We finally got an action-packed episode, but it was, of course, all mindless and incoherent. Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Episode 6: “Udun” was a perfect demonstration on how to completely confuse one’s audience with huge plot contrivances and bad CGI.
Well, this shouldn’t be too long of a review as the entire episode was spent around only two (well, really only one as they merged) plotlines: Numenor and the Southlands. Seeing as this episode was centered in the Southlands, I’ll start with that plotline.
Alright, so the famous Battle of the Southlands that we’ve now seen in every trailer has come at last.
Sure, Arondir, Bronwyn, Theo, and the rest of the Southlanders may have been meandering around the Elven watchtower for the past 3 episodes, which would have given them more than enough time to escape, but that doesn’t matter now.
All that matters is the decisive battle to determine the fate of the Southlands as less than half of two dozen peasants prepare to fight nearly 100 orcs. Wait, what? Why is there only 20 Southlanders in all of the Southlands? Did the rest find better housing in Gondor or something? And, yes, I know Gondor doesn’t exist yet.
In all seriousness, is the entirety of the Southlands really that unpopulated that only a handful of small villages makes up the entire population density? Even with the villages the Orcs burned and destroyed, the Southlands should still have at least another 2-10 thousand more people.
Where is everybody?
Anyway, the battle starts off with the orcs and Adar storming the Elven watchtower…only to find it empty. As the confused orcs search for any remnants of villagers, Arondir, who was hiding a few feet from the tower, burned through the wooden support beams and brought the huge, heavy, stone behemoth down on the heads of the orcs and Adar.
What about the Southlanders? Where were they? Well, they somehow ended up sneaking behind the orcs and were watching the events unfold from the safety of the village. Don’t ask me how they did that.
Anywho, that was a quick battle, right? All the orcs are dead and buried under hundreds of pounds of stone and gravel as the tower not only collapsed on top of their heads, but the whole watchtower’s collapse caused a rockslide that engulfed the entire orc party.
How could they recover from that?
Well, they did, pretty quickly actually. But not before Bronwyn and the Southlanders headed back to the village to grab weapons and build fortifications.
Why the Southlanders didn’t take the superior Elven weapons from the superiorly defended watchtower is beyond me. With the only entrance to the tower being the front gate, it would have made more sense to just defend there and form a chokepoint rather than defending an undefended, unwalled village.
But this is Rings of Power, so all the story logic was thrown out of the writer’s room window.
So, getting back to the story, as the Southlanders are preparing to fight the second wave of orcs, Arondir resolves to hide the evil blade where no one, even Bronywn, could find it. This was a very good idea by Arondir as the armies of Adar were hell-bent on finding that blade for their nefarious purposes.
It’s a good thing he buried it deep underground in the middle of the woods….wait, what was that? Arondir didn’t bury it in the middle of nowhere where not even the orcs could find it? He just stuck it under a stone tile in the tavern, which is where everyone in the village ended up staying during the assault?
And Theo, even though it was never foreshadowed or hinted at in this episode at all (yes, I rewatched the early scenes to verify this), somehow knew where Arondir buried it?
Yup, the showrunners and writer’s curse of plot contrivances struck again as not only did Arondir pick the one spot in all of Middle Earth where both the Southlanders and orcs would end up fighting, but also that Theo somehow learned of this location and conveniently told the orcs when his mother’s life was threatened.
Alright, I got a bit ahead of myself. That whole situation arises because the orcs end up assaulting the town, broke through the crudely built defenses, captured everyone hiding inside the tavern, and then Adar threatened an injured Bronwyn’s life in order for Arondir to give up the location of the evil blade. And that’s when Theo gives up its location.
(Amazon-Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power-SDCC Trailer)
Everything about that battle was just SUPER CONTRIVED. Why didn’t Arondir hide the blade literally anywhere else besides the tavern? How did Theo know of its location? How did Adar know that Arondir was in love with Bronwyn and use her life as bait? Why did the Southlanders immediately stop fighting when the orcs broke into the taverns? I really could go on forever.
But I won’t as this is where the heroes of Numenor discovered the most OP item in all of Middle Earth…fast travel.
Forget the One Ring, the Similarils, or this evil blade, a band of 500 Numenoreans, Galadriel, Isildur, Elendil, and Queen Regent Miriel discovered the ancient arts of fast travel as they were able to sail across the ENTIRE GLOBE in just 30 minutes.
Does anyone still doubt that this show has horrible pacing problems?
Of course, our dear, combative Galadriel and her company of Numenoreans were able to reach the inner Southlands just in time to save the villagers from being completely slaughtered as the Numenoreans somehow found this backwoods village out of the thousands of acres of land.
My one compliment of this scene is the Numenoreans’ armor. I can’t help but love the white-scale design as it just looks awesome.
Getting back to the story, Adar tried fleeing with the evil blade, but Halbrand and Galadriel rode him down and stopped him in his tracks. There is obviously some sort of connection between Adar and Halbrand as when the ‘Southlander King’ (I still think he’s someone else) caught him, he asked Adar if he remembered who he was.
When the corrupted Elf said ‘no’, he immediately drove down his spear towards his neck…but was stopped by Galadriel as she wanted to question him about Sauron’s plot and the evil sword. Given that Galadriel got Adar to reveal that he is not only a corrupted Morgoth elf, but also got him to reveal that he ‘killed Sauron by splitting him in two’, I think Halbrand is one half of the Dark Lord hiding in plain sight.
Why else would he be so mad with this low-level Morgoth crony if he didn’t kill his family/loved ones?
Okay, wrapping up, Galadriel went completely insane in her interrogation of the corrupted elf as she threatened to hunt down and murder every last one of his kind before killing him out of spite. In fact, Adar said the best line of the series to date when he told Galadriel to ‘look in the mirror’ for the Dark Lord.
Finally, someone else agrees with me. What is wrong with these showrunners? Why are they actually making Galadriel look worse than Sauron, the orcs, and Morgoth combined? Do they know that she’s supposed to be one of the GOOD Elves?
I’m beginning to doubt that they actually read Tolkien’s books as they have so profusely claimed.
Nonetheless, the episode ends with Theo and Arondir talking about how Theo needs to let go of his desire for the evil sword by giving it to the Numenoreans directly. That’s kind of a strange way to kick an obsession, but ok, I guess. Anyway, when Theo opens the rag that the sword has been kept in thus far, it is revealed to hold just a wooden axe.
Yes, Galadriel and Halbrand were fooled by the old “McGuffin has been switched out” cliche. It turns out that, in the confusion of the Numenorean attack, Adar switched the blade with the wooden axe and gave it to that creepy old guy who defected last episode. And, when Galadriel and Halbrand took the clothed weapon from him, they didn’t bother to check it.
(Amazon-Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power-SDCC Trailer)
How typical.
This creepy old guy somehow managed to sneak past the Numenoreans and reach a ruined monument (in the middle of nowhere, mind you) and placed the sword into a ‘swordkey’ that released a huge waterfall into the tunnels the orcs have been digging all season long.
Furthermore, these tunnels actually ended up leading to this huge volcano that nobody knew about and when the cold water crashed against the magma, the volcano erupted and sent a huge pyroclastic flow and rock shower into the faces of Galadriel, the Numenoreans, and the Southlanders.
Pretty stupid, right? I think a toddler could have thought of a more coherent plotline than that.
Rings of Power has just been an utter waste ever since Episode 3. The plotline of this show has fallen off Mount Doom and into the fires of stupidity and contrivance as this episode just cemented in my mind that J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay wrote this show all in under an hour. Did this script even get a second read-though before production?
These two are really giving Dan Weiss and Davd Benioff a run for their money in stupidity.
And, to be honest, the CGI volcano looked worse than the one in the movie Pompeii. First, a pyroclastic flow/blast would incinerate anyone and anything in its path in a matter of moments. Second, volcanos don’t shoot off small rocks like a catapult would, Amazon. It’s an explosion that blast huge chunks of rock indiscriminately, regardless of what’s in its path.
Just because she’s Galadriel it doesn’t mean that the rues of physics, even in a fantasy world, don’t apply to her.
(Amazon-Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power-SDCC Trailer)
Everyone who was standing in that village should have died in an instant as the Romans of Pompeii did when the pyroclastic flow hit them.
For those reasons, this episode is getting a 3.5/10. The plot was downright stupid, but so too was the CGI. And, for a show that spent $1B on CGI to have worse volcano CGI than a bad, 8-year-old film, that’s a huge indictment on the care and craft going into this production.
(PS: I’m sick and tired of hearing these actors fake, over-emphasized Elven and Numenorean accent. If this show was decent, this wouldn’t’ bother me in the slightest. But given how bad the plot and the characters actually are, it’s just the icing on a cake of garbage for me.)
Images Source: Featured Image: (Amazon) (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power – Official Trailer | Prime Video – YouTube)
In Text Image 1: (Amazon) (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power – SDCC Trailer – YouTube)
In Text Image 2: (Amazon) (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power – SDCC Trailer – YouTube)
In Text Image 3: (Amazon) (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power – SDCC Trailer – YouTube)
