‘Rings Of Power’ Star On His Rule As The High King And Season 2 Finale

For The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power star Benjamin Walker, starring in the blockbuster Prime Video series is a dream come full circle that keeps paying dividends.

Not only is Walker back in the pivotal role of the Elven High King Gil-galad for Season 2 of The Rings of Power, but he’s hoping the streamer marches forth with the series for many years after the sprawling J.R.R. Tolkien tale heads into the season finale on Thursday.

When Season 1 of The Rings of Power was released September 1, 2022, the show not only had to face the inevitable comparisons to filmmaker Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movie trilogies—it was saddled with the massive challenge of building an audience of its own.

And build an audience it did. On Wednesday, Amazon MGM Studios head Jennifer Salke announced at the Prime Video UK upfront presentation in London that over 150 million viewers worldwide have watched the first season of The Rings of Power. The viewing numbers for Season 2 are looking very promising, considering that the series is currently in the all-time top five of most-viewed seasons on Prime Video.

Since the massive reception of The Rings of Power Season 1 was on everybody’s minds heading into Season 2, Walker said it was important for the cast to return to Tolkien’s source material to remind themselves of the importance of the material that the series is rooted in.

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Essentially, the blueprint for the success of Season 2 was laid out in front of the cast and creatives like an open book.

“We have the structure of the material that we're afforded, but part of the job is that we get paid to read Tolkien, which is just, I mean, what a coup for a career,” Walker told me in a recent Zoom conversation. “But even if it's to understand the context of where the characters would have existed or just the general tone of Tolkien’s fantastical imagination, it only enriches your performance.”

Walker added that since much of Tolkien’s work is about “the inevitable resurrection of evil,” he’s glad that Gil-galad and the likes of Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and Elrond (Robert Aramayo) are challenged with the manifestation of the evil-incarnate, Sauron (Charlie Vickers), in Season 2.

“What's exciting about the second season is that evil has reformed and it begs the question, ‘What do we do about it?’” Walker said. “So, we glean what we can from the source material, embrace the scripts that we have and double down on our efforts to preserve Middle Earth. It's a dream job in that sense.”

Walker’s Love Of Tolkien’s Work Extends Back To His Childhood

Not surprisingly, Benjamin Walker, 42, said he’s been a Hobbit and Lord of the Rings fan for decades, so his turn as the High King Gil-galad in The Lord of the Rings of Power marks an exciting continuation of the J.R.R. Tolkien tales that he’s watched, read and imagined in his mind since he was a kid.

“My father had a movie rental store and we used to rent the cartoon of The Hobbit, and my brother gave me his first copy of The Hobbit, which was kind of like my first big boy book,” Walker enthused. “So, I have this familial connection with it and of course, I love the films. Plus, the table of Tolkien has room for multiple interpretations. We have the luxury of being in the Second Age [with the series] and I have the luxury of playing a canon character. So, I hit the jackpot.”

Between the time Walker was a child who ventured into the dreamscapes of Tolkien’s work and his time as a screen actor—he’s starred in such films as Kinsey, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and In the Heart of the Sea, as well as the Marvel series Jessica Jones—he honed his acting skills on stage.

Making his debut on Broadway in 2007, Walker has starred in such major theater productions as Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson in the title role, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in the lead role of Brick and American Psycho as the villainous Patrick Bateman.

And while acting on stage is decidedly different than being on a real location while working on a film or TV show, Walker said some of his acting sensibilities remain the same no matter where the setting is.

“The difference between them is if you're an athlete and one race is a marathon and the next is a hundred-yard dash, you're using the same muscles—but you are using them differently,” Walker explained. “Still, the training of them is similar and the mechanics of them are the same. [You use] the same tools that you use but forget that there's 2, 000 people sitting in the theater watching.

“It's not dissimilar when you have a crew of 2,000 and you're staring at a tennis ball on a stick,” Walker added. “But that's also part of the fun if not most of the fun, it's still imagination at play—collaborative imagination.”

The Times Are Changing For The High King

Benjamin Walker said one of the most exciting aspects of playing the High King Gil-galad in Season 2 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is how he’s been given the opportunity to further develop the character—especially in the penultimate episode and season finale.

“We've known the king is largely a kind of peacetime conciliatory, but if you know him from the source material, you know where he's going in terms of his prowess as a warrior,” Walker explained. “You know what he has lived through in terms of battle and certainly the gloves are about to come off.”

As such, Walker teased, Gil-galad gets to explore the notion of what a leader does when diplomacy fails.

“When peacetime is broken down, we also know that Gil-galad has this mythical spear because there are a few weapons in Tolkien's lore that are characters,” Walker said. “I'm fortunate to have one named Aeglos. I get her out from under the bed and I'm pretty sure she stays out for the remainder of the time.”

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 finale premieres Thursday on Prime Video. All eight episodes of Season 1 and Season 2 of the series are available exclusively on the streaming service.

Note: Some quotes in this interview have been condensed and edited for clarity.