For The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the endpoint is more or less set. The Sauron will rise, engulfing Middle-earth in a toxic darkness and century-spanning conflict. But as Charlotte Brändström — co-executive producer of The Rings of the Power — points out, the Dark Lord’s ascendancy is still some time away. The details of his plot remain a mystery, and it’s up to Amazon’s prequel series to flesh them out.

“We know what Sauron’s ultimate goal is, but we have no idea how he’s going to get there,” Brändström tells Inverse.

The Rings of the Power takes place in the Second Age of Middle-earth, a period only loosely defined by J.R.R. Tolkien in his appendices. This offers a foundation for The Rings of Power to build upon, and now that Sauron is even closer to getting what he wants, the series can fill in some major canon blindspots.

It all culminates in The Rings of Power’s latest episode, which sees Sauron launching the riskiest part of his master plan: forging nine rings for the race of Men. His task gets slightly more difficult with Adar (Sam Hazeldine) and his army of orcs bearing down on the Elven stronghold of Eregion. But even as battle breaks out in earnest, Sauron remains two steps ahead, culminating in an action-packed, devastating episode.

As Season 2 creeps closer to an explosive finale, Inverse caught up with the cast and crew to unpack the Siege of Eregion, Sauron’s descent, and the battles still to come.

What happens when you get the two most charismatic people alive together in a movie? You build an ensemble of equally cool guys around them, and turn it into a slick, star-powered heist franchise. But with Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven crew dissolved, could George Clooney and Brad Pitt recapture the magic all on their twosome? Not really.

Wolfs, the new movie from Spider-Man: No Way Home director Jon Watts, is a breezy, effortlessly funny action caper powered by the crackling charisma of Clooney and Pitt — until it’s not. Watts, in his first film outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2015’s Cop Car, relies too heavily on the natural charisma of his leads, who settle into a familiar rhythm that starts to get tired when the movie runs out of plot. But there’s something to say about the power of Clooney and Pitt’s chemistry that you don’t much mind spending a couple hours with them as they bicker, even as the film takes too much time spinning its wheels.