With the The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power finale now streaming on Prime Video, the true identity of its villain, the Dark Lord Sauron has finally been revealed and it's either exactly who you were expecting or you're in for quite the twist...
*SPOILER ALERT*
So, who is it? Who is Sauron? Who is the Dark Lord?
Drumroll please...
It's... Halbrand (Charlie Vickers)!
Yes, the mysterious blacksmith and presumed heir to the Southlands was actually no King at all, but was instead the Dark Lord hiding in plain sight - and he is now very much back in the driver's seat as he looks to set his master plan in motion, which is, of course, to craft the One Ring.
However, the hour began with a major fake-out, as the white-cloaked witches initially claimed that The Stranger (Daniel Weyman) was the real Sauron, but, it's later revealed that he isn't really the Dark Lord, but, as was heavily rumored, is an Istari - a powerful wizard like Gandalf and Saruman.
The Stranger's finale storyline sees him captured by the three witches, who believe him to be their Dark Lord and attempt to restore his lost memories, but Nori (Markella Kavanagh) and her squadron of harfoots manage to free him. Then, when the witches realize The Stranger isn't Sauron, they go on the offensive, but he's able to defeat them with relative ease as he begins to gain control over his growing elemental powers. Sadoc (Lenny Henry) is sadly lost in the battle and they all ultimately return to the other harfoots to mourn him, before Nori and The Stranger ultimately bid farewell and embark on their own journey to learn more about his origins and purpose in the fight against the darkest of evils. While we never get a name for The Stranger, there's starting to be plenty of reason to believe he may be Gandalf himself, although we'll have to wait till next season to find out.
As for the season's most highly anticipated reveal, it took quite some while, but when Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) finally begins to suspect that there's something more to Halbrand than meets the eye, especially after he shows an immense amount of interest in Celebrimbor’s (Charles Edwards) smithing project, offering suggestions on the possibility of combining the precious mithral with other metals to stabilize it into some kind of small, wearable shape... a ring, perhaps?
While Halbrand gets chummy with Celebrimbor, Galadriel does some digging into his lineage and uncovers that his stories have been full of lies and he's not the real King of the Southlands, as previously presumed, so she heads out to confront him and receives the shock of a lifetime. He confirms his identity as the Dark Lord Sauron and promptly enters her mind, torturing her with visions of her dead brother as well as their first encounter out at sea.
Sauron finally offers her a proposal, join him to rule and heal Middle-earth, and we even get a quick tease of the Dark Lord in his full battle armor, albeit in only a stunning reflection in the water. Our heroine unsurprisingly refuses and when she awakens, he's disappeared, having slipped right through her elven fingers. Sauron returns in the hour's closing seconds, walking into Mordor triumphant and setting the stage for what should be an unbelievably epic season two.