Rings of Power had a ‘Ring Team’ making the show’s actual rings look good

The funny thing about making a show about how some magic rings are made is that someone on the production team has to make the actual dang rings. And for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Powerthe production had an entire “Ring Team,” according to producer and VFX veteran Ron Ames.

“It took us months,” Ames told Polygon. All that research, testing and filming was in preparation Rings of power‘s first season finale, in which Celebrimbor, Elrond and Galadriel – with some help from a disguised Sauron – forge the three legendary elven rings. It is a monumental moment in Tolkien lore that required a monumental effort.

The forging of the rings themselves was depicted fantastically on screen, with fire, molten metal and a strange mithril processing machine. “We really looked into that,” Ames said (although we suspect there wasn’t a lot of information about it mithril processing, exactly). “And we’ve been shooting for a few days, shooting fluids and things that go down there, but obviously not [actual] molten flame.”

Ames added with a laugh that he and his team had been able to shoot the flames of actual molten metal being poured into grooves for one of the show’s trailers, as if to say he would pour hot metal in front of a camera lens in an instant.

But practical work with special effects had to be improved for the show’s eponymous props. “No ring that we could have practically built would have been special enough,” said Ames. “We had rings that were shaped and felt like that, but we also enlarged them a lot to make them really unique and special,” he said, adding “glitters and speckles of gold and stuff.”

Viewers can expect a lot more from the rings in season 2 of Power ringscurrently filming in the UK and is expected to premiere in 2024 – and certainly more of the work of Ames and his Ring Team as Sauron’s unfolding machinations are met by Middle-earth’s newly minted elven ring bearers.