialization. How do you respond?

Any clear-eyed view of Amazon’s business practices would lean towards a conclusion that they’re a lot more Orc-like than Ent-ish in their impact as a global company.

5. Where is Celeborn?

In those short appendices of The Lord of the Rings about the Second Age, expanded greatly for the TV series, Galadriel’s husband Celeborn is name-checked a few times. Last season in the standout episode “The Eye,” Galadriel mentions that she never saw Celeborn after he went off to war. If the series is worth its salt, by next season, we should be seeing the Elven couple reunite.

What did you think of The Rings of Power season 2? Join the discussion below.