Early this morning, the crew of a commercial space mission opened the hatch of their Crew Dragon capsule as they orbited 435 miles above Earth.

Half the Polaris Dawn crew, SpaceX astronaut Sarah Gillis and billionaire CEO Jared Isaacman, successfully pulled themselves out through the hatch and became the first private crew to perform a spacewalk. The other half, SpaceX astronauts Scott Poteet and Anna Mennon, were strapped into their seats inside the Crew Dragon, but they were still be exposed to most of the risks that come with a spacewalk. This may be the riskiest mission a commercial space crew has ever undertaken — but that’s not because they’re not space agency astronauts.

The sea masters of Middle-earth might believe they could be the rulers of everything, but once King Pharazôn of Númenor starts down a dark path of betrayal and domination, his destiny as a puppet of Sauron is almost totally assured. As deep-cut Tolkien Lord of the Rings lore goes, the fall of Númenor occupies a sizable space in the imaginations of hardcore fans. But in Season 1 of The Rings of Power, some fans felt the depiction of this island kingdom was an instance of the show treading water and not really doing justice to the full potential of this massive and tragic story.

Now, the Númenor story has kicked into high gear, with Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle) and his son, Kemen (Leon Wadham), steadily becoming the most hated villains of Season 2. And in Episode 5, the actions of both Pharazôn and Kemen finally reveal the importance of this piece of the Tolkien puzzle.

Just before the airing of Episode 5 of Season 2, Inverse caught up with Gravelle and Wadham to get their takes on the future of Númenor’s downfall, and how their characters might exist outside of established Middle-earth canon.