THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER Episode 6 Reveals Adar's Identity - SPOILERS

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER Episode 6 Reveals Adar's Identity - SPOILERS

Fans have been wondering exactly who Joseph Mawle's Adar really was ever since he was introduced as the season's "big bad," and the latest episode of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power reveals all.

News
By MarkCassidy - Oct 01, 2022 07:10 AM EST
Filed Under: Lord of the Rings
Source: Via SFF Gazette

"It would seem I am not the only Elf alive who has been transformed by darkness."

Episode 6 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is now streaming on Prime Video, and "Udûn" finally reveals the backstory of the mysterious villain known as Adar.

"Adar" is the Sindarin word for father, which suggested that the Orcs saw their leader as more of a paternal figure. J.R.R. Tolkien's original history of Middle Earth claimed that Morgoth captured some Elves right after their "awakening" and used dark magic and other twisted means to create a new form of life that would be loyal only to him.

Tolkien would later revise this part of the lore to make the Elves incorruptible, but we found out that the Orcs' original origin did carry over to The Rings of Power when Galadriel captured and questioned the enemy commander. 

Adar admits that he was indeed one of the first Elves, or "Moriondor," taken by Melkor and transformed into one of the first Orcs. He refers to himself as an "Uruk," which was the name later given to the "Great Orcs" bred by Saruman in Peter Jackson's trilogy (Sauron created them in the Third Age in Tolkien's novels). 

He tells his captor that the Orcs all have names and hearts, and were given life by Ilúvatar just as she was. Galadriel rejects this notion, calling his kind "mistakes" and promising to wipe them out completely. Adar then claims to have killed Sauron himself in order to free his "children" and find them a home in the Southlands.

Galadriel doesn't believe him, but Adar doesn't seem to have any love for or loyalty to The Dark Lord, so perhaps he's telling the truth?

Either way, Adar's plan is put into action when Waldreg uses the sword hilt as a key to open the floodgates back in the Watchtower and awaken the volcano in Mount Doom, covering the lands that will soon come to be known as Mordor in fire and ash.

Will more of these Uruks emerge, or is Adar the last of his kind? Is he really an enemy of Sauron, or has he been doing his bidding all along? We'll just have to wait and see how these last two episodes play out.

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Floke
Floke - 10/1/2022, 7:51 AM
"Tolkien would later revise this part of the lore to make the Elves incorruptible, but we found out that the Orcs' original origin did carry over to The Rings of Power"

Didnt this also carry over to the P.J. LOTR-films? Saruman clearly stated:

"Do you know how the Orcs first came into being? They were elves once, taken by the dark powers, tortured and mutilated. A ruined and terrible form of life."
ScaryTerry
ScaryTerry - 10/1/2022, 7:52 AM
@Floke - I thought I heard that before. Thanks.
angkasha1
angkasha1 - 10/1/2022, 8:05 AM
@Floke - I read that in Sarumans voice:D
IcePyke
IcePyke - 10/1/2022, 8:11 AM


TheRose
TheRose - 10/1/2022, 8:40 AM
I actually loved this episode from start to finish. The reveal on Adar is an interesting one and I fear that the poor guy is telling the truth. Worse yet, I believe that Sauron ALLOWED Adar to cut him down so that he could be used to unite the Orcs. Sauron is never truly defeated--he is always using pain and suffering to drive his goals. I imagine the dark lord is in hiding, biding his time and calmly influencing Adar's actions.
SauronthePower
SauronthePower - 10/1/2022, 12:00 PM
@TheRose - this would represent a VERY slippery slope, I fear. Physically unhorsing the Maia from their corporeal form has very real consequences to the potency and efficacy of their power set going forward. Tolkien was VERY specific about the import of this which is why Sauron was completely nullified, but not entirely destroyed, upon his 4th unhousing with the destruction of the ring. To introduce a new, and additional, example of this is tremendously irresponsible
TheRose
TheRose - 10/1/2022, 2:27 PM
@SauronthePower - I'm coming from a background of knowing little about Tolkien lore, but this sounds interesting as well. So at this time in the wider lore, is Sauron still in physical form?
SauronthePower
SauronthePower - 10/1/2022, 6:26 PM
@TheRose - short answer, yes.

Long answer is that this apparently takes place as Sauron is re-emerging from hiding after his first bodily unhousing by Huan and Luthien during the First Age. Sauron retakes physical form with still much of his initial potency (unlime his next unhorsement wherein he forever lost the ability to appear deceptively fair of form). As of now, we are not exactly sure where in the 2nd Age that this takes place (though we can make a very educated guess) due to the writers compressing 3,400 years of history into a period of a few years. What is problematic is that this appears to be taking Sauron’s re-emergence from hiding during the War of Wrath and jumping/delaying it for that 3,400 years and this is DEEPLY problematic (actually, it’s rather stupid to be honest). At this point, Sauron is gathering his forces and raising the Barad Dur (his tower in Return of the King) while rampaging over all of Middle Earth annihilating the opposition. The Numenor storyline emerges centuries later as Middle Earth’s apex of the power of men, and the Elendil/Isuldur storyline emerges centuries after that. By trying to eliminate all of that, they seriously A) wipe vast swathes of important aspects of the 2nd Age story development and B ) undermine Sauron’s rise to power arc (among many other things)

By having Adar (assuming that this is truthful) unhorse him an additional time, it interferes and contradicts Sauron’s devolution through physical death
SauronthePower
SauronthePower - 10/1/2022, 6:27 PM
@TheRose - I actually agree with your belief on what they are eventually doing with the character, I just am not particularly enamored with the idea
Fares
Fares - 10/1/2022, 9:27 AM
Pretty good episode.
TheWalkingCuban
TheWalkingCuban - 10/1/2022, 9:50 AM
Someday I will get on this. Currently I’m watching something so old it feels hokey, The dark zone TV series. It is nowhere near as good as the Christopher Walken movie, and so I forget them watching it and then I’m like oh yeah I’m on episode whatever and get back to it, and it just feels so quaint. Barely any cursing, or anything sexual etc. Hints of adultery all the way through. It’s not like the Andy Griffith show or anything but don’t forget that one had a guy constantly in the drunk tank.

I wonder, does this Tolkien show have any moral ambiguities? I’m not saying that would change whether I watch it or not lol I am genuinely curious. Some violence aside, Lord of the rings and the hobbit were practically rated G. Of course the violence brought that up a couple notches. Is the show like that? Or are there Lovers’ Quarrels between married couples with this elf and that human not knowing that all their hard work and/or screen time is unappreciated and/or resented thereby causing an unauthorized secret friendship within those couples that grows with manipulation and gaslighting and tons more resentment until it finally reaches illicit affair levels and drama and tears until finally Maury says “Barry, in the case of Shelob’s latest brood… you are NOT the father”
SauronthePower
SauronthePower - 10/1/2022, 11:10 AM
@TheWalkingCuban - unfortunately they have only gone a bit beyond Jackson in terms of the gritty and the gore because Bezos needs maximal viewership eyes to get back some of that sweet cash. This last episode had a pretty cool wound dressing sequence that didn’t pull the camera away from some of the filth and effluent but it’s not anywhere near GoT level crazy (actually kind of thankful for that TBH). The bigger issue is that they have taken such wholesale liberties with the source canon (the canon that J.R.R. actually wrote) that this show would have fared FAR better had they used it as an original IP. Bezos basically is franchise-farming the Tolkien name on a vastly different world than the books.

Despite all of that, it is extremely beautiful visually and aurally AND the acting and linguistics (though not so much the dialogue) are on-point. I find myself kind of enjoying it by keeping it extremely arm’s length from the actual novels.
TheWalkingCuban
TheWalkingCuban - 10/1/2022, 11:20 AM
@SauronthePower - I think I would love it then.
MochaKing
MochaKing - 10/1/2022, 10:47 AM
Yet to watch this episode.. Hope it changes my opinion towards the show...
SauronthePower
SauronthePower - 10/1/2022, 11:22 AM
@MochaKing - it was a bit better than the others
SauronthePower
SauronthePower - 10/1/2022, 10:55 AM
Tolkien never revised anything.

Yet certain parties continue to parrot the Amazon narrative in order to try and steer the conversation towards settled science on the matter.

What IS settled science is that the Tolkien estate continuously mined obscure notes, initial drafts, and dated correspondence from Tolkien’s library and sold it, well AFTER his death in 1973, to publishers looking to capitalize on the Dungeons and Dragons craze of the late 70’s/early 80’s, hence the birth of the numerous compendium additions. ‘Unfinished Tales,’ ‘Lost Tales,’ ‘People’s of Middle Earth,’ etc etc are all hodge-podge assimilations of Tolkien’s notes by his son, hence listing Christopher Tolkien as one of the authors.

Honestly, some of you need to stop trying to sound like you did your research by glancing at LOTRfandom and Wikipedia because it shows.

Also, the five wizards all arrived silmultaneously 1,000 years into the 3rd age, by boat, to the Grey Havens, the elves were NEVER retconned to not be the corrupted, ruined orcish forebears, etc

If you want to equivocate all that noise and nonsense as now official source canon, then you’d also better be prepared to reimagine that there were 2 additional Valar to the post-creation 14.

Stop trying to equivocate the Tolkien Estate’s firesale mining of the literary equivalent of the ‘Deleted Bonus Scene’ as canon, unless you are prepared to ALSO blindly fawn over Zeus following Thor to Earth and willingly giving ip the bolt, that Thanos cut Cap’s head off and presented it as a trophy during the pre-portal standoff, and that Will Smith survived the end of ‘I Am Legend.’
ProfessorWhy
ProfessorWhy - 10/1/2022, 11:40 AM
@SauronthePower - spoken with authority. I like it.
Would've loved to hear the conversations at Amazon during this shows development, and the input of Bezos's JRRT experts
SauronthePower
SauronthePower - 10/1/2022, 12:20 PM
@ProfessorWhy - unfortunately they fired Tom Shippey (somewhat his fault for violating an NDA) and replaced him with someone nowhere near as researched on the material. People are railing on Musk because of that statement about Tolkien ‘rolling over in his grave,’ but TBH, he is very much on-point with that (despite whatever feelings people have on him as a person). Granted, there is very much a billionaire’s ego competition playing into this (Musk has motivation and agency) but the show REALLY is way off base in terms of Tolkien’s legendarium. Removing the ethno-alteration complaints because they have no place in the discussion, the compression of chronology, wholesale reinvention of wide swathes of history, and apparent multiversal character interpretations really cheapens what should have been a grand reintroduction/expansion of the beauty and majesty if Tolkien’s work to the world at-large.

Despite all of that, and like I mentioned above, it IS extremely beautiful to look at, well acted, tremendous aural presentation that hits all the right ‘feels,’ and has kept me invested (I really do believe that the potential is still there to salvage this). The powers-that-be, however, had better get better attuned to the actual literary material and stop cribbing their scripts and dialogue from the cliff-notes summations running rampant on the web.
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