#after charlie vickers

[wickedrum]

Sauron as Mairon, a force of goodness and peace, shaping the world under the guidance of the Eru the One.

"Mairon was fair and handsome. Sauron would later take similar forms to Mairon during his wanderings in Middle-earth, particularly to gain the confidence and trust of Elves."

[ladyhawke]

Charlie Vickers as Halbrand – THE RINGS OF POWER 1.06 “Udûn”

[fatcatlittlebox]

[eleyras]

I don't know if someone already pointed it out BUT for the whole episode every interaction Annatar had was so unsettling, so false, so sweetly manipulative and yet AND YET the moment he thought about Galadriel his façade slipped, a fraction of something close to sincere emotion breaking out on his face, as if the sole memory of the gold in her hair was enough to ripple the cold calm of his travesty:

[highly-flammable]

IDK if people will come for me for saying this but not showing how Sauron took control over the orcs for the sake of surprising the audience was not good writing.

Also, why was Galadriel just standing there watching Adar get stabbed? Asking for a friend.

[sauronpilled]

hot take : i think charlie vickers embody sauron perfectly well. he's good at portraying sauron impulsive nature and curiousity + those puppy eyes are working on me, and i am Weak. but the show did him so Wrong, so all we see are the glaring flaws here and there, and it's hard to enjoy his perfomance.

[blood-ofmyblood]

”Whatever the case, that’s the story I’ve heard. The heart tree called a woman’s name over and over again. Especially on stormy nights. I wish I’d heard it myself. I could do with a little misadventure.”

Harwin rushes back through the winding garden pathways, back to the weirwood. The red leaves are fire in the setting sun’s light. A tingling runs all over his body. He approaches the tree, looks into its angry face. Is it watching him now? Can he feel a presence? “The woman. What was her name?” Why should he ask that? Why should he care? Harwin waits a minute, feeling more and more foolish. The wind sighs through the leaves, and he realizes that is probably what he heard before. The wind in the tree, his own fevered imagination, the perfect combination for magic. Harwin shakes his head and sighs. “I’m losing it. Lost it, more like.” He turns and walks away. The wind picks up, shaking the leaves back and forth. ”Alicent.“ Perhaps that was just the wind again, married to his own fancies. Perhaps he just thought the name Alicent himself, answered his own question. Probably that’s all. But Harwin walks faster and does not look back at the tree.

inspired by "After the Fall"

[highly-flammable]

I still have so many thoughts about this scene.

It’s very interesting how regardless of what you think of Sauron’s motivations here, his emotions are completely genuine. Galadriel is someone who has believed in him, who has pushed him and revitalized him, and that feeling, that high he could chase forever. We see how lonely Sauron as a character is in S2, how he has felt betrayed at the hand of Adar, and how normal people (like Diarmid) don’t do anything for him. It takes someone like Galadriel with her level of power and wisdom, and that hint of darkness, to finally feel like he is not alone. That he has somehow been made better.

At the same time, you have to wonder why this is the moment that he chose to open up to Galadriel like this. In the scene right before, he seemed almost calculating as he called her name and stopped her from killing Adar. I, for one, am averse to having too much of a charitable opinion of this guy. To me, part of the beauty of this character in TROP is that he says and does many things that come from an emotionally honest place, but they end up serving his goals in little ways.

As I see it, both things are true: he could genuinely feel a connection to her and felt like communicating it (you can almost feel the words spilling out of him), and he also saw how this moment was absolutely ripe for Galadriel to know they were firm friends and therefore get bound to him. Their fight was seemingly over and he knew she was going to have to leave soon. He had to give her a reason to still have him around, and here he tries to do that. Galadriel is someone who has spent centuries looking for him so that she could destroy him, and this is when he sees that opening where he could get through to her and somehow make her feel that they did not have to be enemies. Sauron’s good at choosing the moments for planting seeds which will bear fruit later, and we will indeed see him referring to this interaction multiple times in the future.

Sidenote: Charlie Vickers has very soulful, expressive eyes.

Moving on to what I personally find even more interesting: Galadriel’s feelings. Morfydd once mentioned in an interview that when Galadriel meets Halbrand, she is desperate to feel anything other than grief. She has been drowning in it for centuries, and when Sauron pulls her out of the ocean in the middle of the tempest, their resurfacing is symbolic of a rebirth. As brash and headstrong and disrespectful as she finds Halbrand, she enjoys his audacity and his wit. She admires that he feels alive and seems to grasp at opportunities. He wakes her up, as much as she does it for him.

But between the two of them, Galadriel is the one still dealing with overwhelming loss. She is mourning so many of her kinsmen, particularly Finrod, who was clearly her guiding light, and also Celeborn. Different shipper camps will have their interpretations of Galadriel and Celeborn’s relationship, but I don’t think it’s up for debate that she had been quietly grieving him. It wasn’t enough to divert her from hunting down Sauron, but the grief itself is clear in 1x07 when she mentions him. Galadriel’s story has been a tapestry of different kinds of loss - the ones that are unexpected and come as a heavy blow like Finrod’s, and the ones where the realization slowly seeps in like poison and eats away at you.

It’s downright painful for her to admit here that she felt something poignant with regard to Halbrand, perhaps simply because she is so afraid of loss again. It must have been ages since she last let someone new in, and this person has rescued her and stood by her (aside from all the playing hard to get) when she was utterly alone. This is the moment where it truly hits her how much he has begun to mean to her, and having gone through what she has, you have to assume she is downright terrified of it, particularly because as per her knowledge, this is a mortal man, with no enhanced lifespan even, his time on middle-earth a mere blink against the ages she has endured and will continue to.

Their relationship has been coded as romantic from the very beginning (I would say right from the moment Sauron first tries to separate from the rest of the castaways in 1x02 and clearly plans to join her). But I don’t believe Galadriel in this scene would ever admit to herself if she felt anything romantic. It would be too much for her, and I don’t believe she is even in the headspace to think about these things . I have to say Morfydd and Charlie are right about one thing: romance alone doesn’t cover whatever they were trying to sell here. For both characters, this is a moment of a tremendous wall breaking down emotionally, and both of them realizing they have met their kindreds. This is the moment that understandably keeps haunting both of them, and I suppose will continue to for multiple reasons.

Sidenote 2: Galadriel’s little shaky breaths and subtly pained expressions are so masterfully done here by Morfydd. You almost feel like you are watching someone’s wounds being slowly, excruciatingly cut open again.

[leotanaka]

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER (2022 - ) Charlie Vickers as Halbrand / Sauron & Sam Hazeldine as Adar Season 2, Episode 1: Elven Kings Under the Sky

I was in your place once. In the eldest of the Elder Days. Thirteen of us were chosen to be blessed of Morgoth's hand, with the promise of power. A new birth. I was led up to a dark and nameless peak. Chained and left. And after what seemed endless thirst and hunger… I saw it. His servant's face. Sauron's face. And it was beautiful. He offered me wine, red as a blood moon. He offered me wine, and on that dark and nameless peak, I drank it. I drank it all.

[apoloadonisandnarcissus]

For the sake of not repeating myself, read these posts first: here and here .

We, as a fandom, don’t talk about this smile, nearly enough. This is Sauron’s reaction after he stabs Galadriel with Morgoth’s crown. And this is a smile of victory. He just got what he wanted: Galadriel. She's his, now.

As I’ve theorized before, the “fight” or the "temptation" (there was no temptation, folks) wasn’t the point of their scene in 2x08: Sauron went up there to collect everything that belongs to him, Morgoth's memorabilia (crown + sword), rings of power and Galadriel, herself. His mindset was "you are going to bind yourself to me, one way or the another." That's the reason why he was carrying Morgoth's crown around with him: "All this... was your design from the beginning."

This is how possessive, obsessive and jealous Sauron is, and this fits perfectly well with the “corrupted love” he has for Galadriel, now (as I’ve already discussed). Repentant Mairon/Halbrand is gone, and so is the somewhat purest form of love he used to feel for Galadriel.

Sauron and Galadriel are spiritually bound together, like he wanted back in Season 1 finale (only blood can bind):

hello? why do you think he wanted the dagger for?

I’ve said this many times, but the fandom can’t think of Sauron and Galadriel as something physical. Sauron is an immortal spirit from the Unseen world who can chose his physical form in the Seen world (hence his shapeshifting abilities – but it’s not just him, it’s pretty much every other Maia or Vala in Tolkien lore, even though Sauron takes it a bit further than the rest of the group).

And no matter what physical form he takes, he's always the same immortal spirit; his "physicality" is of no consequence to who he is. His true form is what Mirdania saw in the Unseen world, in 2x04: tall, skin made of flames, and reeks of death (because he's a fallen Maia, corrupted by Morgoth). Galadriel is also an immortal spirit, but she belongs to the Seen world, and can’t change her physical form because she’s bound to it. Sauron is not.

And this is why the showrunners and even Charlie Vickers call it a "cosmic connection" and not a "romantic one" in the human meaning of the word. Because it's so much bigger than that.

Halbrand/Mairon: I never believed I could be... Until today. Fighting at your side, I... I felt... If I could just hold on to that feeling, keep it with me always, bind it to my very being, then I... Galadriel: I felt it, too.

What this Maia was saying in 1x06 is that: he wants to bind Galadriel to his own immortal spirit (his very being), for her to be with him, always. And that's what he did in 2x08, using Morgoth's crown.

[wickedrum]

Sauron: 'when I think about you I touch myself'

[loo-nuh-tik]

The Rings of Power's Charlie Vickers and Charles Edwards on life after season one (x)

[martanis]

Charlie Vickers after watching The Rings of Power Season 2 Final Trailer on Amazon Live.

[maria-taiwin]

It's good to listen Charlie Vickers saying: "But ruling with her (Galadriel) is a step he never would have taken. He could never share this level of power with someone. Maybe she’d have been a figurehead, a mascot for the public, but I don’t believe that, had she said yes, they’d have been king and queen. It would have been him as king and her as his assistant." and that he intended to kill Galadriel when he hurt her with the crown (edit: he intended to kill her after the "the door is shut, go to therapy" scene), because while I terribly know the last trend of creators is to follow the tropes and giving the audience or shippers what they want, it's quite good to still maintain some consistency and the characters being IC.

[rings-of-power-realm]

CHARLIE WHAT

Galadriel and Sauron share the deepest connection to another being either of them has ever experienced, a fact that haunts them both in the new episodes. What they share “is greater than romance,” Vickers explains. “Their connection runs far deeper than anything surface level.”

Sauron, meanwhile, won’t make the mistake of connecting with someone ever again, not after Galadriel’s rejection of his de facto “marriage proposal,” as Vickers describes it

X

[hailturinturambar]

I'm actually obsessed with Charlie Vickers as Sauron, in a way I haven't been obsessed with an adapted character in a long time. And I love Charlie's portrayal of Sauron in his various forms, Halbrand, Annatar.

But Jack Lowden of Sauron was something I didn't know I needed and now I can't help but need it more and more. Jack's appearance in the prologue of season two only deepened my obsession with Sauron in the days of Angband.

And I keep thinking about how many stories Prime Video could give us. I like the representation of the characters in the series so much, that I could watch exclusive movies and series of each character and never get tired.

After watching the first episode of the second season, I spent every day that followed thinking about scenes that could be presented from Sauron's past in Angband. Prime Video, I am at your gates begging for new scenes of my red-haired Sauron!