LOTR: Rings Of Power Season 1 Finale Reveals Who Sauron Is, Will Become Like Walter White In Season 2

Amazon's The Rings of Power has concluded its first season, and the show went out with a bang. There was a big reveal during the episode and it could have big implications for Season 2. This story contains spoilers for The Rings of Power, so only read on if you've seen the episode or don't care about being spoiled.

In the Season 1 finale, we finally learn who Sauron is--Halbrand. He successfully deceived Galadriel and others by telling them he was the king of the Southlands. Many viewers guessed that Halbrand was Sauron, but this was finally confirmed in the Season 1 finale. Showrunners Patrick McKay and JD Payne discussed their take on Sauron in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter and teased that the character will be like Walter White or Tony Soprano in the upcoming second season of the fantasy show.

McKay said that Sauron in the books is an "all-encompassing evil" and in Peter Jackson's films, he is the image of an eye and not manifested physically. For The Rings of Power, the showrunners wanted to make Sauron "a character in his own right."

"We wanted to study the currents running within him in a way that hopefully would reward audiences as they follow him moving forward as he becomes The Dark Lord. You now know him as a person outside the name 'Sauron.' In some ways, we wanted to do an origin story for Sauron," McKay said. "We didn't want to make a show that was about the hunt for Sauron, but we love the idea of Sauron as a deceiver who could, hopefully, deceive some of the audience."

For Payne, he said the team tried to make Sauron similar to how Satan is presented as a "really compelling" anti-hero in Paradise Lost. Satan is compelling and persuasive, and Payne tried to make Sauron this way, too.

"So it's not just as easy as, 'This person is evil, I'm going to back away,' because you've already formed some level attachment to him. What if we could get the audience to go through a similar journey?," Payne said.

For Season 2, the writers are trying to make Sauron similar to villains like Walter White from Breaking Bad or Tony Soprano from The Sopranos. "Sauron can now just be Sauron," McKay said. "Like Tony Soprano or Walter White. He's evil, but complexly evil. We felt like if we did that in season one, he'd overshadow everything else."

Payne said The Rings of Power Season 1 is like Batman Begins, with Season 2 taking the form of The Dark Knight, with Sauron now out in the open and causing mayhem.

The actor who plays Halbrand AKA Sauron, Charlie Vickers, didn't even know he was playing Sauron until they filmed Episode 3.

"We filmed the first two episodes and then the show went on hiatus because of COVID. Towards the end of the hiatus, the showrunners sat me down and told me," Vickers said. "But I did have an inkling, if I'm honest with you. My last two auditions [were reading lines from] Richard III and we know he’s not the greatest guy in the world. And then the other [audition lines were] from Paradise Lost where you’re literally giving the speech as Satan. So that gave me an inkling there was something up. So I was definitely suspicious, but it wasn't confirmed until right before we started filming the third episode."

The Rings of Power is currently filming its second season in the UK, having departed New Zealand. There is no word yet, however, on when the next season will premiere.