The Rings Of Power’s Big Battle Nearly Featured An Even More Extreme Death Scene [Exclusive]

This post contains spoilers for season 2, episode 7 of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.”

When it comes to the greatest battle episodes in TV history, “The Rings of Power” season 2 has just entered the conversation in a major way. The latest episode of the series showcased the Siege of Eregion in truly epic fashion, rivaling, if not topping, any of the battles in “Game of Thrones.” In fact, if you ask Barrie and Sarah Gower, who worked as prosthetics designers and oversaw that department on both “Game of Thrones” and “Rings of Power” season 2, they say this episode was bigger than anything they’ve ever done:

“Nothing could have prepared us for the scale of ‘Rings of Power.’ Everything we’ve worked on sort of pales in [comparison],” Barrie told me. “On ‘Game of Thrones’ for each season, the battles got bigger and bigger and bigger,” Sarah explained. “And then come to this season of ‘Rings of Power,’ this is probably the biggest thing that we’ve ever done, and now it puts those other battles — [they do] not compare to what we had to do.”

My full interview with Barrie and Sarah will be published on an episode of the /Film Daily podcast next week ahead of the season 2 finale, and it will also contain an interview with Vic Armstrong, the legendary stunt man who serves as a second unit director on “Rings of Power.” During my recent chat with Armstrong, he revealed that one of the death scenes in the battle was almost much more graphic and extreme than it ended up being.

RIP, Mirdania. The elf, who served as Celebrimbor’s student and the de facto leader of his smiths, was flung off a rampart right before the battle kicked into its highest gear, and thanks to a dastardly bit of subtle magic by Sauron/Annatar, the dark lord forced Celebrimbor to be the one that pushed her. (So evil!) Mirdania’s arc came to an end when she landed on the battlefield and an orc chopped her to death, but the show cuts away before we see the actual impact of the creature’s ax.

But during the filming of the episode, things when a lot further. As Vic Armstrong explained to me:

“We did a really gory thing where, [Mirdania, during the battle], she gets thrown off the castle wall and the orcs kill her. And Charlotte [Brändström], my director friend who directed [the episode] — she’s a great buddy of mine, fantastic director, good counterpart — she said, ‘Give me some really gruesome bits!’ So I said, ‘OK.’ So I had [Mirdania] thrown off the roof, you see her go down and hit the ground, there’s a really good shot, and you see this orc chop her. And then he holds up her whole shoulder and arm and starts drinking the blood. But they deemed it a bit too gory, which, I can’t understand why, of course. [laughing] 

All of those sort of things get in there, and then they get taken out, but that’s the mindset you’ve got when you’re in there … If [people] were sitting at the next table in a cafe [hearing] about what I was suggesting — ‘Yeah, have her fall off the wall and then hack her, have the whole shoulder come off, complete with the dress on her sleeve, and the blood’s coming out’ — people would think you’re completely bonkers. [laughing] But that’s the mind of us people who do these sort of things.”

Ultimately, Brändström, the editors, and showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne made the correct call by avoiding such a grisly detail. As heavy metal as that moment would have been, “The Rings of Power” is simply not the type of show that revels in the violence of an orc drinking blood from an innocent elf’s severed limb. This is a series that operates in grand, sweeping tones about light overcoming the darkness, and while plenty of gnarly stuff happens during that battle (you simply must love that troll absolutely wrecking people left and right), I think it’s fair to say that an orc chugging elf blood may have been a step too far.

“The Rings of Power” is streaming on Prime Video, and has one more episode remaining in season 2.