If there's one thing to rule a fandom, it's a healthy dose of speculation and theorizing. One such theory that has dominated the conversation of fans of the Prime Video series Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is simply: which of these beloved characters is actually Sauron in disguise, in his pre-giant flaming eye days? For the Marvel fans out there, it's much like the Mephisto speculation that has followed every single series since WandaVision. As it turns out, even the cast find themselves wondering the very same thing.
During an interview with Collider's own Maggie Lovitt at New York Comic Con, Sara Zwangobani, who plays Harfoot Marigold Brandyfoot, and Leon Wadham, who plays the young Numenorian man Kemen, weighed in with their own thoughts on the matter. While Zwangobani says that the two of them have seen the fan theories and the tweets, they don't actually know Sauron's identity either.
"We don't know who Sauron is. So we also have speculation amongst ourselves," she said, with Wadham adding, "Yeah, they redacted a bunch of stuff that would have been giveaways so that we would be part of the mystery too." Zwangobani clarified that this meant the cast received their scripts with "great big gaps" in them.
Though Wadham says the cast is as curious as anyone else, showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne previously said that the decision to hold off on showing Sauron was a deliberate one, intentionally making the audience a part of the mystery. As Payne put it:
"So having an audience suspect this person or that person could be Sauron is drawing them into that thing where the shadow is overcoming all of us and making us suspicious of each other."
That's not to say the audience hasn't seen Sauron in some form or another thus far, but with everyone from the cast to the audience speculating on this, it's likely to be a while before we get any concrete answers.
As for where things are going in the now in-production Season 2, both Wadham and Zwangobani remain tight-lipped, especially ahead of next week's finale. Zwangobani quipped that she couldn't possibly say if Marigold Brandyfoot would be returning, saying "Well, I don't know. Am I in season two? Haven't seen episode eight."
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power streams on Prime Video.