‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’: On Set of Númenor’s Civil War

Sauron (Charlie Vickers) has conquered nearly all of Middle-earth since the fall of Eregion in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 3. Khazad-dûm, Lindon, and Rivendell are the only strongholds left. The Elves are racing against time to stop the creation of the One Ring that could control the three Elven rings, while a waning faction of Dwarves are fighting to stop Khazad-dûm from siding with Sauron.

In Númenor, civil war rages, distracting the island nation from outside threats, but “all roads lead to Sauron” in Season 3, warns executive producer J.D. Payne. “For the first two seasons, we were lighting a bunch of fuses. Now the bombs start to go off.”

In July 2025, TV Insider was on set for Númenor’s pivotal opening scenes of Season 3, premiering on November 11 with four (of eight) episodes, with two episodes weekly through November 25. We were shown firsthand just how much stronger and bolder the Faithful faction has grown in the five-year time jump between the seasons, but also how the seeds of Pharazôn and Sauron’s rivalry foretold in J.R.R. Tolkien‘s legendarium are growing.

Here, we have your exclusive look behind the scenes of the corner of The Rings of Power Season 3 that’s more political drama than action-fantasy. “It’s a battle for the soul of Númenor,” Payne told us on set. Lloyd Owen, who plays legendary warrior Elendil, likens Númenor’s storyline to the fall of the Roman Empire and William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

“Tolkien’s great theme and great obsession was the fall of man,” Owen told TV Insider. “All of that plays out particularly in Númenor.”

Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle) has enriched the island nation since supplanting his cousin, Queen Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), in the Season 2 finale, but when Pharazôn came to power, people who were loyal to Míriel left into exile with her and formed a Faithful community. Elendil and his younger son, Anarion (Andrew Richardson), train Faithful troops on the west coast, while his eldest son, Isildur (Maxim Baldry), and daughter, Eärien (Ema Horvath), are in the city.

Míriel is “gathering forces for the revolution to come,” Addai-Robinson told us. She “has a dual track in terms of unifying Númenor to have enough strength and forces to combat a formidable foe such as Sauron,” Addai-Robinson said, “but unfortunately, the person standing in her way is Pharazôn.”

Eärien previously aligned herself with Pharazôn. “She [was] dead to him” because of that, Owen told us, but he admits the “great tragedy” of the family is “Elendil’s attitude towards Eärien.” Because Elendil’s wife died young in an accident, he assumed Eärien “replaced the mother figure for her brothers and indeed him,” Owen explained, and expected her to “pick up all the pieces of what that female role might have been in the house.”

“He’s neglected her emotionally, and I think that’s why she has her mind turned by Pharazôn and moves across politically to what you’d argue is the wrong side of history,” Owen noted.

Eärien gets her biggest scenes yet this year, according to executive producer Patrick McKay. He said they designed this original character as “someone of conflicted loyalties who would be put into an extremely difficult and tense position if she’s caught between the people in power in Pharazôn’s camp and the queen who’s been ousted.”

“Very early on, we told [Horvath] we had a hell of a story for her [in Season 3],” McKay added, “and she hit it right out of the park. She’s going to surprise a lot of people.” Addai-Robinson calls Eärien’s arc one of her favorites of the season.

Through the construction of hospitals, universities, and canals, Pharazôn has “been a real kingdom-builder,” Payne noted, but the desire to put Míriel back on the throne has never faded under his regime post-coup. Pharazôn is trying to keep the Faithful rebels “to the fringes of his agenda,” Payne said, because he’s just as focused on Sauron, but for more egotistical reasons.

Between takes of the chariot scene pictured above, Gravelle told us that Pharazôn is completely obsessed with the Dark Lord now that he has no more “glass ceilings” to shatter at home. A better man would be racked with guilt that he released Sauron, known to him then as Halbrand, from a Númenórean jail, setting him free to sow destruction all over the world, but Pharazôn is more humiliated than anything else.

“It’s very much the human condition that you’re always grasping for something, that you’re always looking to climb. And now that he’s there, what else is there to do?” Gravelle explained. “There’s a bit of a cleanup job, yes, with Númenor, but his main obsession is with what’s going on in Middle-earth. The fact that he’s been outplayed, outsmarted then by a blacksmith who he thought he had the measure of, the ignominy of that, it really eats at him. He’s had five years of that worm in the apple.”

Pharazôn wants to build an armada to sail to Middle-earth and fight Sauron, but the thorn in his side is Elendil, who “just won’t flush,” Gravelle said.

A major act of public rebellion in Númenor’s first episode will make the Kingsmen vs. Faithful civil war impossible to ignore, forcing Pharazôn’s eye off of Sauron and onto his own backyard.

This gives the Elves time for a last-ditch attempt at an alliance with Númenor that could rival Sauron’s forces, which he is aiming to consist of a “100,000-person army that is going to utterly dominate Lindon and Rivendell,” Payne said.

However, he has to crack the code of Elven smithing in order to make the One Ring to rule them all. If only he hadn’t murdered Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards), the last of the high-elven smiths, whose secrets about making Elven rings died with him.

“Hindsight, even with one eye, is 20/20,” Payne joked of their big-bad villain.

Míriel saw the end of Númenor in the Palantír in Season 1, and while that terrifying vision is not at the forefront of Míriel’s decision-making this year, Addai-Robinson feels it still lingers on her mind.

“It just becomes a question of what is fated and what can you try to change,” she said.

Isildur is trying to change Númenor from inside the belly of the beast.

He’s basically “a brand new character” in Season 3, Baldry told us between takes of an action scene. Isildur has become more mercenary-like as he can’t easily receive orders from Míriel and Elendil in the capital.

He’s “a bit more rogue in the city, taking things into [his] own hands,” Baldry said. “I don’t really listen to anyone, which frustrates people, but I definitely believe in the same cause. I’m a bit off the rails.”

Isildur’s acting alone at times, but he still has marching orders as he lives undercover. He and his allies are “trying to dig into the Kingsmen and understand how they all work,” Baldry explained. “We are there as a function to try and topple the regime from the inside.” Pharazôn’s Kingsmen have no idea that Isildur is there or that Elendil is the mysterious “Man With the White Flame” they keep hearing about.

Isildur has grown, but his youth is still a folly, and as the stakes get higher and the rebellion requires more sacrifice, Isildur’s actions become more extreme. Míriel will try to guide Isildur this season, giving Addai-Robinson and Baldry the chance to work together “quite closely,” the actress said.

“[Isildur is] aware of how other people may seek justice through political means,” Baldry shared, but “he wants to use force and violence to achieve justice. That’s his big shift. He’s seen the life that people lived in Middle-earth, the darkness that engulfs it [under Sauron], and he now sees Númenor, and he is enamored by it. He’s so proud to be a Númenórean, and he will stop at no cost to protect it.”

Richardson, in his first interview about the series, told TV Insider that Anarion is also a live wire. “He has always felt emotions, acted on them, then [thought] about his actions, in that order. Feel, act, think,” he said. “Having to rise to the events and to the politics of Season 3, work with his father — all of this is forcing him to challenge that process.” All of Elendil’s children are asking themselves this season who they are independently of their father and how they want to show up in this war.

Elendil and Anarion have repaired the rift that made Anarion leave the capital and head to the West, and Owen noted that there must have been some sort of apology from Elendil to Anarion during the last five years to create their “deep mutual understanding.” Now, as Elendil stages a revolution with his “hotheaded” sons, “the wiser head of Elendil is trying to channel that energy in the right direction and try to get them to use their political smarts as well as everything else,” Owen said.

And then, there’s Míriel and Elendil, whose romantic feelings for each other were a slow burn in the first two seasons.

They’re separated on different sides of the island out of necessity as the civil war and Sauron’s influence loom, but “they have this shared belief and shared passion,” said Addai-Robinson. “In all the events that they’ve experienced side by side, it’s absolutely brought them closer together.”

“There’s a lot of very deep feelings there,” she admitted. “I’m excited for the audience to see how that plays out over the course of this season because you will get some, I don’t want to say resolution, but you will see some interesting things in regards to that dynamic.”

“To a certain extent, it cannot be, so that’s the agony of that relationship,” said Owen. “And she has a stronger sense of duty.”

The ousted monarch has always put her devotion in her people first and foremost. Her willingness to self-sacrifice is not changing. While it’s a trait Elendil shares, it’s harder for him to commit to it.

“Because he slightly opened his heart a bit more to her [in] Season 2, I think that’s only continued for him,” Owen explained. “He’s incredibly loyal. His first responsibility, as he knows, is to the Faithful and her as leader, and so he’s continued trying to suppress his emotional intimate feelings for her in order to make the right choice, but that’s always really difficult for him. And this season, that kicks off in quite a major way. It’s a tough year for him.”

Míriel will be forced to make tough decisions for the greater good of her people. Despite it all, Addai-Robinson doesn’t believe that Míriel and Pharazôn hate each other.

“Oftentimes I think there’s how you feel about a person versus being self-absorbed in your own situation,” Addai-Robinson explained. “And Pharazôn first and foremost, at least in my view of things, is [driven by] his lust for power and his lust to be firmly positioned as he believes he should be. Whether it was her or somebody else, it’s really, ‘I’m not going to let anybody get in the way of what I want and where I want to be.’ I don’t know if it’s about hating her for that. I think it’s really about his own determination. He’s going to have what he wants, and nobody’s going to stop him and get in his way.”

Something tells us that won’t end well.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Season 3 Premiere (Four Episodes), Wednesday, November 11, Prime Video