There are all kinds of fiends lurking in the darker parts of Middle-earth. You don\u2019t 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\u2019s Lord Of The Rings films, there are Sauron\u2019s Ringwraiths \u2013 the corrupted former men whose nine rings turned them into fearsome ghouls. Since The Rings Of Power Season 3 sees Charlie Vickers\u2019 Lord Sauron ascend in the Second Age, we\u2019ll also get to see the origins of the Ringwraiths, aka the Nazg\u00fbl.<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n Or, as they\u2019re known in The Rings Of Power<\/em>, the Nazgnag\u00f4l. Here, they\u2019re still men, working in service of Sauron and lusting for power. To figure out what this early iteration of the eventual Nazg\u00fbl would be, showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay immersed themselves in Tolkien linguistics. \u201cWe love looking back at what inspired Tolkien,\u201d Payne tells Empire<\/em>. \u201cHe led with language. Language became a scaffold on which the myth would hang. The word \u2018Nazg\u00fbl\u2019 means \u2018Ringwraith\u2019 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 \u2018nag\u00f4l\u2019 could mean \u2018servant\u2019.\u201d \u2018Nazgnag\u00f4l\u2019, therefore, literally means \u2018Ring-servant\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n One such Ring-servant is Zubin Varla\u2019s incoming Kham\u00fbl the Easterling, a character who we already know is doomed to eventual inhumanity. \u201cIn a sense, they go on the same journey as Gollum,\u201d says Varla of the Nazgnag\u00f4l. \u201cEvil begets evil, and violence begets violence. Their souls, and their bodies, are corrupted until they are literally hollowed out, almost devoid of physical form.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Not that the Nazgnag\u00f4l would see themselves as the bad guys. \u201cEvery character stays the hero of their own story,\u201d says Payne. \u201cFrom Kham\u00fbl\u2019s 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.\u201d Remember: some \u2018gifts\u2019 are worth saying no to.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read Empire<\/em>\u2019s full The Rings Of Power Season 3 cover story \u2013 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 \u2013 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<\/em> Season 3 streams on Prime Video from November 11.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are all kinds of fiends lurking in the darker parts of Middle-earth. You don\u2019t 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\u2019s Lord Of The Rings films, there are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-47"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12382"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12384,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12382\/revisions\/12384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/the-rings-of-power-season-3-introduces-proto-ringwraiths-meet-the-nazgnagol.jpg\")
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