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Jamie Campbell Bower has not been coy about Stranger Things being an emotionally taxing gig. As Vecna (and all of his many iterations) in the final two seasons of the Netflix series, Bower would put himself through intense and isolating experiences in preparation of playing the show's big bad. At MegaCon in early 2025, months ahead of the Stranger Things series finale, Bower said that he told his therapist that he wouldn't "be doing another bad guy for a minute" because it "f---s me up."
Bower's first post-Stranger Things role is, appropriately, miles away from his characters' persistent darkness. He's now starring in the third season of Prime Video's Rings of Power, which picks up five years after Season 2 well into the battle with Sauron, as Galadriel's long-lost husband, the elf Celeborn. Morfydd Clark's Galadriel mentions in Season 1 that Celeborn had not returned from his battle with Morgoth. In Season 3, the semi-estranged couple is reunited. On the red carpet for the season premiere in New York, Bower said that playing Celeborn was refreshing.
"I've been describing it as the perfect kind of antidote, I suppose," he told IGN. "It is so different to what I was doing before, and I'm so grateful to be here and so grateful to join this amazing cast and crew and this world. It's been beautiful. It really has been. It's been gorgeous."
Bower also elaborated on playing a character who has more ambiguity. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote several versions of Celeborn's origins, but never settled on one definitively. Thanks to the murkiness of of Tolkien's legendarium, the many depictions of Celeborn in adapted media and Tolkien's own writings left room for the actor to interpret the elf in his own way.
"Celeborn's really interesting because he was approached and then kind of re-approached in the works. And so there has been sort of... not conflicting, but different information that's available on him," he said. "My job was realistically to take what was there, look at what I related to, look at what was obvious, and then build on top of that. And I think for me as an actor, my intention was really to come into it with sensitivity and a vulnerability for him, which has been beautiful. It's been great."
We haven't seen too much of Celeborn in Season 3 yet, only appearing in a flashback meeting Galadriel 1,000 years ago in Episode 1 and again in Episode 4 (no spoilers), but it sure seems freeing to be able to act without prosthetics from day one.
We're liking Season 3 so far, giving the first batch of episodes an 8 in our review and calling it "a new beginning for the Prime Video series [...], streamlining the overall narrative into a more cohesive war story" that "refocuses The Rings of Power on its simple yet compelling good vs. evil premise, jettisoning some past characters and subplots while ensuring the ones remaining all align with the same goal: you exist to either defeat Sauron or to serve him."
Rings of Power Season 3 Episodes 1–4 is available to stream on Prime Video now. Episodes 5 and 6 premiere November 18, and Episodes 7 and 8 come out November 25.
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