In The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2, elvish commander Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) has something heavy weighing on her mind: that she was deceived by Sauron (Charlie Vickers) as he assumed one of his deceptive forms, a seemingly noble man named Halbrand. But in a recent interview with Collider, Morfydd Clark noted that the second season of the show gave her character a shot at redemption.

At the beginning of The Rings of Power Season 2, the audience gets a look at Sauron’s backstory in events that take place following the death of the original J.R.R. Tolkien bad boy, Morgoth. Sauron seeks to take Morgoth’s place but is betrayed by Adar (Sam Hazeldine) and the orcs. However, his diminished power is short-lived as he takes form and rises again.

The backstory leads to Galadriel’s meeting with Halbrand (Sauron) on a raft at sea. The audience sees different angles of this moment in Rings of Power Season 1 and 2. In the Collider interview, Charlie Vickers spoke about how different views of the moment informed not only the viewer but also his portrayal of Sauron.

“It was quite fun recreating that in a tiny little pool in England, to recreate that shot in order to give me a moment of thought before hearing Galadriel in the water. That whole sequence was so useful to me, and it just colored his whole world. It gave it a little more context to the earlier parts of the first season.”

On the other side of the same coin, Clark also weighed in on Galadriel being redeemed, which came as Sauron gained power in Season 2. “I think it redeemed Galadriel a bit to see that he’d chosen [this]. She didn’t open up all his darkness, but she doesn’t know that, unfortunately,” she said. Clark also pointed to the fight between Galadriel and Sauron at the end of Season 2 as a point of redemption:

“In terms of Galadriel, as well, when she says, ‘The door is shut,’ she kind of knows that she might just die there, but she’s going to go as hard as she possibly can. But she’s redeemed herself. So, that was fun to find how low she could be brought by him, and to then be able to rise and still maintain her sense of goodness and integrity.”

No One Is Safe From Sauron’s Deception in ‘The Rings of Power’

Similar to the way that Jedi are susceptible to the dark side in the Star Wars universe, so too are characters in Tolkien’s world. The legendary fantasy writer had this internal fight between good and evil in mind for Galadriel even in the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, namely The Fellowship of the Ring. When the Fellowship finally makes it out of the Mines of Moria after their confrontation with the Balrog and Gandalf the Grey’s “death,” Frodo offers The One Ring to Galadriel, and she is tempted to take it.

In the soothsaying Galadriel’s Mirror, she sees an all-powerful image of herself with The Ring:

“In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!”

But at the end of the vision she declares, “I pass the test.” Even Gandalf is susceptible to this temptation, a central theme of LotR — no one is safe from the evil corruption of Sauron’s ring.