Full spoilers follow for Episodes 1-4 of Season 3 of The Rings of Power, which are streaming now on Prime Video.

Just four episodes into Season 3 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne have already delivered two consequential deaths from their pool of original Middle-earth characters. In “The Gift of Men,” Ema Horvath’s Eärien, Elendil's daughter, takes her own life rather than allow King Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle) to punish her. And “Gundabad” ends with the tragic, lifeless eyes of Elven warrior Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) staring out across the wasteland of Morodor.

The series has never shied away from killing characters, but McKay told IGN this season’s deaths are about underscoring how Sauron and his evil are ascendant. “There are real stakes,” he explained. “There is a real cost to what Sauron is doing. As we were in the writers’ room, myself and J.D., very early on, we felt that the audience needed to feel that and feel it viscerally. We had to take things from the audience. It had to hurt.”

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Eärien Ends Her Story on Her Own Terms

In Episode 2, it’s revealed that Eärien has convincingly played the part of enthusiastic King Pharazôn stan and Númenórean purist, while she’s actually been a mole for exiled queen regent and Faithful Havens leader Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson). For five years, she fed Númenor’s movements and plans to her brother Isildur (Maxim Baldry).

“She helped her father escape arrest, and that's supposed to be a real turning point for that character,” McKay said of Eärien’s change in worldview this season. “She's now essentially a spy within the enemy camp trying to protect people like her, trying to protect her family, and she feels incredibly guilty that she was in part responsible for bringing these people to power.”

McKay cited the shocking death of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) in Psycho as their inspiration for how to frame Eärien’s exit. “The idea [was] that we would open up Númenor with this is all about Eärien and she’s a double agent and she's feeling it deeply, and she's feeling the walls closing in around her,” he explained. “And then, we'll take her away from you just as you're getting used to her as a character in the situation. We felt that that would disrupt the narrative and shock the audience a little bit.”

Though her death will be an audience shock, actress Ema Horvath told IGN that she knew from the very beginning that Eärien would never leave the island. “I knew that in some sense the entire parable of Númenor was gonna be kind of contained within her character. But I didn't know exactly how or when I was gonna go, and so that was new information to me.”

She said McKay and Payne pitched her the storyline in a Zoom call before she flew to the UK to film Season 3. “They're very good at animating the world for you,” Horvath remembered. “So they got to the end of what happened and I was so into the story that I got off the Zoom and my husband was like, ‘Did you hear what they said? Did you not process it, because you're not behaving like the way someone would react to that information?’ And so it did take me a couple hours to just process that that was the end of my time on the show. But I was very excited about the story side of it.”

Charlotte and I were really on the same page with that walk to the window. Obviously, you're thinking in terms of surprise. But even on a psychological level...

Having given birth to her first child between Seasons 2 and 3, Horvath said that “deepened my work, I think, drastically. There are parts of myself that are way more accessible that have been hidden for a while, and then new ones that have cropped up. This season I had the most fun shooting because of that.”

She described Eärien by this season as a woman very good at acting the part but battling with unbearable “shame” for her actions. “I think if you watch it once – this is my hope – you see someone terrible at the beginning,” said the actress. “And I think if you watch it again, what's behind the eyes is a little different. You're watching a severely depressed person with massive amounts of shame. If someone watches it that is coming from Season 2 and thinks she's fully committed to the cause, maybe on a second watch they can see the sadness.”

All it takes is just one messy reconnaissance mission in Belzagar’s (Will Keen) private quarters to tip off her true mission, and she’s then confronted by the trifecta of hate: Belzagar, Pharazôn and his weaselly son, Kemen (Leon Wadham).

“I love the shape of that scene, because she's still trying,” Horath said. “She’s trying until the very end to appeal to [Kemen] and she appeals to [Belzagar] in a different way. And then I was most excited about getting to act with Trystan. We’ve never delivered lines to each other and we finally got to do it,” she smiled. “But then there's a moment where she's not even in the room anymore.”

Eärien just turns from the men who are thrilled that they’ve caged her and she walks out the window and drops to her death. Director Charlotte Brändström explained to IGN, “I remember when I shot it on set, a cameraman was pushing to follow her to the window. I said, ‘No, no, that would feel wrong… I don't want to feel the intention.’ We just stayed wide and she slowly walked away and just jumped. And then, you cut to their reactions, and… it just felt right to me.”

Horvath agreed, “Charlotte and I were really on the same page with that walk to the window. Obviously, you're thinking in terms of surprise. But even on a psychological level, after the research I had done, that tracked with what that can look like.

“When someone no longer has power over you — and I don't think these people have really had power over her for a while because this choice has been on the table for a long time for her — she didn't know if she was ever gonna have to use it,” the actress said. “The mask is off at this moment and [they] really have no power over me. There are forces and ideas and things that are way more important and I think that's so much more powerful than getting into an argument with someone. When you're no longer arguing with someone, there’s tremendous power in that.”

The Death of Arondir, the Wood Elf Who Became a Warrior

The second massive loss comes at the end of “Gundabad” with Arondir’s unexpected reunion with his human lover’s son, Theo (Tyroe Muhafidin), a recently conscripted Nazgnagôl for Sauron.

“The idea of the journey that Theo goes on and the journey that Arondir goes on, having their paths intersect in a way that has ultimately tragic consequences, that was one of the earliest ideas that we kind of hung the whole season around,” McKay said of this long-planned, fateful moment.

At least for Arondir actor Ismael Cruz Córdova, it takes four episodes to get to there, which means his character gets plenty to do this season before his end – including more death-defying battles and embarking on an emotionally eventful road trip with Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and the orc Marnûkh (Adam Young).

Córdova shared with IGN that Arondir’s “dark night of the soul” exploration in the last two seasons of Rings of Power have paralleled his own personal journey: “I definitely allow what happens in my life to go through my work. It's the way that I've been able to live and grieve and grow. I was going through quite a moment in my own life shooting Season 2, and going into Season 3 I was dealing with sickness from a parent. He's good now but at that moment it was tough.

“And I was told that the character wouldn't be coming back the same day that my dad got his diagnosis, so that put me right there. I'm sheepish about talking about these personal things because I don't want to be exploiting them for the story, but this is how it happened. And when we were gonna shoot the death sequence — it was like a six-day sequence — the day before that, one of the loves of my life passed away in a car crash as well, so those bookends were so sharp.”

The actor said he was grateful that, before his character was killed off, the showrunners allowed Arondir to build a real friendship with Galadriel where they could challenge one another, and come to understand the orcs through Marnûkh.

I said, ‘Well, if he's gonna go, let's make sure that we can show all the colors of him, things that we haven't seen.'

“One of the things that I told the showrunners when they told me Arondir’s fate, I said, ‘Well, if he's gonna go, let's make sure that we can show all the colors of him, things that we haven't seen, things that we want to punch up, and that people can see a little bit more of him in the softer side,’” Córdova said. “You see all that, and you see that softness with Marnûkh, and you see that friendliness with Galadriel. But on a drop of a hat, I will obliterate [any foes too].

“We saw this little outcast that was out there all muddied up, carrying out tasks for who knows who that he never met,” he continued. “And now I'm at that same table telling them what to do in terms of military strategy. Still wearing the same costume.”

As for that never-changing Arondir costume, the actor chuckled: “I would say, that was a creative choice of a certain kind. I'm not sure exactly what that is, but for me, how I see it is like, ‘I'm gonna go through this entire thing and I'm gonna do it my way, and I'm gonna be on your table dressing exactly how I came from and representing.’ And he does.”

Regarding the fateful, final collision of Sauron, Theo and Arondir, Córdova said he worried most for Tyroe Muhafidin. “He is just a piece of my heart. He's family,” he said. “I've seen him grow from 14 years old and now he's a grown man, taller than me.”

It was difficult for Muhafidin to be the one who pierces Arondir with his sword in the end.

“Tyro was struggling with having to be the one who would take him away. He was really struggling with that,” Córdova said.

“I think when we were shooting, he was having a harder time than me, so I had to caregive in that moment,” he continued. “I think it was the same with Arondir and Theo. I wanted Theo and Tyro to know that Arondir and Ismael knew that it wasn't his fault. I'm out here having trouble with it [now] but that’s truly what I was consistently thinking. [Theo] has had all of the things happen to him, and he still has fought and fought and fought. Even at that moment, I just wanted him to know that I love him. Period. I loved him and I believed in them. That's it.”

McKay said both actors were “pros” about their deaths and understood the importance of their character’s sacrifices. “Both Ema and Ismael were absolutely on board and absolutely saw what we were going for and saw why it was the correct, if painful, end of their journeys in this regard. I think both of those stories are really powerful, and I think both of their performances are incredible.”

With reporting by Jim Vejvoda