“Did I cause someone you love pain?” Adar whispers, smiling cruelly. Just as she catches up, Halbrand arrives and trips Adar’s horse, then skewers his grasping, ungloved hand with a spear. Galadriel chases Adar through the woods it was suspiciously easy for him to abandon his children. Galadriel takes off in pursuit, leaving a deeply star-struck Arondir and Theo in her wake. “Soldier,” she asks, “where is their commander?” He nods to Adar, who is trying to get out of Dodge on a Númenorean horse. Amidst the chaos, Galadriel spies Arondir. But not for long - with her permission, Isildur races into battle. From the hilltop, gold-plated Míriel watches, a restless stable sweep at her side. Theo and Arondir fight on their feet while Galadriel hangs sideways off her horse to avoid an arrow and take the head of its shooter. They mow down orcs with chains, swords, spears, and hooves. He leaves the tavern with the hilt and a job for Waldreg, only to find that it’s not thunder: It’s the Númenorean cavalry flooding into the village. Thunder rumbles as Adar lays his eyes on what he’s been seeking. Arondir still won’t break, but as a blade arcs toward her neck, Theo does. He asks Arondir for the hilt, but Arondir will only consider it if he lets the villagers go. Outside the tavern, the orcs have overrun the village, and an obviously-not-crushed Adar walks between the flames to the tavern. Theo throws an arm around Arondir, who cradles Bronwyn’s face.
For a long, long moment, they watch her lifeless face. Theo and Arondir treat her wounds with those same seeds and a burning piece of wood. Arondir carries her to temporary safety in the tavern, where her blood drips red through the planks of the table. Suddenly, arrows whistle through the air from the trees, felling Southlanders left and right - including Bronwyn. Fires dance on rivulets of blood, black and red alike, spattering the sweat-soaked Southlanders as they realize what this means. One by one, villagers remove animal skulls and chain-mail masks to reveal their neighbors, friends, fellow refugees. He pulls it off to reveal not an orc, but a man. But when Arondir looks at the bodies, he sees something strange: red blood pooling beneath a fallen orc’s helmet. They return to the sound of celebrations - the villagers have declared victory. But before he can sink it in, Bronwyn stabs the orc from behind. The orc turns the blade to Arondir - an eye for an eye. Arondir grabs at the knife still stuck in the orc’s eye, raining black blood as it pours (and when I say “pours,” I mean POURS) out of the ruined socket. Arondir sinks a knife directly into an enormous orc’s face, but he gets Arondir by the throat anyway. Burning wagons smash into the orc’s ranks, while archers on rooftops rain down arrows. The surviving orcs cross the bridge, and the battle commences.
And then Arondir sees it - pinpricks of fire coming over the hill. But when they push open the doors, the courtyard is abandoned. War drums and the orc's guttural growls score their march to the elven fortress, Adar at their head. For the first time, we do so not as unnamed slaves in faraway lands, but as brothers, as brothers and sisters in our home,” Adar calls out. “Before this night is through, some of us will fall. How can they find the light when the shadow blots out the sun?Īdar stands in front of a sea of fire, hundreds of orcs holding torches aloft in the night, with the murderous Waldreg ( Geoff Morrell) in the front row. Through bloody battles, fleeting victory, and persistent tragedy, the Southlanders create new families and lose loved ones, protect their lands and see them ravaged. “New life,” he whispers, “in defiance of death.” In “Udûn,” the brutal sixth episode of Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the stakes are truly life and death. Adar’s ( Joseph Mawle) clawed hand digs into the dirt to plant a collection of alfirin seeds.
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