Rings of Power's sixth episode is called Udûn. It's a location in what will come to be known as Mordor (currently "The Southlands" in Rings of Power - though it looks like Mordor is coming soon). This actually makes Gandalf's calling the Balrog the "Flame of Udûn" kind of odd, as it's not clear that Durin's Bane has any loyalty or relationship to Mordor and Sauron. (Further Tolkien research has informed me that the region of Mordor is actually named after another name for Utumno, the fortress of Morgoth - so really it's closer to "hell," though technically I don't think Tolkien's Legendarium has a true "hell" as another plane of existence).
Rings of Power is an exciting fantasy show, and one I'm enjoying. But I think it's also important to note that it's an interpretation more than an adaptation. I'm not talking about the *gasp* presence of people of color in it (anyone who has a problem with that can go toss themselves into Mount Doom, and good riddance) but instead various conceits that allow the story to be told in which any human character lives long enough to be a character throughout the story.
There are elements I'm a little wary of - mystery-box things like who the "Stranger" is and, while not explicitly encouraged by the show, the natural guessing game of whether any given character is going to turn out to actually be Sauron or will become one of the Ringwraiths. (At the same time, I can't help but indulge in some of that speculation.)
One of the most interesting, but simultaneously canon-... I won't say canon-breaking, but canon-testing at least elements has been the introduction of a character known as Adar. And because his whole deal is a spoiler, let's put a spoiler cut ahead:
SPOILERS AHEAD
When Arondir is captured by Orcs and forced to dig a massive trench along with his fellow prisoners (the purpose of which we just learned of in episode six - it helps catalyze the eruption of Orodruin, aka Mount Doom) we find out that the leader of the Orcs is actually what looks like an elf, whom the Orcs call Adar - the Sindarin word for "Father" (I'll cop here to possibly getting the language wrong - Quenya is the other main elf language, and it could be that).
This episode confirms that Adar is, on a technical level, not actually an elf anymore. Instead, he's one of the first generation of Orcs - Uruk in their native tongue (the "Black Speech," which Tolkien never fully fleshed out, likewise Khuzdul, aka Dwarvish, though we do see an Orc yell "Gimpatul" in this episode, meaning "find them," which one might recall from the little poem about the One Ring).
And when Adar is captured after the forces of Numenor save the villagers in the Southlands, we're presented with something that Tolkien and the adaptations of his works have not really dealt with: the Orcs right to exist.
Galadriel is eager to destroy Adar and all the Orcs they've taken prisoner. Obviously, the Orcs and Adar have been behaving unquestionably in an evil manner - killing prisoners, attacking innocent villagers, and killing hostages to coerce others. But Adar's motivation is actually fairly sympathetic: he wants a homeland for his children.
Adar points out that he and his people were created by "The One," (aka Eru Illuvatar, aka literally God,) and that the spark of life exists within them just as much as any Elf or Man. Yes, they served Morgoth - but then again, so did the humans who were left on Middle Earth (for all their arrogance, the people of Numenor at least don't have that massive sin in their history - they got the island as a reward for fighting on the side of good).
Indeed, Adar points out an element that is, (I believe) canonical, which is that Sauron's motivation after Morgoth's defeat was genuinely to redeem himself and atone for what he did - he just chose as his method to do so the creation of a perfect order in the world that he would just naturally have to rule over.
(Indeed, Sauron originally served the Vala Aulë, the craftsman Vala who innocently made the Dwarves without Eru's approval. Sauron's craftsman-like talents both informed his ability to create artifacts like the great rings and also led him to think that he could just apply cold logic to making the world function perfectly - an attitude that saw him first losing sight of and then resenting petty considerations like morality.)
Adar says that he worked with Sauron on this plan to "fix" the world, only for all the Orcish sacrifice that Sauron committed in his attempt to find a mechanism to instill perfect order into the world were in vain, and Adar believes he killed Sauron for his failure at such a terrible cost in life.
The Orcs always bothered Tolkien. While the Peter Jackson movies and now this show are really committing to the idea that Orcs were corrupted Elves, Tolkien never really came up with an origin story for them that satisfied him. He felt they couldn't be natural creations, as he felt that any natural creation had to have the potential for good in them (and Orcs were there to be the creatures that could serve as guilt-free slaughter-fodder for our heroes, which meant they should be pure evil). Another possibility he raised was that they were corrupted humans, instead. He even speculated that, if the Legendarium was meant to be a pre-history of our own world, that Orcs likely bred into humanity, and that the worst brutes and thugs of the world probably had a bit of Orcish ancestry in them.
Tolkien, of course, was fairly old-fashioned in a number of ways. He was unabashedly someone who believed in inherited qualities - a staunch monarchist, for instance. Also, see that notion about Orcs in the modern day above.
Tolkien really codified the high fantasy genre, and popularized the "fantasy races" as we see them today. Along with Elves and Dwarves, a lot of fantasy also includes Orcs. But while Orcs are usually antagonistic and villainous, a number of works have other notions about them - the Warcraft games started out with pure-evil orcs, but then transformed them into a rich culture that had been the victim of what was essentially a political movement spurred on by demons (further still, we'd later find out that some of the main demons who corrupted them were, themselves, formerly a culture of nuanced people, some of whom fell to corruption).
While racism is, sadly, far from dead (consider all the people getting up in arms about there being a black elf in Rings of Power) on a broader cultural level, there's been a reexamination of the notion of race in fantasy fiction as it relates to race in the real world.
And here, I think the line gets a little blurry. Tolkien intended his Orcs to be Monsters - intelligent monsters, but truly just monsters representing evil and violence. But Orcs as a trope have evolved to be more of a People, and now, the idea of condemning an entire group of people as inherently evil and violent sounds a lot like some really destructive and, frankly, evil trends in the past.
This demands something of us: we need to know where the line is between a group of nuanced individuals who happen to share traits and ancestry, versus a type of monster that represents some deep human fear. And different people will draw the line in different places.
The Orcs in Rings of Power are still evil - but it's not pure evil, at least in Adar's case. Tolkien conceived the forces of evil as being filled with hatred - the Orcs hate Sauron and Morgoth and everyone. Evil isn't capable of compassion or love, and what makes them monsters is that even if they got the world they wanted, they'd just destroy one another because all that motivates them is hate.
In Adar, we see some genuine sense of compassion and responsibility. Hell, even triggering a massive steam-explosion to induce the eruption of Mount Doom (something it seems was engineered by Sauron - again, he's a craftsman) could be to provide a realm where his Orcish children are not singed by the light of the sun. Is there a chance for his redemption? What of his children?
(Ok, let's do our dumb mystery-box speculation thing.)
First off, I feel strongly that Halbrand, the newly-revealed King of the Southlands is going to turn out to be evil.
My initial guess was that he was going to become a Ringwraith - that Annatar (Sauron's guise as the "gift-giver") might give him a ring to help him rally his people and gradually turn his heart to tyranny. However, I saw someone else (on the AV Club comment sections) suggest that he could, in fact, be Sauron himself. The circumstantial evidence: first, he claims that he stole his kingly symbol off a dead man - maybe that's not a lie. Second, he spends a bit of time imprisoned in Numenor, just like Sauron. He also looks like he's going to kill Adar and asks if the Elder Uruk remembers him - which Adar does not. Is it possible that his anger is from when Adar "killed" him? And he's a talented blacksmith.
Now, as to who the Stranger is: there are, likewise, some who think that he's Sauron (the creepy pale-skinned cult people following him would make sense) given the way that he killed all those fireflies and how the fire around his impact crater was drawn away when he bellowed. The obvious answer would be Gandalf (and his kind treatment by Harfoots would explain his eventual love of Hobbits). Another idea I've seen floated is that he's one of the Blue Wizards, who we never see much of. But I also wonder if maybe he's some kind of proto-Istari - in the canon timeline, the Istari didn't come to Middle-Earth until the Third Age, which means that if he's one of them, he's there too early. Now, of course, Rings of Power is making a few changes to better fit the show's timeline. And hey, maybe he's Saruman, and he got there before the others.
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