Sauron is an incredibly interesting character and I'm glad Rings of Power is exploring him in depth.

With the return of Rings of Power today with three episodes on Prime, I want to talk about the thing that I liked the most from the first season: the portrayal of Sauron. Peter Jackson's Sauron is much the same as what you get when you read the books. He's this menacing ancient foe that is more of a force of nature than anything else. But any of us that read deeper and took on the other writings know that Sauron was a person. This is even hinted at with his alliance that got struck between Isengard and Mordor. Saruman talked to someone on the other end of the palantir, and whomever he talked to wasn't scary enough to make Saruman hang up the phone. Additionally, that person made sense, and thus was Saruman deceived.

Now, in Rings of Power...we got a pretty smokin' hot Sauron (not gonna lie on this). At least that was my interpretation by the end of season one. I'm sure he shall become a lot more menacing as time progresses (and probably a lot less pretty), but for now color me intrigued. In the Silmarillion, I'm pretty sure that Sauron takes on the forms of vampires and werewolves. But, he's still a person, admittedly a powerful one. He was Galadriel's friend, and it's so telling that he deceived her (because that is what he does). Sauron deceives, he lies, and he tells people what they want to hear so that he can manipulate him. If you're being that kind of a sycophant, you can't really be all that menacing because you don't want your audience to be scared of you. So, I'm on board with this very human take on Sauron. The menacing guy in armor that we see at the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring is probably way down the road.

And that's just the thing, right? By the time The Lord of the Rings story unfolds, Sauron is just a faceless, reclusive, oppressive entity who is holed up in his fort doing who knows what. He doesn't even ride into battles anymore or interact much with his subjects. He only showed up once during the peak battle of the last alliance, and that is after ignoring the whole skirmish for seven years or so. In the third age, no one really saw him save for Gollum when Sauron tortured him. Everyone else who had interactions with him only spoke to him through the palantir. He never came out or showed his face. His looks were left to the imagination.

The great thing about Amazon's first season (I think) is it got people thinking about Sauron as he could have been. He saved Galadriel from the ocean. He's a talented smith and craftsman capable of great beauty. He's charismatic and persuasive. It makes what he becomes all the more evil knowing that he didn't have to be that way. It was a choice he made. From the books:

"[Sauron] repents in fear when the First Enemy is utterly defeated, but in the end does not do as was commanded, return to the judgment of the gods. He lingers in Middle-Earth. Very slowly, beginning with fair motives: the reorganizing and rehabilitation of the ruin of Middle-Earth, 'neglected by the gods', he becomes a reincarnation of Evil, and a thing lusting for Complete Power--and so consumed ever more fiercely with hate (especially of gods and Elves)."

All in all, Sauron is an incredibly interesting character, and you just don't get any of that in either The Lord of the Rings or in the film adaptations. But in Rings of Power, we are getting it. And thus far, I'm really liking this exploration of who Sauron really was, and I'm definitely looking forward to more this week.