There aren’t many people who can hold the One Ring — you know, the one that rules them all, and in the darkness binds them — and emerge unscathed. So kudos to Charlie Vickers, who today in an exclusive interview with Empire, admitted that he got to hold the One Ring during production of the third season of The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power. And he seemed totally fine to us. “To be able to hold that prop,” said Vickers, “which arguably of all the props in this whole series and the whole lore, like everything revolves around it, was a huge moment.”
Of course, it makes sense that Vickers remained uncorrupted by the One Ring. After all, the Australian actor plays Sauron, the architect of all Middle-earth’s pain, in the Prime Video smash hit. And, as showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay made clear at today’s Hall H panel previewing the show’s imminent return, season three is going to see Sauron finally forge the One Ring. “We had a long-term plan,” McKay told Empire after the panel. “It’s a show that aspires to the epic, and the way you achieve that is good planning. We always knew that the One Ring would come right around the middle.” Nodding, Payne added, “I think some things we thought about doing a little earlier, but eventually this felt like the exact right place to do it.”
There were many different aspects to the Rings Of Power panel (hosted by the show’s own Benjamin Walker), with the Hall H crowd going nuts as they celebrated Celeborn, the new character (Galadriel’s husband, no less) played by Jamie Campbell Bower. New characters were confirmed, including a brother for Dwarf king Durin, played by Eddie Marsan. And, in a wild revelation, it was confirmed that not only will The Balrog speak this season (as Payne and McKay pointed out, in Tolkien, creatures speak; sometimes you can’t shut them up), but he’ll speak with the voice of one Simon Pegg, who was seen in the recording booth during a featurette shown during the panel.
But this season is all about Sauron and his ignoble quest. *Spoiler Alert*, if you haven’t seen or read The Hobbit or The Lord Of The Rings: he succeeds. Which is how Vickers ended up clutching it on set. “It was nice and heavy,” he told Empire. “They had two versions, They had the inscription and then the plain ring.” But the big question on everyone’s lips is, did it speak to him? “Oh yeah,” he smiled. “It whispered a lot of stuff for two weeks.”
Maybe he didn’t emerge so unscathed after all.
