Inside Galadriel and Sauron’s ‘Cosmic Connection’

Opposites attract in Season 2 of Prime Video‘s dazzling The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Elven warrior Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and Dark Lord Sauron (Charlie Vickers) may be separate forces of good and evil, but Galadriel remains bound to him after his elaborate trickery led to the creation of the Elven rings. But as we return to the Second Age of Middle-earth in these eight episodes, the star-crossed pair are ignoring their “cosmic connection,” Vickers tells TV Insider.

Darkness is spreading throughout Middle-earth as Sauron’s influence grows in the second season (premiering August 29 with three episodes), and JRR Tolkien’s ultimate villain is wasting no time getting more rings of power made after the Elven rings escaped his clutch. This mission draws in deadly chaos in Eregion, culminating in the series’ biggest battle yet that will bring a legendary conflict from Tolkien’s tales, the Siege of Eregion, to life for the first time onscreen.

After establishing a vast world of characters in Season 1, “Worlds start to braid into one story” this time around, co-showrunner Patrick McKay says. “That story is Sauron rising and threatening the world and the world having to band together despite how different they all are to try and stop him.” But as co-showrunner JD Payne warns, “If you know the canon, things don’t go very well for our heroes” in this fight.

“It’s also a psychological thriller,” Payne adds of the season’s arc. Sauron is forced to take new form now that Galadriel has warned her allies not to trust Halbrand. He transforms into Annatar, the Lord of Gifts, to combat this, a guise Vickers says is specially designed to lure in Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards). Annatar manipulates the master craftsman into making rings for Dwarves and Men, an act that will make “Celebrimbor descend into madness and Eregion hurdle towards potential destruction,” Payne reveals.

Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, and Men are all deceived by the great shapeshifter, but even as he’s laser-focused on bending Middle-earth to his will, Sauron can’t shake his obsession with Galadriel. Their undeniable bond is the through-line for the second season, one that “will pay dividends” now that this pair has acknowledged their “incredible connection and are grappling with what to do with it,” executive producer Lindsey Weber explains. “It is a driver of story for quite some time to come and is really satisfying when you see them together again in Season 2.”

Galadriel and Sauron share the deepest connection to another being either of them has ever experienced, a fact that haunts them both in the new episodes. What they share “is greater than romance,” Vickers explains. “Their connection runs far deeper than anything surface level.”

“It would be like if you had the most intense type of synesthesia, and then you met someone else that had the same type of it,” Clark describes, “but then you find out they’re the worst person in the world. But you can’t undo that feeling of what it was to be understood and connected in that way.”

Galadriel is shellshocked by the fact that the enemy stood before her and instead of clocking his disguise, she cared for him. She now must “sit back and learn and be contrite” with the Elves, Clark shares, and she must prove to her community — Robert Aramayo’s Elrond, in particular — that her mind, while known to the Dark Lord, isn’t controlled by him. She’s battling with herself, too, after being tempted by evil and almost failing the test.

Galadriel’s “been shown something terrifying, which is a possible future where she is by Sauron’s side,” Clark explains. “And so, she’s fighting in the present and in this imagined possible future. She’s trying to change both now and what’s to come.”

Galadriel’s “not just hunting [Sauron] down and fighting him,” Clark continues. “She’s keeping a wolf that she’s discovered within herself at bay.” She’ll find that isolating herself from the Elves in Season 1 was just as big of a mistake as trusting Halbrand, as it made her prime prey. The weary warrior is “coming home this season and may be hanging her head in shame, but nonetheless, she’s coming back,” Clark admits. “She’s accepting that she’s part of something and connected and that she can’t do things alone.”

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Sauron, meanwhile, won’t make the mistake of connecting with someone ever again, not after Galadriel’s rejection of his de facto “marriage proposal,” as Vickers describes it, at the end of Season 1. “He’s moved on to bigger and better things” since, Vickers argues, but try as they might, there’s no denying their entwined fates. And those close to them last season, like Elrond and Númenor’s Queen-regent Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), will see their lives changed forever because of that proximity. (Get an exclusive look at Galadriel, Sauron/Annatar, Elrond, and Míriel in Season 2 in the photos above.)

Second to his lust for more rings is Sauron’s desire to get the Elven rings back. “While he didn’t directly touch them, which is a big thing this season, [Galadriel] has this ring that he put all this effort into, and he wants that back,” Vickers admits. Sauron “covets” these jewels, “and particularly hers,” he explains, “because he knows what they represented when he was making them.”

“He’d been trying to think of these ideas for so long. Finally, Celebrimbor unlocked the door, and now Galadriel has one of them,” Vickers continues, adding that Sauron feels “taunted” and “pissed off” that Galadriel rejected him. That makes getting her ring back personal, but Vickers insists that “he’s past ruling with her.” That won’t stop him from showing her “what could have been, what you could have had,” Vickers teases.

Forging the rings may have been Sauron’s idea, but now they’re the Elves’ shield against him. Clark says the Dark Lord is “obsessed” with “corrupting” Galadriel this season, which won’t be easy to do now that she’s reconnected with her people and her love of Middle-earth. “Sauron continues to be obsessed with the Elven rings because they don’t want more of them,” Clark reveals. “They’re content with what they’ve got, and he wants to be addictive.” Could he want Galadriel to find him addictive as well?

Ben Rothstein / Prime Video

“He’s fascinated by her because she sees the world in an utterly different way,” Clark explains. It’s a tale of a “darker soul sees a sparkling, glittering personality and is like, ‘I want to possess that,’” she says. “He will never be able to possess what she has, even if he got the ring, because she loves things, and he doesn’t.” Galadriel is Sauron’s perfect foil, Clark says, because “her goodness is a painful mirror to him because he will never be that.”

On the home front, Galadriel must contend with how those closest to her are changed by her “huge mistake,” according to Clark. Struggling the most with Galadriel’s folly is Elrond, who charts the season’s biggest transformation from untested diplomat to fierce warrior. His journey begins with a literal leap of faith off a waterfall, requiring a 30-foot drop Aramayo did himself. That act of defiance “springboards this season,” Aramayo says, with Elrond as the sole critic of the rings and Galadriel.

TV Insider is exclusively debuting one of Ben Daniels‘ first scenes as Círdan the Shipwright in the clip above. The wise Elf will make his debut in the Season 2 premiere. In the scene above, Elrond has come to Círdan for guidance about the Elves’ rings. Elrond echoes his Third-Age self when telling his new mentor that “the rings must be destroyed,” a line that directly references a line from the same character in The Fellowship of the Ring. But the half-Elf, half-mortal being must “go on a journey about what he feels about the Elven rings,” Payne says. His Season 2 arc is just as much about disillusionment as it is heroism.

“There are several shots in which we’re watching his hopes be dashed,” Payne reveals. “His hopes for what would happen come crashing into the reality of what has happened, and you’re watching the innocence and optimism of Elrond in Season 1 give way to the world-weary jadedness that we see of the Elrond in the Third Age. It’s pretty breathtaking.”

Galadriel is a catalyst for that change early on, Aramayo says, “because she had such a hand in the path as we’ve gotten to this point.” Elrond’s disappointment in his friend can’t be understated now that her actions have led, in his mind, to the creation of weapons that Sauron can use against them. Galadriel will spend much of this season trying to reconcile this rift so that Elrond can “find his way back” to her, Aramayo says, with Clark noting that “her and Elrond have quite a battle of mind and wills going through this.”

“They are both being transformed by the darkness,” Clark admits. “What’s so special about Elves though is that what doesn’t kill them makes them even gentler. The more darkness they see, the more they’re like, ‘We must bring light. We must keep loving the world.’”

That’s easier said than done when you’re fighting the greatest force of evil, and that evil knows you far too well. As McKay warns, “Things are going to have to get worse before they get better.”

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Season 2 Premiere, Thursday, August 29, Prime Video