Sauron is shaping up to be a much better character in Amazon's The Rings of Power than he ever was in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Amazon's The Lord of the Rings series will premiere on September 2nd on Prime Video and has also now been given a name in keeping with other LOTR titles in the form of The Rings of Power. This title change confirms The Rings of Power's narrative plan, with the dark lord Sauron helping to forge 17 of the rings of power mid-way through the Second Age on Middle Earth.
This focus on the 20 rings of power spread across Middle Earth's great kingdom hones in more clearly on exactly what Amazon's The Lord of the Rings series will entail. The Rings of Power, therefore, is set to include all key stories from the Second Age, including the fall of Numenor, the forging of the rings, and the Last Alliance of Men and Elves seen in the opening of The Fellowship of the Ring. Naturally, The Rings of Power's Second Age setting will also grant audiences a prolonged look at the rise, fall, and rise again of the dark lord Sauron, as well as a clearer picture of his motivations and history en route to his defeat on the slopes of Mount Doom.
As a result, Sauron will be a far more engaging and compelling character in Amazon's The Rings of Power than the looming presence used in Peter Jackson's original The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Amazon series' Second Age setting has a prime opportunity to flesh out Sauron's character as he transitions from a beautiful, deceptive Maia to an ashen, horrifying entity reborn in fire. More poignantly, The Rings of Power series also has the chance to delve deeper into Sauron's early character flaws and progressions in a way unseen in LOTR canon to date, and make the dark lord a complete character whose journey only enriches The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings cinematic trilogies that follow.
In The Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson depicts Sauron's image like an eye that represents the dark lord looking into the minds of his enemies. While absolutely the correct choice at the time and befitting of Tolkien's spectral descriptions of Sauron in the Third Age, this aesthetic choice essentially relegated Sauron to embody evil with no form beyond a whispering eye atop Barad-dûr, giving him little physical agency over the LOTR narrative itself. However, Amazon's The Rings of Power will emphatically fix this character hole, with Sauron's machinations (many of which he personally enacts) being critical to the entire Second Age plot.
In this way, Amazon's series is now confirmed to be fleshing out Sauron's backstory and will show a more flawed, emotional, and tangible character than previously seen by The Lord of the Rings audiences. The Second Age covers Sauron's deceptions as a beautiful, human-like being, as well as his Maia form being destroyed at Numenor, forcing him to become a creature of fire and sulfur to forge The One Ring. This character progression and his physical and psychological descent into absolute darkness will make Sauron's story in The Rings of Power far more compelling than his prior incarnations and will also enrich Jackson's original trilogy as a result.