Celebrimbor and Sauron’s relationship reaches its inevitable grisly end in the Rings of Power Season 2 finale, with Charlie Vickers improvising one of the Dark Lord’s most surprising moments.
Celebrimbor has been the most tragic figure in Rings of Power: the greatest of Elven smiths, duped – as anyone would be – by evil incarnate, masquerading as an emissary of the Valar who can’t even rely on the gods to produce rings as magical as his own.
In the penultimate episode, his illusion of Annatar’s grandeur vanished like a shadow in the dark: this whole time, he’d been crafting rings for Sauron, and going into the finale, he was trapped in his orbit.
Sadly, he doesn’t make it out of Season 2 Episode 8 alive. Just like in Tolkien’s writings, Sauron tortures him with arrows, fondling them and splintering his wounds, before impaling him against a pillar with a pole.
“I am the creator. I am the master,” he says, and with his dying breaths, Celebrimbor tells him: “No, you are a prisoner. Sauron… Lord of the Rings.”
It’s a powerful scene that brutally ends one of the most important relationships. “Yeah, that was a really special day,” Charlie Vickers told Dexerto before the finale aired.
Vickers also said it was the scene he was most looking forward to seeing in the finished episode. “There’s a lot of imagery in the scene which is in the lore, so we were really excited to bring that to life. And we filmed chronologically, so it was the end for [Charles Edwards] and I in terms of this room we’d been in for eight months,” he recalled.
“To get to the end of the road, it was very emotional and really complex; a long, difficult scene with lots of moving pieces.”
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As Celebrimbor’s body falls limp, a tear trickles down Sauron’s face. It’s a fascinating beat for a villain who’s never shown remorse – only well-practiced charm, fury, and impatience.
“I think it was an enormous release of emotion, and anger and sadness. Often you can’t really explain these things, they just happen. When we were filming it, it was not my intention for that to happen. That’s the beauty of acting: you’re just alive in the moment and if something happens, you just have to trust it and go with it,” he explained.
So, why did he cry; was he mourning the loss of a friend, or was it something else? “Looking back on it, you can interpret it in so many different ways,” Vickers mused.
“I think he could be sad. There’s an element of sadness that he’s lost a creative partner and someone he really respects, but also, in that moment, he’s been defeated.
“He hasn’t found out where the Nine are and Celebrimbor has coaxed him into killing him… his anger overcomes him, and it’s very un-Sauron to lose control. He’s a being that’s all about control. So yeah, there’s a lot of complexity there.”
After the finale, make sure you check out our recaps of the rest of Rings of Power Season 2:
Also read our guides on Tom Bombadil, the Dark Wizard, Undying Lands, Forodwaith, and Círdan, and check out our interview with Elrond’s actor – where he talks about that kiss with Galadriel.