The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Udûn

September 30, 2022 10:39 AM - Season 1, Episode 6

Galadriel talks with a stable boy as they sail to Middle Earth, Arondir makes a promise, Halbrand has a reunion, and Adar leads the Orcs into an attack in the Southlands.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (36 comments total)

I swear, the protagonist on the ground getting choked out or fighting off stabbing by enemy straddling them and then other protagonist stabbing enemy from behind is sooooooo overdone. I'm like writers... noooooo, borrrrrrrring.

Also, i have no real clue about what happened at the end there. It all seemed to happen pretty suddenly. I guess our heroes didn't either so we're even.
posted by kokaku at 10:49 AM on September 30, 2022 [6 favorites]

Seems like a very important mountain was created, aka the Adar was much smarter than anyone gave him credit for.

And yes, the last minute saves are incredibly cliched, writers, please stop that.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:53 AM on September 30, 2022 [4 favorites]

In the immortal words of Yzma, who once said:
WHY DO WE EVEN HAVE THAT LEVER?!!?
posted by bartleby at 11:07 AM on September 30, 2022 [21 favorites]

While watching it, I thought the episode was too cliched filled with the last minute saves and the heroes managing to stay ahead of the villains. I figured the promised between Arondir and Bronwyn meant one of them was going to die and figured it was going to the Arondir, because the attempts to save Bronwyn appeared like misdirection in their gritty gruesomeness.

I did not expect their promises to go unfilled because the entire countryside gets razed and everyone killed (probably) in the creation of Mount Doom. That last minute save by the troops of Numenor, so beautiful in their gleaming armor, so heroic in their deeds turned out to mean absolutely nothing and it was a well placed gut punch.

Halbrand's the unnamed king, eh? I suspect we've seen him before, in Lord of the Rings.

Aslo, the sea captain, who said the Sea is Always Right, has a wife who drowned. Imma need more backstory there.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:20 AM on September 30, 2022 [5 favorites]

So elves can survive pyroclastic flows now, huh? Who knew.

Still believe that Halbrand is Sauron-
-The possible order of events: Sauron's former body killed by Adar > Sauron reforms as Halbrand> Halbrand peaces out to start anew in Numenor> gets pulled back in to Mordor, but this time he gets to try out the "good guy" persona.
-I noticed Halbrand never claimed to be King of the Southlands, everyone who does, from Galadriel to Miriel to Bronwyn, is projecting that idea onto him. Although he does affirm that idea when Bronwyn asks him.
-The speech Adar gives about Sauron wanting to amend his ways (albeit at the expense of Adar's children) speaks to that idea. I think Tolkien wrote about that too, but can't remember where off the top of my head.
posted by ishmael at 2:12 PM on September 30, 2022 [4 favorites]

I expected the creation of Mount Doom in this ep because of all the talk early on about "You'll see the sun rise again!" ("No you wooooo-on't," I retorted), but then was surprised by both the Numenoreans getting there in time to help and by the precise mechanism by which Doom lit up. All that tunneling and trenching and I never saw it coming. So now I feel willing to forgive the movie-combat cliches.

The Halbrand is Sauron theory does fit with Adar's last interaction with him.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 5:21 PM on September 30, 2022 [4 favorites]

So are we to understand that that powerful MacGuffin, the sword-hilt thingie which unlocks caverns measureless to man, was handed over by Adar to bad-guy-dude at some point? That all the time that Galadriel and Halbrand and Arondir were handling the wrapped object they never even peeked inside?
posted by mono blanco at 7:19 PM on September 30, 2022 [5 favorites]

Yes and yes. Even if they had peeked inside, it would not have changed anything.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:26 PM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

We were just rehashing the switcheroo a minute ago. Must’ve happened prior to or during the daytime battle? We don’t see it happen and I have to say I thought Waldreg was crushed in the collapse of the tower.

For all the cliches of the action sequences, the conversation between Adar and Galadriel was something for sure - who’s-the-real-monster-here and all that. We’re still all-in here, having kicked House of the Dragon to the curb after last week’s episode.
posted by jquinby at 8:13 PM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

Hey, things were happening again in this episode! There were a few "well this is convenient" twists, my biggest one was the Numenoreans galloping off the boat into battle...? They should not have known where to go, much less to make haste there.

But I really enjoyed action hero Arondir and Galadriel; I'm an easy mark for that stuff. Every time Arondir pulled off a clever trap or Galadriel ducked an arrow, I thought about how much better the action elf stuff is here than when Legolas did it.

I fully snickered through Galadriel talking up the virtues of humble work, though. Just the most glamorous person you've ever seen, with a full face of makeup, telling the guy working the stables that it's good he's building character.
posted by grandiloquiet at 8:37 PM on September 30, 2022 [9 favorites]

I've been watching this show entirely because it has some pretty imagery. The sea-horses galloping in a wave before the water came to Mt Doom, that kind of thing.

But, the bit of the oroc's pescpective before the fighting started, plus Galadriel promising genocide to all of Adar's children does start to seem interesting.

(Also, you don't even need to unwrap an axe to know that it is not a dagger. One end is very very heavy. Lol. But anyway, the handoff happened when Adar said "I need you to do one thing..."
posted by joeyh at 8:44 PM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

Every time Galadriel dodged an arrow, I wondered why they didn’t shoot her horse. #orclife
posted by cardboard at 8:55 PM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

I like volcanoes. Not so keen on sped-up galloping that looks like Comet Scrubbing Bubbles. But good job volcano! And giving a purpose to all that random-seeming digging.
posted by janell at 9:18 PM on September 30, 2022 [5 favorites]

When one of the orcs said GIMBATUL I swear to god I made this face. I know like eight words in The Black Speech of Mordor Which I Will Not Utter Here but hell if they didn't use one of them!

I like the Harfoot stuff and the Elf-Dwarf stuff a lot better than the People Stuff so while this episode was very exciting it wasn't to my taste.

I do like that the orcs are portrayed as reasonably smart, worthy foes as opposed to big dumb idiots and/or overwhelmingly numerous cannon fodder. The biology of the creation of orcs doesn't make sense and never has but it's increasingly felt bad to me how few redeeming qualities the orcs have in canon. I don't root for them but I'm glad they're able to outsmart a bunch of villagers. They are a custom bred fighting force! It makes sense!
posted by potrzebie at 10:37 PM on September 30, 2022 [7 favorites]

OK, I'm a little bummed that I didn't post this theory last week, but I checked with my wife to confirm and

OMG I CALLED IT I CALLED IT I FUCKING CALLED IT!

Adar = "father" = one of the first Elves captured by Morgoth and corrupted, one of the progenitors of the whole race of Orcs (who, remember, "had life and multiplied after the manner of the Children of Ilúvatar"), but still immortal...

YESSS!

The D&D campaign I've been running for my kids, which is set in Middle-Earth, probably helped. One of them is playing a Half-Orc (a deserter from Saruman's armies), and over time they've slowly encountered/discovered "the Gray Folk", a group of Angmar Half-Orcs from the time of the Witch King, similarly deserted from his armies, now living in a hidden valley and trying to make a life for themselves (and terrified what will happen if the Rangers figure out what they are).

When the characters left the valley, the leader of the Gray Folk—Mauhur the Merciless, Chief of the People of War, High Marshal of the North, right hand of the Witch King of Angmar—charged the Half-Orc character to "save the Orcs". She doesn't know how, but if, as appears to be the case, the breeding experiments that produced Half-Orcs broke the curse that forever whispered in their minds, calling them to rage and cruelty and war, surely there must be a way to free the Orcs, too...
posted by The Tensor at 11:24 PM on September 30, 2022 [5 favorites]

Every time Galadriel dodged an arrow, I wondered why they didn’t shoot her horse. #orclife

Apparently, Ulysses S. Grant was an expert horse-rider as a young man, and used that same trick to hide from the enemy during the Mexican-American war on foraging runs during a siege.
posted by ishmael at 1:29 AM on October 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

Yes! Things are happening!

I won't get into headcanoning how the Mount Doom trigger got built in the first place (except that the digging orcs and the lost key tells me that the original plan got interrupted at some point, maybe when the elves showed up to set up their garrison in the first place). I *will*, however, talk about my fun game of "what if 'X' is really Sauron in disguise?". Come on, people, besides Adar and Halbrand there are *so* many fun options. Theo! Theo's dad! Celebrimbor! Somebody who is always in shot when we see Pharazon! Isildur's sister! Berek the Horse (think about it, he keeps showing up at important moments)! Nori! Etc Etc.

Anyhoo, I notice that Pharazon has lost the "Ar-" that he had in the Appendices (Ar-Pharazon the Golden), just as I have lost the little accent over the 'a' in his name. Could it be that "Ar-" was a posthumous addition and is Quenya for 'that f***ing idiot'?
posted by Mogur at 6:14 AM on October 1, 2022 [9 favorites]

Anyhoo, I notice that Pharazon has lost the "Ar-" that he had in the Appendices (Ar-Pharazon the Golden), just as I have lost the little accent over the 'a' in his name. Could it be that "Ar-" was a posthumous addition and is Quenya for 'that f***ing idiot'?

Hehehe. I'm not 100% sure, but I think the "Ar-" prefix is a royal indicator. He's not king just yet, so no "Ar" on "Pharazon".
posted by ishmael at 7:51 AM on October 1, 2022 [3 favorites]

Galadriel was chilling in Lothlórien all this time while Sauron was commanding the northern armies
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 8:05 AM on October 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

I feel like this was good though they definitely were playing some tricks with light and dark to build suspense. However, I also feel like the idea that Galadriel wouldn’t have even checked the object once to be…unlikely.
posted by corb at 11:40 AM on October 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

Well, I don't think Arondir actually told Galadriel what was inside the bundle, he just shouted that Adar was getting away with something important. So Galadriel wouldn't have had any reason to suspect a switch, and if she had peeked inside she would probably have been merely confused why an axe was so important.

Re: who is/becomes Sauron, my bet is Theo, and he'll become Sauron in a moment of desperation when he thinks using the magic power sword of forbidden magic is the only way to save Bronwynn or Arondir.
posted by Pyry at 8:10 PM on October 1, 2022

This is a really interesting comparison of costume designs in the show to older artwork.

An interesting idea from the same person, Rachel Conrad: Halbrand isn’t Sauron, he’s the future King of the Dead.
posted by the duck by the oboe at 10:25 PM on October 1, 2022 [5 favorites]

And since I've learned my lesson, let me throw out my current Halbrand theory in case it turns out to be ABSOLUTE GENIUS:

Until now, it's looked pretty unlikely that Halbrand could be Sauron. Sure, the show's been tossing out little hints about how skilled at manipulation he is, and making him good at smithing, etc., but it seems like everybody in the show has accepted that he's the true heir to the throne of the Southlands, right?

Didn't that seem a little to easy, though? Galadriel sees a sigil on his little pouch and decides he's the True King, then she convinces Miriel, and then Bronwyn sees the same pouch (hmm...) and immediately leads the townspeople to hail him as their king. Why's everybody so quick to accept it?

Here's why: Adar tells us that Sauron was working on something that will give him power, but not physical power. Obviously, he was working on a prototype of the One Ring, but he hasn't yet gotten it right. Eventually Adar got fed up with Sauron killing his Uruks and killed Sauron. OF COURSE that doesn't mean Sauron is dead-dead—he's a spirit and can reconstitute a new body. And the body he's currently inhabiting is Halbrand, who's carrying a pouch that HE TOLD US HE TOOK OFF A DEAD MAN and that contains his prototype Ring. It's not yet powerful enough to let him "dominate all life", but its mere presence is enough to predispose people to see him as sympathetic...as trustworthy...as a LEADER...
posted by The Tensor at 1:35 AM on October 2, 2022 [6 favorites]

Are the Ents around in the second age? Do we know how they formed?

A friend was wondering if Meteor Man was possibly Ent related.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:39 AM on October 2, 2022

Halbrand isn’t Sauron, he’s the future King of the Dead.

Oh I like that. That sounds very plausible.
posted by restless_nomad at 5:46 AM on October 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

Are the Ents around in the second age? Do we know how they formed?

We saw a couple of Ent-like beings when the Stranger came down in a flaming fireball at the end of episode 1.
posted by Pendragon at 5:57 AM on October 2, 2022 [2 favorites]

When Magma and Water Mix
posted by lalochezia at 6:08 AM on October 2, 2022 [4 favorites]

Are the Ents around in the second age? Do we know how they formed?

According to Gandalf, "Treebeard is Fangorn, and the eldest and chief of the Ents, and when you speak with him you will hear the speech of the oldest of all living things."
posted by paper chromatographologist at 6:09 AM on October 2, 2022 [2 favorites]

I really think the Stranger is either Gandalf or Saruman, and I feel like we'll get some concrete movement toward his identity in the next episode, because (A) they're in danger of dragging that thread out too long right about now, and (B) this episode had no Harfoot presence at all.

I also expect a whimsical scene in which the Stranger is introduced to leaf-smoking, but perhaps not this early in his time on Middle-Earth.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 7:59 AM on October 2, 2022 [4 favorites]

“Galadriel was chilling in Lothlórien all this time while Sauron was commanding the northern armies“

The shot of her covered in black ash at the end (or was it the beginning of the scenes from next week?) combines with all the mirror of evil talk had me thinking she could be Sauron.

Then I read some wiki that talks about what she was doing in the Second and Third Ages & there’s no mention of her being “banished” to the Undying Lands or being on Numenor or at the creation of Mordor, but there’s plenty of time for that.

So, I’m back to that idea. There’s plenty for her to do later, but I’d be OK with the idea Sauron’s spirit possessing her for a few hundred years in an Analon -> Vader turn. She should be too powerful for that, but *everyone* she meets is worried about her obsession with hunting down Sauron.

There’s also a strong feeling of “the orcs did nothing wrong” going on. I like the idea of a historiography of Middle-Earth that reconsiders the goals of the forces involved in the vein of re-examining the Jedi as a dangerous cult.
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 8:14 PM on October 2, 2022 [3 favorites]

Per the book LOTR the Istari, i.e. Gandalf and the other wizards, didn't appear until a thousand years into the Third Age whereas this Rings of Power series is the Second Age. So perhaps the Stranger, the Giant, is a new character? Like Adar?
posted by mono blanco at 7:02 PM on October 3, 2022 [2 favorites]

Later writings apparently have the Blue Wizards arriving in the Second Age instead, so Alatar/Pallando?

They better kiss.
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 12:54 AM on October 4, 2022

if you're genuinely interested in figuring out who Sauron is (whether we've even seen him yet -- I don't think we have*) it's going to be whoever ...

[SPOILER ALERT]

... assumes a fair appearance and befriends the Elven-smiths of Eregion, led by Celebrimbor, and counsels them in arts and magic.


* I'm guessing that one of the final developments of season one will be this master villain's friendly entrance.
posted by philip-random at 8:02 AM on October 4, 2022

I swear, the protagonist on the ground getting choked out or fighting off stabbing by enemy straddling them and then other protagonist stabbing enemy from behind is sooooooo overdone.

Even if you'd never seen it before you would have been fed up with it by the end of this episode.
posted by biffa at 1:46 PM on October 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

I used to know a bunch of volcanologists, apparently if you ever near a volcano chucking out fiery rocks you're supposed to face the source and back away. This gives you some chance of dodging.

However, someone did get footage of one of them on a volcano that started rumbling, and what he actually did was to run the fuck away as fast as he could.
posted by biffa at 1:51 PM on October 7, 2022 [4 favorites]

Those uniforms on the riders of definitely not Rohan are very impractical.
posted by biffa at 2:47 PM on October 7, 2022