The Rings of Power Season 1 Ep 6 is the fifth instalment of the first season of a fantasy TV series streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Loosely based on the appendices author JRR Tolkien included in his Lord of the Rings trilogy, canonically, this series is set in the Second Age of Middle Earth, whereas the Lord of the Rings was set in the Third Age. Much has been made about this series being unfaithful to Tolkien’s works and thus, we have decided to analyse the story of The Rings of Power on its own merits, while ignoring the accusations of virtue signalling race and gender swapping.
S P O I L E R S
Plot
Entitled “Udûn”, The Rings of Power Season 1 Ep 6 is essentially one long battle sequence broken up into three parts. The episode has the storylines involving Galadriel, Halbrand and the Númenoreans intersect with that involving Arondir, Bronwyn in the Southlands. The first part has Arondir bringing down the tower on the Orcs, an utterly non-sensical action scene. How is a tower built with ties completely enveloping such that it could be brought down so easily? Very convenient.
READ OUR ANALYSES OF THE RINGS OF POWER.
The second part is set in the village as the villagers spring a trap for the remaining Orcs. Again, what stuck in the craw was Bronwyn’s superhuman ability to beat Orcs at hand to hand combat (!) – she is a fucking florist! But at least there is a bit of bait and switch when the villagers easily defeat the Orcs, only to find out later that they were gleefully killing their own kind – the ones that had defected! Then an ambush, Bronwyn is wounded and the Orcs seemed to have taken the village, Theo surrendering the location of the Morgul hilt.
Finally, of course, the Númenoreans arrive to save the day and Galadriel and Halbrand capture Adar, the Orc leader. But Adar has the last laugh as the real Morgul hilt had been switched and a village defector uses it as a key to set off a volcanic eruption (ask not how or why) and that’s how the episode ends…
P.S. Why does everybody accept that Halbrand is the King of the Southlands? All because of a pouch? Geez.
Characters
What The Rings of Power Season 1 Ep 6 achieves, thanks to the awful characterisations of the “good” guys, is that one begins to root for the “bad” guys, in this case, Adar. There is an insightful sequence where Galadriel reveals her genocidal desires for the entire Orc race, in which Adar responds that she is as evil as Sauron. Is that what Rings of Power is about? Galadriel is EVIL? Yikes. Perhaps that is why we felt like cheering when the volcano erupted but there is no fear shown from Galadriel, she simply stands there staring down the volcano – only thinking about herself and how she is strong enough to survive this – fails to lift a finger to help anybody else. Talk about EVIL!
The Final Analysis
The Rings of Power Season 1 Ep 6 was watchable though with disturbing implications brought about by the character revelations. Two episodes left to make any sense from this narrative mess!
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