Friday 14 October saw two huge events take place: the first season finale of The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power went live on Prime Video and Empire hosted a screening of the episode at Finsbury Park's Picturehouse Cinema.

Once the episode ended, the audience was treated to a Q&A with stars Morfydd Clark (Galadriel) and Charlie Vickers (Halbrand), showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay and then a live Spoiler Special podcast recording. Here are our favourite nuggets gleaned from the cast and creators…

1. Lenny Henry improvised a lot of his lines

As Sadoc Burrows, the veteran comedian and actor brought a lot of life and laughter to his role, and by all accounts, the set and beyond. You know, before they went and killed him (the character. Not Lenny).

"Lenny is amazing. And infuriating. I love him to a degree that wouldn't fit in this room," says Payne. "In episode three, where he's playing the master of ceremonies for the Harfoots at harvest ritual, he would just be improv-ing on set and tossing stuff out that was cracking us all up. And then in the ADR booth, similarly, you know, if every other actor would come in for ADR, or we would carefully figure out what we wanted them to say. For Lenny on the call sheet it would just be like, 'let Lenny do his thing.' And that was that was all that was prepared."

2. Mordor's creation required a lot of planning (not just by Orcs)

One of the huge reveals of the series is not in the finale, but at the end of episode six. Where, in a terrifying confluence, Mordor is revealed as lurking within the Southlands, and erupts into a powerful volcano, Mount Doom returning to lava-happy glory. That was a very tricky idea to figure out.

"That was a lot of work over many, many, many, many years, to link all those ideas together, because a lot of them came separately," says McKay. "The idea that there'll be a love story that would be you know, an elf and a human, and that she would be a mother, and that her boy would be drawn toward evil… That was a whole independent idea. And then the idea he found the thing that was an old evil artifact that grew into a sword when there was blood, right? That's a cool idea. And then we're like, 'oh, but what if that thing's connected?' Then the idea that there was a volcano that would explode was another thing, and then the orcs digging trenches was for another thing, and then eventually that the lake in the Watchtower connected to the trenches, it could be accessed and opened by the sword that would go to the volcano and make it explode. We were bringing together all these story elements all in one thing."

3. The cast suffered through (fake) snow and (real) dust

Morfydd Clark in particular went through the wringer in terms of environmental conditions. Early in the season, of course, there was the snow to deal with. And then the explosion of Mount Doom meant being covered in dust. Lots of dust.

"The dust… It was just a lot of it," the actor explains. "And I kept thinking they were done. But then there was more dust. But actually, the worse thing than that was the snow at the beginning. This is kind of gross. That snow is made out of potato starch, and it's dry. So we're walking through the snow and JA (Bayona), says, 'elves have their eyes open in the snow. You're an elf, not a human.' So we're, 'okay…' But it expands as it gets wet. And basically all the elves were just squeezing starch of our eyes for days. So that was worse than the dust."

4. Patrick McKay's family tried to talk him out of taking the job

The co-creators knew they'd have to make the show appeal to more than just Tolkien die-hards and fantasy experts, and they had an unexpected sounding board to help. You'd think that most parents, even given the mammoth ramifications of the job, would be thrilled to learn that their son was co-creating a giant show for one of the biggest streaming services, based on an incredibly popular source material. But McKay's parents? Not so much.

"My parents had an intervention with me," he laughs. "They sat me down, and they were like, 'look, you know, the scriptwriting thing seems to be kind of working for you guys. I really think, let's be honest, nobody wants to watch Lord Of The Rings. Nobody really liked those movies. Nobody needs to see any more of them. I really think you should reconsider this terrible choice you're making with your life.' And I was like, 'No, no people would like to see more Lord Of The Rings. So at every turn, I'm going, 'My mom just got off-board. My mom doesn't like that.'"

"Which is bizarre because they love Star Trek," says Payne. "And I think for them, it's, 'well, they have pointy ears but they're not Vulcans, I don't understand…'"

5. Season 2: Cart Confirmed!

Towards the end of the conversation, we couldn't help but ask the Rings team to provide some hint of what is to come in Season 2, now shooting in the UK. And Charlie Vickers – despite being worried about what he might give away, was happy to detail on element of the first shot he's worked on in the next batch of episodes.

"You know how we see we see Galadriel at the start of Season 1?" he says. "Part of the sequence that I've shot is the early story of Sauron in the next season, and that's the shot but I'm not gonna go into specifics."

"The shot is you get out of a cart," adds McKay. "This will be the headline: 'Cart Confirmed!'"

"We're putting the cart before the horse here," cracks Payne.

To hear the full conversation with Clark, Vickers, McKay and Payne, plus Empire's own Tolkien scholars* discussing the finale revelations and the season as a whole, subscribe to our Spoiler Special Podcast feed. Full details on that can be found here.

*Blithering idiots