The Rings of Power Episode 6 is bristling with warfare and fan service

It’s time for another episode of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Will the forces of Númenor arrive in time to help the Men of the Southlands avoid being annihilated by orcish invaders? Or will their homeland finally be turned into the dark and foreboding Mordor we know from The Lord of the Rings?

This was by far the most action-packed episode of the series yet, and there’s much to discuss. Let’s get right into it, and as always, there shall be SPOILERS below.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Episode 6 review, “Udûn”

After two weeks of plodding along, things finally kicked into high gear in the latest episode of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. This is the most focused episode of the entire series so far; there are no harfoots, no dwarves or politicking from Elrond. The whole episode is devoted to an epic battle in the Southlands. And while I did miss the antics of Nori and Durin IV, leaving them on the sidelines for “Udûn” was undeniably the right choice.

One of the biggest highlights of this episode is the performance from Game of Thrones veteran Joseph Mawle, who plays the orc daddy Adar. We learned a lot about him this week, and the story as a whole was much richer for it.

Things begin with Adar commanding his legions of orcs and traitorous humans to attack the tower where Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova), Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi), and the rest of the Southlanders are holed up. Except when Adar’s forces get there, they find the tower suspiciously abandoned. Arondir sets off a booby trap which causes the tower to collapse on top of them, and we’re off to the races.

The give and take of the battle that follows is both predictable and exciting, as it never lets up. Arondir’s initial blow against the orcs leads to a pitched fight in the nearby village; the victory there leads to the discovery that many of the enemies were in fact humans wearing orcish armor; the actual orcish ambush is broken by a Númenorean cavalry charge which leads to a volcanic eruption. The way the fight moves through its various phases is fun to watch, and as many times as the episode felt rote (timely arrivals, heroes withholding the mortal blow, etc), it also threw its share of curveballs.

Heroes and villains on the rise

We’ve talked about the battle in broad terms, but let’s hit on a few specific details. The first and possibly most important to discuss is the aforementioned backstory for Adar. Once Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and the Númenoreans arrive to turn the tide of the fight, Adar is captured and questioned. Clark and Mawle are excellent, and the scene gives us some of our first answers about the nature of the evil facing our characters.

Adar is one of the first prototype orcs, or Uruk, who were created by the dark lord Morgoth during the First Age of Middle-earth. This is a great little detail from J.R.R. Tolkien’s work to slip in there, and it was nice to confirm that Morgoth created the first orcs from elves, since the orcs we typically see in the series and movies obviously look quite different.

That’s not to say I had no qualms with this scene; Galadriel gets particularly fiery, threatening Adar with the ways she’ll torment him before his death. When he calls her on it, she then decides, hey, maybe I should just kill you right now. It’s only the timely intervention of Halbrand (Charlie Vickers) which stays her hand, mirroring an earlier moment where Galadriel did the same for him.

The back and forth works for Halbrand and Galadriel, but it also felt a little forced. Galadriel was literally just telling Adar she wouldn’t kill him, then changes her mind because of one taunt? It’s another one of those instances where it feels like The Rings of Power is pushing characters into situations more because that’s what the show needs rather than because it actually makes sense in the moment.

Halbrand had an interesting episode as well. After resisting the urge to become Aragorn 2.0, the king who would return, he finally took to the battlefield this episode to save the Southlands. One of the last events of the episode is that he’s actually proclaimed king, and the people of the Southlands rejoice. I still have a hard time trusting this particular plot point though. In previous episodes I’ve wondered if Halbrand might be Sauron in disguise…and for as much as this episode seemed to paint Halbrand in a different light, I actually wondered it even more by the end.

During Galadriel’s interrogation of Adar, the corrupted elf claims to have killed Sauron. While Galadriel doesn’t believe Adar, it does raise some interesting questions about who Sauron could be on this show. Halbrand has displayed exceptional skill in combat, even more than the Númenoreans. In this episode he’s instrumental in capturing Adar, then stands over him with a spear and asks if Adar remembered him. Adar does not. On the one hand, this could just go to show how many humans Adar has hurt and how little he cares about them.

But what if it’s not? What if this is a play on the idea that Halbrand looks very different now than the last time he met Adar? The people of the Southlands seem to recognize Halbrand as their long lost king, but I think it’s worth noting that we still have no idea how exactly Halbrand acquired his skills. It’s not like there’s a palace down there where he could have trained. He didn’t join the rangers like Aragorn. He definitely has secrets, and whether those secrets turn out to be Sauron-related or not, they’re keeping me interested in him.

Fan service strikes again

This episode also heavily featured Bronwyn and Arondir. Some highlights include Arondir’s fight against the WWF champion of orcish wrestling and the treatment of Bronwyn’s arrow wound. Both were shockingly grisly in a way that helped elevate the tension to a level it hasn’t reached before on the show. When the orcs start just offhandedly sinking their blades into the bellies of captive humans, I gasped because of just how casually dark it was. That’s not the kind of thing I think most Lord of the Rings viewers expect, and it really helped sell the terror of the orc invasion.

However, there was one particular issue that I had with this episode. While the fighting and the character development were all quite good, I did find myself getting distracted by awkward bits of fan service. There were quite a few quotes lifted directly from The Lord of the Rings, such as Bronwyn quoting a line from Samwise Gamgee about the shadow being a small and passing thing, or Galadriel urging her horse to move swifter with the same elven words used by Arwen in The Fellowship of the Ring. I enjoy a good bit of fan service as much as the next person, but many of those moments felt so unnaturally forced that I literally groaned out loud. The episode was good; it didn’t need to try so hard to remind us that it’s Lord of the Rings.

In fact, I’d say that my biggest issue overall with “Udûn,” and The Rings of Power as a whole, is that it’s going out of its way to drive home that this is The Lord of the Rings and that’s why we should be excited about it, instead of relying on its own strengths. Reusing dialogue from other Tolkien stories does not serve this one very well; it just makes it feel like the writers couldn’t come up with anything as compelling on their own. If it makes sense in the moment, that’s one thing. Galadriel’s horse whispering was fine, despite my gut reaction to it. But many of the other moments such as Bronwyn quoting Sam or the harfoot song last episode were shameless callbacks and stood out as such.

The Bullet Points of Power

• The cliffhanger ending where Mount Doom erupts, covering the Southlands in ash and fire and lightning, is great. The blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment where Adar hands off the sword hilt to one of his human servants is a nice twist, and the character building for Galadriel as she just stands in the face of disaster and is too shattered to even attempt to hide is riveting.
• At the same time, I do have a hard time swallowing the fact that the sword hilt was retrieved from Adar, was passed between many of our heroes, and no one realized the swap had taken place. No one thought to just glance at it? This was another example of The Rings of Power forcing the plot where it needed to go.
• Isildur (Maxim Baldry) and Elendil (Lloyd Owen) had some great moments this episode. Again, we got some of the Lord of the Rings callbacks when Elendil whispered to the horse using words that Aragorn would one day use, but considering how nice the scene was it didn’t matter overmuch.
• Galadriel had some crazy moves on horseback. Did I have to suspend my disbelief when she was upside down? Maybe a little. Did it matter? Not in the slightest.

Verdict

“Udûn” was one of the most solid episodes of The Rings of Power we’ve had in weeks. It was a good step up for the show, and I hope that it carries on this momentum through its final two episodes. Despite some shameless callbacks, this was a more deliberate, focused episode than many that came before it, and a lot happened. Here’s hoping we get more like it.

Episode grade: B+

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