The Lord of the Rings stories are often seen as hopeful, old-school morality tales about good triumphing over evil. This is probably why it came as a surprise to many when author JRR Tolkien once said that his stories about Middle-earth are essentially about death. As the third season of The Rings of Power premieres on Prime Video today, the series' co-showrunner, JD Payne, reflects on Tolkien’s perspective. “I think Tolkien’s observation is spot-on. Death does not have to be ultimate evil. As storytellers, we often get caught up in such binaries that the worst fate that can come to someone is death. That is not the case with Tolkien. In his stories, the characters are presented in the middle, and then they go through numerous choices before deciding to choose the path of goodness or evil. The tragedy in Tolkien’s work is that some characters repeatedly choose to go down the path of darkness. It is all about the choices we make and what we are willing to sacrifice in order to choose the light,” says Payne.

Daniel Weyman, who plays Gandalf in the series, speaks about this tendency of Tolkien’s characters to be constantly tested. “In the first two seasons, we see Gandalf vacillating between good and evil. He definitely feels something good in himself, but he also is seduced by darkness and his own power. And I think that's a real key: none of us are immune from the darkness, whether that's in Middle-earth or in real life, and we have to make choices. That's difficult, and I think Gandalf embodies that,” explains the actor. Payne interjects to remind us how Gandalf was introduced in the series as a stranger with no memory of his identity. Gandalf’s evolution from childlike innocence to the powerful wizard we all know and love is marked by several seductions of power, as Weyman observes. The actor adds that Gandalf's choice to be compassionate is nurtured in part by his relationship with the hobbits. He says, “When we are introduced to Gandalf in season 1, he can't speak the language, and he hasn't ever witnessed the hobbits before. He is intoxicated by what they bring, and I think he learns from them the building blocks of what we come to know as Gandalf's soul.”

While Weyman ponders how his character evolved through his relationships with others, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, who plays Queen Miriel, explains the process of acting while trying to understand her character’s choices. In the series, Miriel loses the trust of her subjects in Numenor, and has to bear witness to the fall of her island nation. On shouldering Miriel’s guilt and the weight of her responsibilities, the actor shares, “It’s interesting because there's the intellectual aspect of it, about what you're reading on the page and how the story has to get from point A to point B. And then, there's the emotional aspect. There's what you think a character could or should do, and then there's how people actually behave. These are two different things. We always think we'd do something in this circumstance, and then there's what people actually do. I think this story is full of that. You're presented with these choices, and then there is what you hope to do, what you think you might do, and what you actually do. We are trying to bring as much truth and understanding of human behavior, and that feels like our job as actors, to interpret it in that way.”

As the actors and the showrunner succinctly put it, Tolkien’s stories are about choices. The antagonist of the story, Sauron, is also making choices, except that he has no internal conflict and consistently chooses evil. Payne says that in the new season, we find Sauron “in the middle of doing what he's always wanted to do, which is to make the One Ring to try to control everyone, to try to bring everyone under what he envisages to be perfect order.” While Sauron is finally focused on his ultimate goal, Gandalf will also be “unleashed” in season 3, as Weyman puts it. The actor then corrects himself, “It's not ‘unleashed’ like letting an aggressive dog off a leash. It's ‘unleashed’ as in removing some of the strong armour and replacing it with the soft power armour.” As crucial as it is to choose good over evil, it is also important for those who choose light to inspire others, which is the ultimate goal of Gandalf. Weyman explains, “Gandalf is following his version of the light, and he is going to hopefully warm other people's hearts and lead to a place where we can all follow the light together to overcome the darkness of Sauron.”