{"id":784119,"date":"2026-07-25T17:55:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T17:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/784119\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T17:55:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T17:55:12","slug":"sdcc-2026-rings-of-power-showrunners-tease-season-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/784119\/","title":{"rendered":"SDCC 2026: ‘Rings of Power’ Showrunners Tease Season 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

When The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power<\/a> took the stage at San Diego Comic-Con to showcase season three, showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay and several cast members shared a first teaser<\/a> and talked about the new additions<\/a> to the ensemble, including Jamie Campbell Bower as Galadriel\u2019s long-lost husband, Celeborn.<\/p>\n

The team also teased more about what\u2019s in store when the J.R.R. Tolkien adaptation returns in November, including details on what\u2019s happened since we last saw Middle-earth in season two.<\/p>\n

Five years have passed, Payne explained. \u201cSauron has been spreading his armies all across Middle-earth, and this is really the season we\u2019ve been building to. There\u2019s only a few pockets of resistance that are able to keep him at bay. You\u2019ve got the Elven realms of Lindon and Rivendell that are protected by the power of the Three Rings, then you\u2019ve got the Dwarven realm of Khazad-d\u00fbm that has so far been neutral in the war.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut Sauron has a plan to turn the tide. He made nine rings for men last season, and now he\u2019s giving them out,\u201d continued Payne. \u201cHe\u2019s getting allies from north, south, west, and, importantly, the east. He\u2019s trying to recruit a massive, massive army from the lands of Rh\u00fbn to come in and tip the scales in the war. But his real plan, the big plan that brings everything together, [the] one for which all roads lead to Sauron this season, is he\u2019s gonna forge the One Ring to rule them all.\u201d<\/p>\n

McKay added that some of the new locations for Rings of Power season three will be especially exciting for Tolkien fans, including \u201cBarad-d\u00fbr, so we\u2019re in the Dark Tower in Mordor\u201d and \u201cseeing what Rivendell might\u2019ve looked like thousands of years before Bilbo and Frodo saw it. We even went back to Tolkien\u2019s own watercolor drawings of it and even shot in the actual valley in Switzerland that I think [he] was inspired by. So our amazing production designer, Kristian Milsted, has come up with something really cool. We can\u2019t wait for you guys to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the returning characters, Daniel Weyman was especially excited to explore his character\u2019s arc now that we all know his true identity as Gandalf\u2014a secret the actor had been sitting on for years before it became clear to the audience.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know how much this character means to so many people,\u201d Weyman said. \u201cWhat J.D. and Patrick have done here, [I think] they\u2019ve given me such a gift of a character. We\u2019ve seen in this time gap between season two and three, he\u2019s been sitting around with Tom Bombadil. He\u2019s been trying to learn his stuff, and he can\u2019t make sense of these riddles that Tom keeps coming up with. But he is learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

To Weyman, Gandalf has really \u201carrived in season three. He\u2019s in his power and has agency. It is the Gandalf I think we all hopefully know and love. And that means that as he tries to influence what\u2019s going on in Middle-earth as the darkness is rising, he\u2019s learning that it\u2019s not all about sort of wielding the staff and creating massive magic power. It\u2019s also about that soft power touching people\u2019s hearts.\u201d<\/p>\n

The SDCC panel also revealed that Simon Pegg will be voicing the Balrog. Though the audience got a glimpse of Pegg in a behind-the-scenes video, the creature actually speaking has yet to be revealed. However, as Payne explained, the choice to let the Balrog talk goes back to the source material.<\/p>\n

\u201cCreatures in Tolkien talk,\u201d he said. \u201cFull stop. And the Balrog is not just a monster, it\u2019s not a mindless beastie. This is an intelligent, strategic, dangerous adversary, and we think of him as a character in this show. Every season, we want to show a different side of him, a different facet of him that you\u2019ve never seen before. And we are crazy, stupid, or wild enough to imagine that this season, he should have a scene with Sauron. I don\u2019t want to give away the game, but Balrogs know how to live in fire. If Sauron is going to go into a volcano to forge a ring, that might be a kind of dark magic that he would need to understand. And he essentially goes to the Balrog to try to learn this power.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season three begins November 11 on Prime Video.<\/p>\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power took the stage at San Diego Comic-Con to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":784120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[88,7048,28613,24242,261064,92],"class_list":["post-784119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-prime-video","tag-san-diego-comic-con","tag-the-lord-of-the-rings","tag-the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/784120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}