There are all kinds of fiends lurking in the darker parts of Middle-earth. You don’t want to catch Gollum on a bad day (does he even have good days?). There are cave trolls and Balrogs and Orcs and all kinds of beasts. And, as seen in Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings films, there are Sauron’s Ringwraiths – the corrupted former men whose nine rings turned them into fearsome ghouls. Since The Rings Of Power Season 3 sees Charlie Vickers’ Lord Sauron ascend in the Second Age, we’ll also get to see the origins of the Ringwraiths, aka the Nazgûl.
Or, as they’re known in The Rings Of Power, the Nazgnagôl. Here, they’re still men, working in service of Sauron and lusting for power. To figure out what this early iteration of the eventual Nazgûl would be, showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay immersed themselves in Tolkien linguistics. “We love looking back at what inspired Tolkien,” Payne tells Empire. “He led with language. Language became a scaffold on which the myth would hang. The word ‘Nazgûl’ means ‘Ringwraith’ in the Black Speech of Mordor. But before they were Ringwraiths, we know that these were just men. So we were able to derive in the Black Speech that ‘nagôl’ could mean ‘servant’.” ‘Nazgnagôl’, therefore, literally means ‘Ring-servant’.”
One such Ring-servant is Zubin Varla’s incoming Khamûl the Easterling, a character who we already know is doomed to eventual inhumanity. “In a sense, they go on the same journey as Gollum,” says Varla of the Nazgnagôl. “Evil begets evil, and violence begets violence. Their souls, and their bodies, are corrupted until they are literally hollowed out, almost devoid of physical form.”
Not that the Nazgnagôl would see themselves as the bad guys. “Every character stays the hero of their own story,” says Payne. “From Khamûl’s point of view, he is a warlord who deserves to be a king, whose power has been usurped by a dark wizard. Sauron offers him a way back to the top.” Remember: some ‘gifts’ are worth saying no to.
Read Empire’s full The Rings Of Power Season 3 cover story – spending three days on set of the epic Middle-earth saga, and speaking to Patrick McKay, J.D. Payne, Charlie Vickers, Morfydd Clark, Robert Aramayo, Daniel Weyman and more – in the September 2026 issue, on sale Thursday July 30. Pre-order a copy online here. The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power Season 3 streams on Prime Video from November 11.
