In defiance of death, The Rings Of Power brings hell to Middle-earth
In Udûn, LOTR: The Rings Of Power clears the board with one surprise after another
TV Reviews Middle-earth
The first five episodes of Lord Of The Rings promised an optimistic delve into myth-making. Co-showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay led viewers through a beautifully produced pastiche of Tolkien’s legendarium that emphasized swashbuckling derring-do, grand proclamations, and mysterious prophecies. Some characters we knew, others were new. Halbrand and Arondir borrowed qualities of Aragorn; Nori and Poppy took from Bilbo and Sam Gamgee. The show has its mysteries, but as viewers debated which character was Sauron, an unseen fire burned. Episode six, “Udûn,” unleashes the first and sends viewers to hell. “Udûn,” or “hell” in Sindarin Elvish, is an hour of surprises, hope, and ultimately bad vibes.
The rug pulls begin almost immediately. “New life. In defiance of death,” says Adar as he plants some seeds before turning to his Orc army and championing their liberation. As promised last week, Adar’s Orc army besieges Ostirith only to discover the place empty. One remains: Arondir, picked out of hiding by Adar due to his distinct Elven odor. With a few well-shot arrows, Arondir brings the tower down on top of the Orc army, buying the rest of the Southlanders time to set their next trap.
They only need a few hours because the Númenóreans are heading for Middle-earth. As Isildur anxiously awaits his first sight of land, he briefly chats with Galadriel. It’s more table setting until Elendil enters when Galadriel asks Elendil about Isildur’s mother. “It is strange. For most of my life, I looked east to see the sunrise over the sea and west to see it set over the land. We’re sailing into the dawn, and it feels like the coming of night,” Elendil tells Galadriel. “She drowned.” All the poetry in the world cannot replace his loss. “She drowned” is a shot to the gut, alluding to the reality check to come.
When the rest of Adar’s army besieges the village, the Southlanders are ready, trapping the Orcs behind a ring of fire, with a fleet of archers on rooftops to finish the job. These battle scenes are a total blast of Orc bodies exploding into goopy messes with ease as their squishy innards echo on the soundtrack. It’s one of the places where Peter Jackson’s influence feels strongest, but episode director Charlotte Brändström uses the whole warg.
For his part, Arondir takes on the biggest Orc they’ve got, downing a mouthful of black Orc blood for his troubles. After his fight, he surveys the dead in the city center, but only a few bleed black—Arondir notices that the sliced necks drip the red blood of Man. These were the villagers that Adar took in last week, the friends and neighbors of the Southlanders, leaving the victors in abject horror. If only that were the end of it. As the final Orc dies, enemy arrows fling into the village, forcing the crowd into a nearby inn. The Númenóreans are coming but not fast enough, and the spindly strings of Bear McCreary’s score signal an Orc invasion straight out of Night Of The Living Dead.
Things take a turn for our heroes, particularly Bronwyn, who, mere hours after getting a nice little kiss from Arondir, takes an Orc arrow in the shoulder. Bronwyn’s been instrumental in rallying the troops, so it would make sense to pull a Ned Stark and give Theo and Arondir something to avenge. Thankfully, we were spared Bronwyn’s fridging. But, unfortunately, there would be plenty more to avenge. Somehow, Adar returned, and he’d like to speak to the manager of the Southlands about the hilt. After showing off how little his Orcs care about human life in a brutal display, Theo offers it to Adar in exchange for his mother’s life. Just then, eucatastrophe.
Coined by Tolkien in his seminal “On Fairy-Stories” essay, eucatastrophe is crucial to the author’s views on fantasy and fairy stories. Eucatastrophe is the happily ever after, the moment when everything turns on a dime and the heroes win the day. Prince Charming’s waking of sleeping beauty, Christ emerging from the cave, or Aragorn arriving with the army of the dead, these surprise, happy endings elevate joy into enchantment. Likewise, the Númenórean earth-quaking arrival in the Southland as Adar gets the hilt is a eucatastrophe.
And the show starts barreling toward the ending we expected. The Númenóreans show up and save the Southlanders. Galadriel does some cool Elf trick shots from her horse, and we learn that she’ll be assembling a company to hunt Sauron. The road goes ever on and on, and all that.
Yet something doesn’t feel right about all this. It’s all been a little too easy. In fact, this whole season’s been going down a little easy. Galadriel had some early setbacks but was successful, thus far, in bringing the South and the West together against Sauron. Arondir and Bronwyn saved the village and even got to kiss. Númenor won so that Queen Regent Míriel could return as a war hero. The Lord Of The Rings television show that for so long felt too epic and grand to produce managed to wrap up its eight-episode season in six installments, on time and under its massive budget. If only the credits rolled 10 minutes early.
With Adar captured, Galadriel figures she can finally nail Sauron. However, “Udûn” has one more ace up its sleeve. Adar isn’t just a fallen Elf but one of the original Orcs known as Uruk, who were early Elves enslaved and tortured by Morgoth in the First Age. Over the generations, they devolved into Orcs, who, as Tolkien writes in The Silmarillion, “loathed the Master whom they served in fear, the maker only of their misery.” This sounds like Adar, who boils with rage so intense he sounds like Pinhead. His intentions aren’t to return the Orcs to Sauron and have his people enslaved once again, but rather to give them the dignity of other living beings.
Orcs have long been a major subject of criticism against Tolkien. Given that most adaptations and artwork based on the author’s work featured white Elves, white Hobbits, white Men, and white Dwarves, many saw the Orcs as negative representations of people of color, immigration, and race mixing, among other critiques. Their lack of dimensionality has supported this subtext because there are no Orcs to offer the contrary. Adar finally complicates the Orcs, giving them something resembling autonomy, which is an exciting prospect. Thus far, the show has deferred chiefly to Tolkien. Adar’s motives, however, feel like a critique of the author, allowing us to reconsider the Orc murder mayhem from earlier. The show goes a step further, though. Perhaps, Adar isn’t the only Elf corrupted by darkness. Galadriel’s speech about eradicating the Orcs makes Adar more sympathetic and spotlights the fascism of the Elves, a season-long thematic concern elevated to the center of the conflict.
As Arondir and Theo make peace with the end of the battle, Theo shares his feelings of loss over giving up the hilt. Like other dark jewelry, this hilt holds power over those who possess it. Yet, when Theo has it, something feels off. He unwraps the blanket to discover it’s gone. As the Numenór and the Southlands clank glasses and turn the battlefield into a Guinness commercial, Waldreg was sticking Sauron’s sword in the stone, breaking the dams and sending water throughout the rivers and underground tunnels.
Now, for the final turn. When the rivers started flowing, it’s fair to assume that the Great Wave imagined by Míriel was coming to pass. But the ancient waters flow beneath the earth, causing an ominous volcano to erupt and enveloping the Southlands in a cloud of ash and fire to envelope the countryside. Elves and Adar have the same pre-war ritual: Burying seeds. “New life in defiance of death.” But nothing grows in hell. There will be no new life. Udûn is here, and we have no idea what to do next.
Stray observations:
- Fun fact: In addition to “hell,” Udûn is also the ancient name of Mordor. If there were any questions about what this Southland is destined to become
- Adar is such a compelling villain, and Joseph Mawle sold these subtle machinations by layering him with contradictions. He’s cold but vulnerable, despondent but idealistic. It’s a fascinating performance that keeps delivering.
- Halbrand took one hell of a pause when Adar asked who he was.
- We’ve made a lot of predictions, all of which have been wrong. This show seems committed to zigging when we expect a zag, and it’s a total relief. Who wants a TV show where they can guess everything that’s going to happen?
- Galadriel’s horse-girl powers turned up in this episode. This Elf is all over the saddle. I will spend the next week impersonating Arondir’s pronunciation of her name.
- There is no better addition to any scene than a last surviving Orc delivering a crucial bit of information before they die.
26 Comments
Did anyone else see that shit? I was already on board, but holy fuck…If you invented a time machine and told 14-year-old me that some day a mail order retail-based Bond villain would spend a billion dollars adapting LotR appendices, I… I didn’t even think that kind of writing could be bought, but turns out a billion dollars buys a lot.
I mean, he 0bviously spent the 250 mil for the rights to also do LOTR for streaming. Which is why there are no big name stars in the roles that carry over, so they can be contracted.
Casting’s the easy part for this kind of material. Writing’s the obscenely difficult part.
Binged episodes 4 and 5 tonight and damn these last two episodes have impressed me.After a slow start, these ones really picked up the pace and narrative momentum.
Same. I’m hooked now.
i am really glad some people are enjoying this show, it quite awful in my opinion.
I know it’s silly to suggest the AVClub are paid to shill the show or that the commenters here are also paid shills, but their enthusiasm and the way they talk about the show is so over the top given its actually quality and pacing that it’s hard not to go there.
Just a minor issue. How did they fit all those men and horses on those three little Numenorian ships? Aside from that the show is improving with each episode.
They said they were sending 500 men in 5 ships originally, and two were destroyed. So 300 in the three remaining ships is consistent. Those ships do have a foremast in addition to the main mast (glossing over the weird pairs mast/sail things that doesn’t actually work) so they’re larger than sloops but smaller than a galleon. 100 men plus horses each is not implausible.
Great episode overall, but slightly undone by the way we got to the end.No one is going to make sure the recovered artifact is, in fact, the artifact? And the failure to do that obvious due diligence results in…Mordor? And, um, water hitting lava causes a cataclysmic eruption? No, it causes steam.Fun to watch, but it was the one part—and unfortunately a crucial one—that had me frustrated with the writing.
Actually water seeping into a volcano does indeed contribute to the most violent eruptions. Obviously not in the context this shows, though, I agree. Water connecting with lava underground, in a restricted environment, creates a flash of steam. And a flash of steam in a restricted environment goes BOOM.
IANAV, but I imagine that while small to moderate amounts of water and fire will create steam, rapidly cooling a huge active volcanic system might cause a slightly bigger reaction. Like, have you ever poured water in a very hot glass?
well now I need to see that. It shatters right?
Presumably Waldreg snuck out as the Numenoreans came in and was well gone by the time Halbrand brought down Adar. It’s difficult to imagine anybody who had stayed with Bronwyn/Arondir not noticing him otherwise.
Oh, I’m fine with him sneaking out and Adar being cunning. I just find it impossible that no one inspected the retrieved artifact to make sure they actually had it. It was inexplicable inaction by the protagonists because the plot needed it.
It’s a sword that’s powered by blood which doubles as the key to some magic mechanism that blows dams, but also the aqueducts to channel the water to Orodruin hadn’t been dug yet. I think it’s easiest to accept that the writers simply decided that Mt. Doom needed to go boom in this episode, and that Adar should still be in custody.
The people who recovered it had no idea what it looked like. It couldn’t have been checked immediately, so all it really means is rather than writing more exposition between the recovery and volcano, they would have had it happen sooner.
And, um, water hitting lava causes a cataclysmic eruption? No, it causes steam.Actually, this is 100% accurate. When the great mass of water blocks the hole from which volcanic gases could emerge from at the same time as the water expands to steam, there’s nowhere for the massive pressure to go, resulting in a huge, volcanic eruption. But yes, I’m slightly disappointed that the sword doesn’t appear to be any more than it looks. I still hope that it’ll have other effects in the future.
“No one is going to make sure the recovered artifact is, in fact, the artifact?”Galadriel didn’t know what the artifact was, and Halbrand didn’t even know she was after an artifact. Arondir gets it from Galadriel and goes over to Theo. When Theo looks at it is the first moment anyone has had to look at it.
It’s a little weird: Halbrand and Galadriel chase after Adar and recover the “artifact” pretty quickly, and it doesn’t seem like it would have taken them long to get back. But by the time Halbrand shows up, it’s evidently been several hours, because everyone’s kickin’ back and having a big ol’ feast. In any event, even if G&H didn’t know what the artifact looked like, presumably they still would have unwrapped it and I would be surprised if Galadriel’s elf-sense didn’t tell her “this is just an axe, wtf” and immediately show it to Arondir when she gets back.
I admit, I have zero concept of the Tolkie world. But did we know it would be THAT quick for the Númenóreans (God I hope I spelled that right) to make it to central Middle Earth? Wha in… 2 hours?
You spelt it right. But it took them several days at the sea and two days after reaching land, as their dialogue explained. They sailed up Andúin river, and then rode the rest of the way. Plus, the Southlands aren’t yet remotely in the central Middle-earth, they’re still quite west in absolute terms.
I think it’s best to view the events as happening non-synchronously until characters actually meet (like in this episode) or are viewing an event happening at roughly the same time (the comet). The Harfoot’s travels seen last episode looked like a very long journey, so it feels like the different storylines are happening at different speeds except when they meet.
And that kids is how I met your Mordor.
Top line: This finally feels like a show worth watching. Things that bugged me the first few weeks have been justified and payed off, with plenty to look forward to. Great episode. I’m on board now.The story beats were kinda bullshit. If you count the sheer number of “BUT ACTUALLY”s in this episode, you’ll run out of fingers and toes. This always set up a really cool dilemma, or fight, or ambush, or rescue, or explosion, or plot twist, or whatever…. but it was a long, long series of Uno Reverse cards to get all that, and I’m not crazy about that kind of writing. But holy shit, the complexity of the actual battle shots blew my mind. Camera and stunt and effects work were all top notch.
WE WON’T CRITICIZE THE NEXT WOKE PROJECT, WE WILL ELIMINATE THE PRODUCERS AND SUPPORTERS.
Adar’s motives, however, feel like a critique of the author, allowing us to reconsider the Orc murder mayhem from earlier.Yes and no. It seems clear that both Tolkien and his son never landed on an absolute origin story for the orcses. Even if we take what The Silmarillion gives us (that orcs were corrupted elves, which may not entirely be the case) and draw it out to its furthest conclusions, what Adar says is true.So I wouldn’t call it a critique so much as exposition. Adar is saying on screen what Tolkien nerds have argued over for a long time.