Forging the One Ring was "very intense," Charlie Vickers says of The Rings of Power

The One Ring isn’t just a plot point this year — it ’s a workout. Charlie Vickers says filming Sauron’s big forging sequence meant standing in punishing heat with wind machines roaring, swinging a hammer again and again until he blew through about five hammers and even clipped his own hand inside those metal gauntlets.

“It was very intense,” Vickers told ScreenRant, calling the finished experience rewarding.

Inside Mount Doom

Vickers told Empire the set piece took roughly two weeks to shoot and is almost entirely physical, with pages of script that barely include any dialogue. Co-showrunner Patrick McKay has called the forging the show’s most technically demanding undertaking to date, anchored by a massive, lava-lit Mount Doom build that turned Sauron’s workshop into a full-on inferno.

All that sweat is in service of a season built around the moment Tolkien fans have waited for: the birth of the One Ring, crafted to dominate every other Ring of Power and lock in Sauron’s rise.

A darker Middle-earth

Season 3 jumps ahead five years after the fall of Eregion, deep into the War of the Elves and Sauron. His forces are spreading across the map while Galadriel and Elrond scramble to hold a line that keeps moving the wrong way.

Who’s back (and new)

• Morfydd Clark — Galadriel
• Robert Aramayo — Elrond
• Charlie Vickers — Sauron
• Jamie Campbell Bower — Celeborn (Galadriel’s long-absent husband)
• Simon Pegg — voice of the Balrog

Release plan

The Rings of Power returns on Prime Video with a staggered rollout across three weeks:

• November 11, 2026 — first four episodes
• November 18, 2026 — two more episodes
• November 25, 2026 — final two episodes