‘The Rings Of Power’ Showrunners Have Awfully Strange Explanations For Sauron’s Identity

Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power has been perhaps the most divisive television show of 2022, which should come as little surprise. Any time something as beloved as Tolkien’s work is adapted for the screen, it’s bound to drive controversy.

Still, I was not prepared for just how much this show would disappoint. I went from mild interest and low expectations to genuine hype after I really enjoyed the first two episodes, to wary caution and finally to crushing disappointment and, quite frankly, anger over the myriad ways I believe this adaptation was mishandled.

My review of Season 1 lays out many of the reasons I found The Rings Of Power to be such a ghastly rendition of Tolkien’s work—at once unfaithful and amateurish, an incompetent fantasy even if it had no ties to Middle-earth. Shabby storytelling that relies on wild coincidences and contrived conflict and leans heavily on tired tropes, rather than exploring the true grandeur of The Lord Of The Rings and its Second Age.

One of the main sticking points many had with the show was the identity of Sauron. Spoilers ahead.

Sauron was one of the many mystery boxes The Rings Of Power offered up in its first season. His identity was kept secret, and we were given plenty of potential candidates. But one remained the obvious choice from the very moment he showed up in the second episode and uttered his very first line: “Looks can be deceiving.”

And sure enough, in the eighth and final episode, Halbrand was revealed to be the Dark Lord himself, though it was never entirely clear if he truly was repenting for his earlier sins or if he was merely attempting to deceive the elves and seduce Galadriel. This all could have been quite interesting, but it relied too heavily on coincidences (Galadriel and Halbrand randomly running into one another in the middle of the ocean being the most egregious) and was never explored with the kind of depth that would have earned that final confrontation.

I am often quite negative about this show, but I will admit that I enjoyed the Sauron reveal itself. Charlie Vickers did a terrific job in this moment, and the surrealism of the showdown itself was compelling. It just didn’t feel earned, and I was troubled by the fact that he had so easily deceived our hero, Galadriel, who is supposed to be so wise and powerful that Sauron could never trick her thus. Had the central protagonist been a different, non-canon elf (or even Galadriel’s daughter, Celebrían) this might have been less of an issue. Whatever the case, the season needed to focus more on this and other relationships, including the one forged between Sauron (in disguise) and the ambitious elven craftsman, Celebrimbor.

In Tolkien’s legendarium, Sauron does not come as Halbrand at all. He appears as Annatar, the Lord of Gifts (though he takes other names as well, including Artano the high smith and Aulendil, servant of Aulë (the Valar who created the dwarves). This is all part of his attempts to deceive and eventually subdue the elves. Since Sauron was a Maia of Aulë’s people, he had vast knowledge in the forging of powerful magical items.

He went to Eregion, home to the elven smiths and Celebrimbor himself, and spent several centuries there, teaching the elven smiths new secrets. Finally, in 1500 SA he began assisting the elves in the forging of the Rings of Power. They forged the Nine and the Seven which would eventually go to the Men and Dwarves, transforming the Men into the Nazgûl, or Ringwraiths.

But in The Rings Of Power, Sauron shows up as Halbrand and spends a few days with Celebrimbor, suggesting he use an alloy to extend the limited supply of mithril. The elf smith ends up creating the Three powerful elven rings first—rather than after the Nine and Seven—and does so in just a few minutes. The entirety of the forging of the Rings Of Power is condensed into fifteen minutes of screen-time, and skips past the entire story that’s supposed to precede it.

This was done, apparently, to keep book readers in the dark over the identity of Sauron along with everyone else. When asked about changing the identity of Annatar to Halbrand, co-showrunner Patrick McKay tells Vulture:

“We were concerned about a situation where the part of the audience steeped in lore is six or seven episodes ahead of the characters. If deception is an important part of the journey, we wanted to preserve that experience for book readers too. The idea that the shadow can take many forms was part of what we were attracted to. The reference to gifts is a nod to the Annatar of it all, but also, at the end of season one, three rings have been crafted, and as you know from the song Fiona Apple sings at the end of the season, there are still seven for the dwarves, nine for the men, and one for the Dark Lord to come. There are more gifts yet to come.”

This is . . . peculiar reasoning. Essentially, they wanted to keep book readers guessing along with everyone else by fundamentally changing the story. It would be like having Gandalf return after his fight with the Balrog as a totally different character in order to make the audience keep guessing at who this white-robed figure was—for eight episodes of a show, rather than the brief time it takes the characters themselves to discover that no, this is not Saruman, but Gandalf reborn—risen, Christ-like, from the dead.

Stranger still is the contradiction offered up by co-showrunner J.D. Payne on the official Rings of Power podcast:

“I want to talk about one more thing on this, which is to go back on your initial comment, surprise, even though you were suss, we were really not about the big twist, the big surprise, the big shocker. That was never the goal here, I think we were much more interested in creating characters and relationships and dynamics that were engaging and, hopefully, emotionally rich, and full of conflict, and, hopefully, delight and warmth. [Chuckles] Episode 2, the minute you see this guy, and he says a thing that Galadriel later says to Frodo, you go, “I bet that’s Sauron,” you know what? You’re going to have, hopefully, as great and valid a viewing experience as someone who has no idea until it suddenly happens. If you suspect him all the way, that is a totally great way to watch the show, in my opinion, where you’re engaging with a whole layer that maybe somebody else doesn’t engage with.”

I’m confused. Here Payne is saying that even if you guess immediately that Halbrand is Sauron you hopefully will have “as great and valid a viewing experience” as everyone else; yet in McKay’s statement, the showrunners were “concerned about a situation where the part of the audience steeped in lore is six or seven episodes ahead of the characters.” Which is it?

This is the problem with tinkering so much with the established story and lore without a clear vision of how to make your own adaptation work without completely bungling and mucking up said story and lore. Having Celebrimbor craft the Three elven rings—the apogee and finest work of his life—prior to crafting the lesser Nine and Seven is ruinous to this story. I’m also confused at how Sauron is supposed to return to Eregion and what, deceive the elves a second time?

It seems both Galadriel and Elrond are covering up Halbrand’s true identity by the end of Season 1, so it’s certainly possible that Celebrimbor—who is portrayed as somewhat dense in the show—will be fooled again, but it sounds awfully silly to me. I’d have preferred that the show dispense with extra mystery boxes that serve no purpose and simply give us as close to the real story as possible using the resources possible.

This was always going to be a difficult task given Amazon didn’t acquire the rights to The Silmarillion, the text in which much of this story can be found. But then that raises an important question: Why choose this story in the first place if you don’t have the full rights to it to begin with?

That’s just one of many questions I have about this perplexing show and its many baffling creative choices. For now, Sauron remains a problem that has yet to be solved—and one that making him “like Tony Soprano or Walter White” surely will not solve.

Read my review of Season 1 right here.

You can watch my video on all of this below:

As always, I’d love it if you’d follow me here on this blog and subscribe to my YouTube channel so you can stay up-to-date on all my TV reviews and coverage. Thanks!