From The Stranger’s identity reveal to Galadriel’s fight and whether Sauron and Celebrimbor were lovers, ‘The Rings of Power’ showrunners break down the ending and look ahead to season three.

Granted, you probably guessed this one. But The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power had a major reveal about The Stranger in its season two finale — along with a climatic Sauron-Galadriel fight, the climax of Sauron’s season-long seduction and betrayal of Celebrimbor, the Balrog being unleashed in Khazad-dûm, and more.

Below, showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay answer The Hollywood Reporter‘s questions about the eighth and final episode, which brings to close a more smartly paced and visually lavish second season that has continued to perform well in the ratings for Amazon. There’s a lot to cover, starting with the confirmation that The Stranger is, yup, Gandalf the Grey…

I was relieved that you didn’t stick with “Grand Elf” because I was thinking, “Oh, is this going to be some weird legally differentiated Kirkland version of Gandalf?” Was this a character you had rights to all along? Was this reveal always the plan?

JD PAYNE Yeah, we’ve had the rights to him from beginning and certainly we had leanings in terms of who we suspected The Stranger (Daniel Weyman) was going to become. The further we got into the story, the further it just made sense for him to be Gandalf. And there are a couple of reasons. One, Gandalf has this strangely strong relationship with Halflings. He’s a wizard who loves to hang out in the Shire. Why? And we thought, “Well, if at one point in his existence he had vulnerably come to Middle-earth in this challenging time with no memory of who he was, and he had been found by ancestors of the Hobbits and they had helped him, that would be a thing he would never forget.”

Second, we see this character crosses path with Tom Bombadil (Rory Kinnear) and has a relationship in which he can learn his power as a wizard. Gandalf, in the books, right before he’s about to leave Middle-earth, the last thing he does is to say, “Before I leave, I’m going to go hang out with Tom Bombadil, and I have some questions I need to ask him.” And usually, when you’re leaving a place, you don’t go meet a new person you’ve never talked to before; you hang out with your friends. We talked about other options. There were blue wizards who were around in the North during the Second Age who went to the East. This just felt like the story that wanted to be told.

PATRICK MCKAY Also, we love this character. The idea of an earlier version of Gandalf on a journey of self-discovery felt like really fertile ground.

So, is this Gandalf being born for the first time?

MCKAY Well, Middle-earth has many ages and many histories, and there are tantalizing hints in some of J.R.R. Tolkien’s writings that Gandalf has appeared in different forms and has walked among various races. The idea that perhaps there is even an earlier story of him is for someone else to tell.

Because when he comes back as Gandalf the White, he’s discombobulated for a few minutes. But this time, not knowing who he was, not knowing his powers, for such a long time … I was wondering what the sort of internal explanation was for that?

PAYNE: Those details we might reveal as the story continues to go forward. But he did have an identity before that moment in the crater.

And the Dark Wizard (Ciarán Hinds) reminded me of Saruman. But since Gandalf doesn’t think of Saruman as a dark wizard in The Lord of the Rings, I’m presuming this is not him.

MCKAY I think that’s a very safe presumption. We know that in the history of Middle-earth, some wizards become corrupted. So there is precedent for this, but that doesn’t mean it’s the same guy. As you say, it wouldn’t actually make sense for it to be Saruman.

Over in Khazad-dûm, I always had the impression that once the Balrog was released, he wreaked havoc and drove everyone out of the mines immediately. But in your story, this is more of a gradual corruption process. That city is still occupied and they’re still going to be fighting for it going into season three.

MCKAY This is a thing where, how do societies fall? Usually it’s gradually, and then all at once. If you want to use climate change as a metaphor, climate change is not an event. Climate change is a process that ebbs and flows, that’s always headed in a dark direction. I think a kingdom as great and powerful as Khazad-dûm does not fall in a moment. The fall is the product of many disasters over time. And I think it would sell Khazad-dûm short for the Balrog to get out and then it’s all over. It’s more complicated. We think there’s a bigger story to be told here.

So let’s talk about the Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) and Sauron/Annatar (Charlie Vickers) stuff, because that was great. How did you plot the final lap of their deteriorating relationship?

PAYNE: This is something that’s been building from the beginning. You’re able to see it in so many aspects of the production. You see it in even the costuming of Sauron. When he first shows up as Annatar, he’s in this biblical angelic prophetic costume, these humble robes. But as it goes on, you see these black feathers on his costume and you see him embracing the role of a dark tormentor more and more. And then, Charlie Edwards gives such a heart-wrenching performance. I think we all can relate to having a lofty ambition, something you’re trying to accomplish, and then something going wrong. And we can related to relationships that didn’t turn out to be what you thought they were going to be — whether romantically or professionally or friendship or family. So I think people will be able to relate to the Sauron Celebrimbor and Annatar relationship, and it’ll be harrowing because of it.

MCKAY I think it’s a boxing match, emotionally. In the middle of the season, in the fifth and sixth episodes, you feel Celebrimbor pushing back against the feeling that he’s being pulled into a noose, and Sauron has to go to ever greater lengths to manipulate him. By the end of the sixth episode, he has put him in what Celebrimbor calls a prison of the mind, where Celebrimbor appears to be living in a beautiful idyllic version of the city, even as Rome is burning. Sauron eventually kills Celebrimbor, but in doing so, it’s almost like Celebrimbor has won. He can no longer be his puppet.

PAYNE: And there’s his dying prophecy — I’m going to go to elf heaven and you’re going to be stuck with yourself in the hell of your own creation. “I perceive that one ring alone will lead to your utter ruin.” He’s given Sauron exactly what he wants, which is to be master over this creation, but with bitter dripping irony — yes, that is your title, “the lord of the rings,” but you’re actually enslaved to these rings that will ultimately destroy you.

What makes him think, though? Given how powerful Sauron has presented himself, how does Celebrimbor know that a ring will eventually destroy him?

MCKAY Sauron has indicated that this is his entire plan, and that his ability to dominate the world is to be dependent upon this technology. But what Celebrimbor knows, and what I hope we’ve shown, is Celebrimbor believes that he can’t do this without him. “You are now the prisoner of your own technology because, without me, there’s nothing you can do to better what I’ve already done.”

So presumably to create the One Ring, he thinks he longer needs Celebrimbor, but he does kind of, and that is why things go wrong for him?

MCKAY: We don’t want to spoil where the story goes next. But certainly I would say Sauron needs Celebrimbor, and if he were to try to do what they did on his own, that might be challenging.

You mentioned their relationship might remind people of their own relationships, including romantic. There were times watching Celebrimbor and Annatar that I wondered if there was some romantic, or even sexual, underpinning to what was going on there?

MCKAY I would say the nature of this relationship and its closeness, and the even the sexual tension in it, has been a source of speculation by may fans of the source material for many years. Anytime you’re dealing with such powerful emotions as seduction and deception, I think it’s easy for your imagination to go there.

PAYNE I think you can see it from the beginning of their interactions together in the second episode. Sauron is pulling Celebrimbor in by saying, “There are things I can only tell to you,” and, “You always saw me the way no one else could” and “You’re safe with me.” You’re seeing this intimate dance that Sauron is doing. So certainly we could see how people could take that a step further and ship them.

Celebrimbor’s fall felt like a bit of a metaphor for drug addiction. He’s addicted to the making of these rings and, of course, in The Lord of the Rings, Andy Serkis has said he portrayed Gollum as a heroin addict. This seemed like a different take on the same idea — somebody who has suddenly woken up, looked around and realized, “My apartment is trash and my life is a wreck because of this.”

MCKAY I love that. I don’t know that we consciously talked about that, but we did think it was important that someone gives themselves willingly over to Sauron. He does not have power over every living thing. He has to pull you into his web. And I love that it could hold up as a metaphor for that. I think that really holds up. Certainly with Gollum it does.

And when Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and Sauron were fighting, I thought, “Well, there’s no version of this where she could win.” I mean, yes, he’s in mortal form, but he has so much power. Did she have a chance in that fight? Was that fight hopeless?

PAYNE: We see at the top of the season that using the crown of Morgoth, which is itself an artifact of immense power, that his physical body is able to be killed. In theory, Galadriel could have done similar to what Adar (Sam Hazeldine) did at top of the season.

MCKAY We talk about this a lot in the writing of those scenes, in the staging of those scenes, in the rehearsals with the actors. Yes, she could physically win. There is a way. But what he wants is not to kill her, but her to finally give him the credit he feels he deserves. He wants her on his side. He’s toying with her. But she’s more powerful than maybe he expected. So it becomes: How does she find a victory, even though he seems to be holding all the cards?

And it’s a nice call back to the first episode with Adar being killed in a very similar way to the way Sauron was killed. I guess the effect of this is there’s really nothing stopping Sauron from controlling all the dark forces in Middle-earth.

PAYNE Sauron starts the season with nothing — no rings, no army, no allies. He ends it with an entire army of Orcs. He’s got the nine rings for men, he’s distributed the seven rings to the dwarfs. So his plan for Middle-earth domination is well on its way.

MCKAY And it’s also a story of the orcs, right? Adar is an orc who believes that orcs could be something more. They could have a home. He even seems to promise Galadriel they’ll leave the rest of Middle-earth alone. In some ways, it’s not just the story of how Sauron claims the orc nation, it’s also the story of how there was a chance that orcs could have been a people in their own right.

What excites you about season three?

MCKAY I would just say we are enormously proud of season two and the work that all these amazing actors did and all our incredible collaborators did. We feel it’s a really strong season. We made a very conscious effort to pace the show differently. We really wanted every episode to play as a discreet experience, and that meant you’re not going to see every character every week. We think the show is just hitting its stride, and we anticipate that season three will be onward and upward.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season two is now streaming on Prime Video.