The rings of power The upcoming season two battle sequence is “the most ambitious undertaking we’ve ever attempted,” according to co-showrunner Patrick McKay, who made it very clear to me about the size, scale and scope of this season’s action spectacle.
Speaking to TechRadar ahead of the release of season 2 at the end of August, McKay spoke about the amount of work that went into bringing the Siege of Eregion to life. A battle that defined an era, the bloody and devastating conflict is arguably the most significant of The Lord of the Rings' iconic fights. In fact, it not only kicks off the War of the Elves and Sauron that spans much of Middle-earth's Second Age, but also shapes the events of the Third Age, the most important of which were covered in Peter Jackson's book. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Film trilogies.
Some of the battles depicted in those films, such as The two towers'Helm's Deep and The return of the kingThe siege of Gondor clearly influenced elements of The rings of powerMcKay's take on the Siege of Eregion During our chat, McKay and co-creator JD Payne didn't elaborate on what inspiration they took from the duo that shaped the Prime Video show's latest big-budget battle.
However, McKay and Payne wanted to honor the multi-stage action scenes that Jackson and company adapted for the big screen and how the Siege of Eregion is described in Tolkien's literary works.
“The Siege of Eregion is the most ambitious project we've ever attempted on this show,” McKay admitted, “which is saying a lot, because everything about this show is ambitious.”
“We wanted to make a classic, epic, thunderous Tolkienian battle, not just with two sides, but with multiple armies and multiple races in conflict. Also, sieges don't happen in a day or a night, but over a matter of weeks or months, so we want you to feel that moment. We want you to feel the phases it goes through. We have an aerial bombardment, the destruction of the city and the natural environment, [and] Then there is a horse charge and a ground assault. In the eighth episode, it turns into a hand-to-hand street fight, as [the Battle of] Stalingrad.”
That sounds like a batch to include in the final two episodes of Amazon's prequel series, and that's before you even factor in the other Season 2 storylines in Númenor, Pelargir, Khazad-dûm, and Rhûn that also need some sort of resolution before The rings of power leaves our screens once again. It's a good thing, then, that McKay, Payne and the show's thousands of cast and crew members prepared thoroughly to ensure that filming of the Siege of Eregion went as smoothly as possible.
“It took us a year to prepare,” McKay revealed, “and it took us weeks to shoot. We had hundreds of extras and an unmeasurable amount of prosthetics done by Barrie and Sarah Gower. Then there’s the stunt work done by our incredible stunt team, the pyrotechnics, our CGI troll, and then our production manager Charlotte Brandstrom and second unit director Vic Armstrong, who captured it all on camera. It’s all of it, all the time, but we’re so proud of the result.”
So, we can expect an episode or two similar to the episodes 'Battle of the Bastards' and 'The Long Night' in the HBO series. game of ThronesRight? Not exactly. As I mentioned, there are other stories unfolding simultaneously with the Siege of Eregion, so one of Prime Video’s best second seasons won’t end with a couple of episodes that will leave the audience exhausted by the end.
“It’s not action from start to finish,” McKay admitted. “You’re in and out of very tense action sequences and character-driven emotional moments. The siege of Eregion isn’t just the big bang at the end of the season. It’s that too, but it’s also the knot that ties together all these different plot threads involving Galadriel, Sauron, Adar, Celebrimbor, Elrond and Durin; it ties them together. So there’s not just narrative explosions; there’s also emotional explosions from the characters, epiphanies and huge changes in the course of Middle-earth history.”
As Galadriel observed in Season 2, Episode 4, then, you'll need to “brace yourselves” for tragic and heroic moments alike. Before the penultimate chapter of this season arrives, be sure to read some of my exclusives with the series cast below, which tease what's coming in the final two episodes.
