‘Rings of Power’ Star Benjamin Walker Unpacks Gil-Galad’s Season 2 Transition From Peacetime Leader to Wartime General
“Rings of Power” Season 2 is sending Gil-Galad to war.
The season picks up shortly after the creation of the three elven rings — Narya, Nenya and Vilya — and the reveal that Halbrand (Charlie Vickers) was Sauron all along. Now, Gil-Galad has some serious choices to make.
Benjamin Walker, who plays the elf high king of Noldor, said that just as he was getting used to playing the Gil-Galad as a peacetime leader, he had to switch gears and look at him in a whole new way as he prepares for war.
“What’s exciting about Season 2 is the beginning of the departure of who we know him to be in Season 1,” he said. “If you know the lore, and you know how far we have to go in the Second Age, it’s exciting that we’re taking such big steps so soon.”
He added, “[i]n the first season he’s kind of this peacetime conciliar, and in the second season the wheels have come off in terms of Middle-earth’s wellbeing so he has to start inching toward who we know he’ll become — which is this wartime general. So it was quite the opposite. As soon as I got comfortable with who I was playing, the circumstances change so drastically that you have to let him adapt.”
Below, Walker breaks down the darker Season 2, Gil-Galad’s wavering trust of both Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and Elrond (Robert Aramayo), and pulling double duty by also voicing the hill troll Damrod.
When it comes to playing these characters in the show that are more storied and have lore baked in, how do you balance fan expectation and reverence to the text with finding your own voice and way into the character?
With any research on any job, you have to do it and you have to do it extensively, and then on the day almost trick yourself into forgetting it. Luckily, we have JD and Patrick, who are superfans, at the helm of the show and you can trust the text that they’ve written. Even if the moments we’re thinking about, or that are from the books, aren’t specifically in the text we can play those relationships that we know them to be.
In spite of the size of this production, it really is a collaborative process. We do have time to discuss and tweak these scenes and marry the two — what we know about the lore, what we can glean from Tolkien’s imagination and what we have to also respect about the medium of television.
Season 2 is quite a bit darker than Season 1, and like you said he’s going from a peacetime leader to wartime general. How do you balance that darkness in a world like Middle-earth that has a lot of earnestness and sentimentality to it?
Of the characters that we see onscreen, he’s one of the most experienced – with the exception of Galadriel who’s technically older. If you look at what he’s lived through, the resurrection of evil is ever present. For me that’s one of the main things about Tolkien, the cyclical nature of darkness. That the moment you take the eye off the ball it starts sneaking back in.
There’s a sense of dread that he carries, but also a real sense of frustration in the sense that this was semi-preventable or at least postponable. His issue is not only with potentially having to abandon Middle-earth, but his relationships and how he’s trusted his most trustworthy hands.
I like to use the metaphor of a loving parent. The “you got yourself up in that tree now get yourself down. These are the consequences of your behavior.” It’s merciful but firm. He’s certainly in a darker place. It’s almost as if in the second season his kids are teenagers and that makes it exponentially more frustrating and complicated.
How is he looking at his relationship with Galadriel currently? Is there a nervous trust?
I think for the elves in particular, because time is such a fluid concept for them, that trust is really earned. The fund of her trust at this point has been depleted. He believes in her potential to be trusted again but in some ways he’s having to tighten the leash on his kingdom a bit because things have gotten out of hand.
He trusts Elrond and his opinion, but when push came to shove in the premiere Gil-Galad still chose to use the rings.
It’s complicated with Elrond because their relationship is much more of a mentor/mentee relationship. Elrond very quickly will become his own master, but at this point he’s still inexperienced and not qualified to make this decision.
He is still not only earning trust but earning respect. He’s half-elf, half-human and has a lot to prove, and a lot to work through in terms of figuring out the path of his destiny. Gil-Galad is aware of that.
Those issues when it comes to “Can we save Middle-earth?” are really a distant second. I think it’s not a stretch to think that when it’s life or death Gil-Galad doesn’t want to talk about feelings. We need to talk about what is possible and can this be the Hail Mary pass that saves Middle-earth.
Gil-Galad chooses Elrond to lead the task force looking for Sauron over Galadriel. Is that the king telling Elrond to earn that trust and respect or is it to get someone who is thinking differently than himself and Galadriel to be in charge of this group?
I think it’s all of the above. That’s one of the unique things about Gil-Galad, he understands the importance of relationship chess and he does it in a loving way. He tries to elevate each character’s strengths. He knows that they’re inseparable in spite of the bickering we see them take part in but we also know that they need each other. Galadriel, if she’s going to go on this journey, cannot do it alone. Elrond has become this wildcard that has stepped up and started to prove himself and stand for something.
It’s kind of the perfect checkmates. This way we get everything we want, everyone gets to use their strengths and get protected of their weaknesses. At least that’s how he’s thinking of it.
Gil-Galad is picking up a weapon and getting into the action in Season 2. How was that after politicking for most of Season 1?
It’s been good. We know so much of that is coming, that every time we start to inch toward it we want to make sure that it’s not just cool and fun but maintains the narrative. It became about what is the vocabulary of how he fights, how can we tell how experienced he is by how he fights, and that’s almost more fun.
Of course, the childhood fan in you can’t believe the luck of getting to ride a stallion into a battlefield of orcs. But also at that moment in time in the narrative they’re desperate. He’s rising to the occasion with the experience that he’s earned.
You also get to voice Damrod the Hill Troll this season. How did that come about?
It was a huge compliment that they asked me to do it. Also they knew that I would be interested in the story of Damrod — what is his past, what is his opinion about fighting, is he funny, what’s his perspective on death and destruction. I think we came up with something really interesting.
Why does he join forces? It’s because he wants to take a crack at Sauron.
Is it more nerve-wracking singing in Elvish while shooting the show or in front of a Comic-Con crowd?
It was uniquely nerve-wracking in Hall H, because I did know I was going to do that. I thought that the singing and some of the music in the season was going to be a spoiler alert, so I didn’t brush up on it. It had been over a year since I had sung it. I was lucky that it came back to me in time.
And if you’re going to speak or sing in Elvish, that’s the room not to do it in because everyone there knows it. If you make a mistake they’ve assembled all the people on the planet that will notice it.
“Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” Season 2 releases new episodes Thursdays on Prime Video.
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