Annatar or Sauron? Can Sauron Shape-Shift? – Let’s Get Nerdy!

Amazon Studios The Rings of Power is here. The Second season is now streaming on Amazon.. We want all Spoilerites to have the best viewing experience possible and have the widest knowledge base about the Second Age of Middle-Earth. This is a weekly Let’s Get Nerdy article series highlighting a different piece of Tolkien I think you need to know about!

This post contains potential spoilers for The Rings of Power’s second season. If you may want to avoid spoilers come back later and see if I was right!

Last Thursday Amazon Studios released the first three episode (of only eight?), of the second season of The Rings of Power on Amazon Prime. There are so many fun topics we are going to get to cover in the coming weeks. Today we’re going to start with a question about one of the series leads:

Can Sauron shape-shift?

In Elven Kings Under the Sky, the premier episode of The Rings of Power’s second season, we see Sauron in multiple physical forms. Slow Horses’ own,

, debuted Sauron’s original Maia form, we then saw it transformed into a suspiciously Sony Pictures’ Venom-esque form while healing in The Shadow Realm and chowing down on an unlucky rat, before Charlie Vickers inhabits the Halbrand form who has been such a figure of contention amongst Lord of the Rings and Rings of Power fans … before transforming before Celebrimbor in Eregion into the full glory of his Annatar form.

Here’s a friendly reminder I wrote extensively about Annatar and who he is ahead of the first season of The Rings of Power. 

When Annatar reintroduces himself to both Charles Edwards’ Celebrimbor and the viewing audience as “The Lord of Gifts” the writers are folding in references to J.R.R. Tolkiens’ book canon lore.

The Silmarillion states:

For Sauron took himself the name Annatar, the Lord of Gifts, and they had at first much profit from his friendship.

The ability to shape-shift and still contain the same soul is bestowed upon Sauron through his previously mentioned status as one of the Maiar (singular: Maia). They are a race of being less powerful than the Valar, but as primordial. Nearly – NEARLY – as powerful. Maiar don’t possess a corporeal body (neither do the Valar), in the way we think of them. If you want to understand why Gandalf the Grey can slip into the skin of Gandalf the White it is because the Istari Wizards are also Maiar. They’re physical forms are “raiments”. If that’s not a word you’re familiar with, think of their bodies are being closer to the way you and I interact with our clothing. 

Changeable.

Maiar raiments are called fanar which allow them to shift various aspects of their physical forms. So, yes, per book canon, it’s totally conceivable that multiple actors can play characters who are all, at the end of the day, “Sauron”. It’s equally canon-compliant that Charlie Vickers can get a complete Legolas-inspired makeover, tell everyone to call him “Annatar: The Lord of the Gifts” and he’s still the same villain we met during the first season of The Rings of Power.

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