The second season of The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power really was all about Sauron gaslighting Celebrimbor. Sauron even looks at him in the season finale and blames Celebrimbor for what Sauron did to him. It has led fans to having fun with his arc this season.

From the jump of the season, Sauron (Charlie Vickers) kept Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) in a room and forced him to make rings. He was lying to him, forcing him to do his bidding, and then, by the end, Sauron was blaming for Celebrimbor for his actions. Fans of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work knew that Celebrimbor’s fate was a tragic one but it didn’t make the last moments of this season any less heartbreaking.

Still, we had our fun. Like pointing out how much Sauron is gaslighting those around him. The jokes are right there. In season 1, he was gatekeeping information from Galadriel (Morfydd Clark). This season? All about gaslighting Celebrimbor until he murdered him and then blamed Celebrimbor for his own death. And so I hope that season 3 comes with Sauron in his girlboss era.

Which is exactly what Charlie Vickers and I spoke about. As part of the post-mortem interviews for the series, Vickers and I talked about the practical effects of the series, the reactions to Sauron this season, and the reality that Sauron really is the king of gaslighting people in season 2 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

Charlie Vickers had fun this season

Talking with Charlie Vickers, I asked him how many people said that Sauron was in his “gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss” era. He responded by laughing, saying “No one said that, a full phrase to me, but I’ve definitely received quite a bit of gaslighting criticism or compliments, if you look at it from Sauron’s perspective.”

It made for a great season of the “evil villain” side of things. Sauron was tormenting Celebrimbor the entire time and it just seemed like Vickers was having a lot of fun with the dynamic in season 2. “That has been one of the joys of doing it. And the real challenge was balancing that with the truth of the character because it all has to come from the truth,” he said.

He went on to talk about how Sauron couldn’t just be evil without any merit behind it. “It can’t just be, I think it loses its effect if you’re just playing evil for evil’s sake. And sometimes when you watch things it doesn’t quite ring true whe you see people doing it. So for me, the challenge was to really have fun and lean into that element of the character. But it all comes from, and it’s in the writing as well, his desire for control. But it was a lot of fun. It was a really, really fun season.”

You can see our full interview here:

You can watch the first two seasons of The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power on Prime Video.