Sauron’s Quest to Forge the One Ring Takes a Gruesome Turn in THE RINGS OF POWER Season 3

Sauron is having some serious trouble with his latest arts and crafts project, and unfortunately for the Orcs of Mordor, failure comes with a pretty horrific body count.

Charlie Vickers returns as the Dark Lord whenThe Lord of the Rings: The Rings of PowerSeason 3 and the story will push Sauron further toward the version of the villain fans know from The Lord of the Rings, including his attempt to forge the One Ring.

New script pages revealed by Entertainment Weekly offer a look at Sauron’s introduction in Season 3, and it sounds much nastier than expected.

Five years have passed when the season begins, and Sauron is working inside his forge at Barad-dûr. Co-showrunner Patrick McKay explained that the creative team wanted to “start in a slightly different way.” That opening finds Sauron already consumed by his effort to create the One Ring.

His experiments aren’t going well. Sauron produces a golden ring and orders a nervous Orc to put it on. The moment the Orc slips it onto his finger, his hand erupts in flames. The fire consumes him until nothing remains but a smoldering pile of bones.

The prototype doesn’t fare much better. It disintegrates in Sauron’s hand. Even worse, this poor Orc isn’t Sauron’s first test subject.

Sauron has apparently spent the past five years trying and failing to forge the One Ring. Co-showrunner J.D. Payne says he still “hasn’t got the recipe right yet.”

This isn’t just about making another magical ring. Sauron needs something powerful enough to dominate the three Elven Rings, seven Dwarf Rings, and nine Rings of Men. The problem is that his own arrogance has left him without the knowledge required to finish the job.

After believing he had learned everything he needed from Celebrimbor, Sauron ordered the records of the legendary Elven smith’s ring-making methods destroyed. Now Celebrimbor is dead, the records are gone, and Sauron discovers that maybe he didn’t know quite as much as he thought.

Payne explained, “Sauron’s own hubris has gotten the better of him.” Those repeated failures also start getting inside Sauron’s head. Vickers said, “Sauron has fallen back down that rabbit hole of frustration and darkness.”

He added, “In killing Celebrimbor, he has lost control and killed the person that could have helped him most on this quest. So he is doubting himself.”

That frustration sends Sauron searching for whatever remains of Celebrimbor’s work. He orders the Orcs to hunt down any surviving records, which brings Marnûkh into the story and gives Sauron another person he can manipulate to get what he wants.

Opening Season 3 with Sauron essentially running lethal One Ring experiments on Orcs sounds like a pretty effective way to show where his head is at. He’s frustrated, obsessed, and willing to burn through bodies until he finally creates the weapon that will help him dominate Middle-earth.

We already know where this road ends. Watching Sauron figure out how to get there could be one of the more interesting parts of The Rings of Power Season 3.