Udûn

Plot

An army of Orcs and their leader, Adar, march on the tower of Ostirith searching for humans from the village of Tirharad. They find the tower abandoned, and Arondir triggers a booby-trap that collapses it on many of the Orcs. The humans, who are back in Tirharad, celebrate. Meanwhile, Galadriel and Halbrand make their way towards the Southlands by ship with Queen Regent Míriel of Númenor and her soldiers. Galadriel meets Isildur and learns from his father, Elendil, that Isildur's mother drowned.

Arondir attempts to destroy the broken sword that the Orcs are seeking, but is unable to with conventional tools. He tells Bronwyn that he is going to hide it as Theo watches on. Arondir helps the town prepare for the next assault. He professes his love to Bronwyn and promises a life together with her and Theo after the battle. That night, the Orcs enter Tirharad. The Southlanders trap and kill them, but soon realize that many of the enemies they just killed were actually humans who joined Adar.

Orc archers shoot at the Southlanders, killing and wounding many. The survivors retreat inside the tavern where Theo and Arondir cauterize a serious wound on Bronwyn's shoulder. Adar and the Orcs enter the tavern and demand the broken sword, killing more people and threatening Bronwyn. Theo reveals that he knows where Arondir hid the sword and gives it to Adar. The latter orders the rest of the humans to be killed, but is interrupted when the Númenóreans arrive on horseback. Adar gives Waldreg a task before attempting to flee; he is chased down and captured by Galadriel and Halbrand. The Númenóreans kill or capture the remaining Orcs.

Galadriel interrogates Adar, discovering that he is an Elf who was corrupted by the first Dark Lord, Morgoth, and turned into one of the first Orcs. He claims to have killed the second Dark Lord, Sauron, and is now focused on creating a home for all Orcs. A celebration is held where Halbrand is hailed as the King of the Southlands. Theo realizes that the broken sword is missing: Waldreg has it, and uses it to unlock the dam beside Ostirith. Water rushes through the Orcs' tunnels to the mountain Orodruin, entering a magma chamber beneath the mountain. The resulting pressure causes an eruption that covers the Southlands in lava, ash, and smoke.

Production

Development

Amazon acquired the television rights for J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954–55) in November 2017. The company's streaming service, Amazon Prime Video, ordered a series based on the novel and its appendices to be produced by Amazon Studios in association with New Line Cinema. It was later titled The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Amazon hired J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay to develop the series and serve as showrunners in July 2018. Justin Doble joined the series as a writer by July 2019, and Charlotte Brändström was set to direct two episodes of the first season by May 2021. The series was originally expected to be a continuation of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings (2001–2003) and The Hobbit (2012–2014) film trilogies, but Amazon later clarified that their deal with the Tolkien Estate required them to keep the series distinct from Jackson's films. Despite this, the showrunners intended for it to be visually consistent with the films. Amazon said in September 2019 that the first season would be filmed in New Zealand, where Jackson's films were made.

The series is set in the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before Tolkien's The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings. Because Amazon did not acquire the rights to Tolkien's other works where the First and Second Ages are primarily explored, the writers had to identify references to the Second Age in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and its appendices, and create a story that bridged those passages. The first season focuses on introducing the setting and major heroic characters to the audience. Written by Nicholas Adams, Doble, Payne, and McKay, and directed by Brändström, the sixth episode is titled "Udûn".

Writing

The showrunners wanted to explore the Second Age in surprising ways and then show an evolution to the way things are in the Third Age. An example of this is the eruption of Mount Doom which turns the Southlands into the dark land of Mordor. McKay said the writers wanted to have a "major centerpiece moment that we hoped would kind of brand the show", and said the eruption was supported by references in Tolkien's writings to the volcano going dormant for centuries and then reawakening. Environmentalism is a key theme in Tolkien's works, and the showrunners felt it was appropriate that Mordor be a corrupted version of a once beautiful land just as the Orcs are corrupted versions of Elves.

The episode depicts a plan by the Orcs and their leader, Adar, to unlock a dam and send water rushing through tunnels to set off the volcanic eruption. The mechanics of this are "loosely based" on the real world physics of what would happen if a large amount of water entered the magma chamber under a volcano, as explained by writer Gennifer Hutchison's father who is a geologist. The showrunners said the plan to ignite the volcano was put together by Sauron on the orders of the first Dark Lord, Morgoth, to create a land where their forces could retreat to in the event of defeat. Adar has co-opted that plan for his own purposes, which is to give his "children"—the Orcs—a home of their own. This aligns with Tolkien's idea that evil can only corrupt, not create, with Morgoth intending to corrupt an existing land for his forces, Sauron cruelly enlisting the Southlanders to build the dam that will one day lead to their home's destruction, and Adar "corrupting" their plans into one of his own. The writers considered beginning the episode with a cold open that showed Adar's backstory with Sauron, but they decided that there was not enough time to do the sequence justice; it was used as the cold open of the second-season premiere, "Elven Kings Under the Sky", instead. Adar prefers the term "Uruk" instead of "Orc" when referring to himself and his followers. "Uruk" is the name for Orcs in Black Speech, one of Tolkien's constructed languages. The character's preference was inspired by Adar actor Joseph Mawle, who personally disliked the word "Orc" being used on set even outside of filming. The episode's title, "Udûn", is the word for "hell" in Sindarin, one of Tolkien's Elvish constructed languages. "Udûn" later becomes the name of a valley in northwest Mordor, where the episode takes place.

Since early writing work in 2018, the writers knew that the sixth episode would be the culmination of key character arcs for the first season, including those of Galadriel, Elendil, Isildur, Arondir, and Bronwyn. The writers' room had a board tracking the season's major characters and many of them had a pink card with a volcano on it, reflecting that the eruption is the major event of the season that impacts many lives. Despite the episode being very action-heavy, the showrunners liked the quieter character scenes that it includes such as Galadriel's discussions with Isildur and Elendil, and the scene where Arondir and Bronwyn plant seeds before the battle begins. The latter is reflected by Adar doing the same at the start of the episode, showing that he still follows some Elvish customs. The seeds that Arondir and Bronwyn plant are the same seeds that Bronwyn gave to Arondir in the first episode, "A Shadow of the Past", and Arondir uses some of them later in the episode to help heal Bronwyn after she is wounded. It was important to the showrunners that the episode have strong emotional stakes rather than just be about action sequences and special effects. They felt the audience would care about the fighting because they already cared about the family of Bronwyn, Theo, and Arondir.

Casting

The season's cast includes Cynthia Addai-Robinson as Míriel, Maxim Baldry as Isildur, Nazanin Boniadi as Bronwyn, Morfydd Clark as Galadriel, Ismael Cruz Córdova as Arondir, Tyroe Muhafidin as Theo, Lloyd Owen as Elendil, and Charlie Vickers as Halbrand. Also starring in the episode are Joseph Mawle as Adar, Geoff Morrell as Waldreg, Peter Tait as Tredwill, Anthony Crum as Ontamo, Alex Tarrant as Valandil, and Phil Grieve as Bazur. Jesse Turner, Mike Homick, Robert Strange, Jed Brophy, Edward Clendon, Luke Hawker, Ellyce Bisson, Rob Mackinnon, Hori Ahipene, and Tim McLachlan play unnamed Orcs in the episode.

Filming and design

Production on episodes beyond the first two began in January 2021, under the working title Untitled Amazon Project or simply UAP, following an extended filming break that began due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Brändström first began discussing plans for the sixth and seventh episodes while she was in COVID-19 quarantine on her way into New Zealand. Virtual production allowed Brändström and cinematographer Alex Disenhof to plan the two episodes within a digital environment. They had two months of pre-production before filming started. Brändström and Disenhof were inspired more by production designer Ramsey Avery's sets and artwork than what the other directors and cinematographers had done so far, believing they could bring a fresh perspective to the series because of their episodes' unique story elements and greater focus on location shooting. Brändström felt the episodes were more like one long film, with the sixth episode being the set-up for dramatic payoffs in the seventh. They chose to play into this by focusing on Galadriel's perspective at the end of the sixth episode and again at the start of the seventh. Brändström was confirmed to be in New Zealand for production in May 2021, and her episodes were filmed across 80 first unit shooting days and 30 second unit shooting days. Much of this episode is set at night, and seven weeks of night shoots took place during New Zealand's cold, muddy winter. Filming for the season wrapped on August 2.

The Tirharad village was built on a farm near Auckland, and was exposed to the weather for several months due to the extended production break. Avery said this gave the set natural aging, including real moss. The Ostirith tower set was built on the backlot at Kelly Park Film Studios, up to 40 feet (12 m). The rest of the tower was created through visual effects. Disenhof wanted to use real fire to light the episode, including a lot of torches, and designed the moonlight to be visible but to not overpower the torch light. The torches only lasted a minute each, giving limited time for each shot to be filmed. Disenhof used overhead lighting for the moonlight and underexposed the cameras to get the right look for the night scenes. He was careful to ensure that the characters and actions were still visible in the night scenes after some recent high-profile examples of television series being too dark to see. To counter the effects of wind during the night shoots, lights were added to a truss grid that was hung from a construction crane over the village set. This allowed wind to pass through the grid and not move the lights, which would not be possible with traditional filmmaking lights. Brändström said the episode uses more hand-held cameras and Dutch angles than others in the season because of the focus on action and dramatic moments. Bronwyn wears a red cloak during the battle scenes to make her stand out and to indicate that she is a healer.

Visual effects

Visual effects for the episode were created by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Wētā FX, Method Studios, Rodeo FX, DNEG, Rising Sun Pictures, Cause and FX, Atomic Arts, and Cantina Creative. The different vendors were overseen by visual effects supervisor Jason Smith. DNEG was responsible for augmenting the action scenes, adding additional Orcs, horses, and Númenóreans to make the scenes feel more "dense". These were all based on scans of real horses and people rather than being created from scratch by the visual effects team. A shot of the Orcs crossing a bridge to the tower of Ostirith with their torches reflecting in the water was designed by Disenhof and Brändström in virtual production. They filmed the camera movement as best they could in the backlot where the tower set was built and handed that to the visual effects team to complete.

Wētā, ILM, and Rising Sun all contributed to the water and volcano effects at the end of the episode. Wētā created Ostirith and handled shots of water flowing from the dam into the Orcs' tunnels; ILM was responsible for the water inside the tunnels, using scans of the real tunnel sets, and the initial eruption; and Rising Sun created the ash cloud and falling lava in the village. The visual effects team studied real-life volcanic eruptions as reference for the sequence, including the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD and the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, as well as the more recent 2021 Cumbre Vieja volcanic eruption and the 2019 Whakaari / White Island eruption. They also looked at films that feature volcanic eruptions. Producer Ron Ames compared the episode's version to an atomic bomb. Based on their research, Smith wanted to have a clear timeline of the characters seeing the eruption, hearing it, and being hit with a shockwave. The design of Mount Doom was influenced by its depiction in Jackson's films as well as Tolkien's illustrations and descriptions.

Music

Composer Bear McCreary began work in July 2021, and started by composing the main themes for the series. He wrote an "anthem" for each culture and then created individual character themes that relate to their culture's music in different ways. The sixth episode's score brings together several of those themes for the first time, including those for Bronwyn and Arondir; Númenor in general and the Faithful Númenóreans specifically; Halbrand, which also represents the Southlands; and Galadriel. For the episode's many action sequences, McCreary said he "pushed the limits of my action music composition, employing every technique I have ever learned." He took inspiration from John Williams's music for the Indiana Jones films for Arondir's fight with the large Orc, and did an orchestral version of John Carpenter's synth music for the scene where Bronwyn is wounded.

Raya Yarbrough, McCreary's wife and frequent collaborator, contributed vocals for Bronwyn and Arondir's theme—singing in Sindarin—for when Bronwyn comforts Theo before the battle and when she is hit by an arrow during it. McCreary enjoyed the dramatic irony of having Yarbrough's voice return as a "musical ghost" for the arrow scene. For Galadriel and Halbrand chasing down Adar on horseback, McCreary wanted to underline the moment's importance by composing a new piece of music rather than using his existing character themes. This piece is called "Nolwa Mahtar", which means "Brave Warrior" in Quenya, another of Tolkien's Elvish constructed languages. It includes a choir singing in Quenya. McCreary originally intended this to be a one-off track, but he started looking for an opportunity to use it again in future episodes. When Galadriel interrogates Adar and the latter claims to have killed Sauron, McCreary chose to underline the moment with a "huge swell in the orchestra". The showrunners asked him to change this to a more subdued moment to keep the focus on Mawle's performance. In the following scene, where Galadriel and Halbrand talk, the sound mixing team found that Halbrand's theme was overpowering Vickers's dialogue. McCreary solved this by changing the scene's key instrument from a fiddle to a cello, and his team organized a last minute session to record the change. To end the episode's score, McCreary composed a "symphonic finale" with a choir singing in Quenya that accompanies the volcanic eruption.

A soundtrack album featuring McCreary's score for the episode was released digitally on the streaming service Amazon Music on September 29, 2022. McCreary said the album contained "virtually every second of score" from the episode. It was added to other music streaming services after the full first season was released. A CD featuring the episode's music is included in a limited edition box set collection for the season from Mondo, Amazon Music, and McCreary's label Sparks & Shadows. The box set was released on April 26, 2024, and includes a journal written by McCreary which details the creation of the episode's score. All music was composed by Bear McCreary:

Release

"Udûn" premiered on Prime Video in the United States on September 30, 2022. It was released at the same time around the world, in more than 240 countries and territories. For two weeks leading up to the premiere of the second season on August 29, 2024, the first season was made available for free on the streaming service Samsung TV Plus in the US, Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

Reception

Viewership

Whip Media, which tracks viewership data for the 21 million worldwide users of its TV Time app, calculated that for the week ending October 2, two days after the episode's debut, The Rings of Power was the second-highest original streaming series for US viewership behind Disney+'s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. This was a move up from being fifth-place the week before. Nielsen Media Research, which records streaming viewership on US television screens, estimated that the series was watched for 966 million minutes during the week ending October 2. This put the series in third-place on the company's list of top streaming series and films for the week, behind only Netflix's Cobra Kai and Disney+'s Hocus Pocus 2. Parrot Analytics determines audience "demand expressions" based on various data sources, including social media activity and comments on rating platforms. During the week ending October 7, the company calculated that The Rings of Power was 30.3 times more in demand than the average US streaming series, moving it up to seventh on the company's top 10 list for the week.

Critical response

Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes calculated that 87% of 30 critics reviews for the episode were positive, and the average of rated reviews was 8.3 out of 10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Focusing on a battle for the Southlands, 'Udûn' features some of the most rollicking action ever witnessed on television and delivers The Rings of Power's most conventionally satisfying episode yet."

Samantha Nelson at IGN scored the episode 10 out of 10, calling it "an absolutely extraordinary hour of television" that she compared to Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) and the battle episodes of the series Game of Thrones (2011–2019) and The Witcher (2019–present). Vulture's Keith Phipps gave the episode five stars out of five and said it was the most exciting episode of the series so far,

while Jack Shepherd of Total Film also praised the episode as the best of the series so far and gave it four-and-a-half stars out of five. Shepherd and TechRadar's Tom Power both described "Udûn" as a series-defining episode. Power gave it five stars out of five and called it "the most thrilling, triumphant, and torturous installment" of the series yet. Andy Welch, writing for The Guardian, praised the episode and said the patience of fans had been rewarded after the slow pace of previous episodes. The narrative and character focus was highlighted by multiple critics. Juliette Harrisson at Den of Geek felt there were still pacing issues with the episode, and thought the effectiveness of the action was hampered by the characters not being better established in earlier episodes, but said the series was "finally starting to really kick into gear" and gave the episode three-and-a-half stars out of five.

Phipps said the episode could not live up to the "impossibly high bar" of the Battle of Helm's Deep in The Two Towers, but said the episode's action was still impressive. He praised Brändström's staging of the battle scenes and key moments, particularly when Arondir is almost stabbed in the eye.

Shepherd said the episode's production value matched that of a feature film and the battle scenes would not seem out of place in Jackson's films.

Nelson praised the direction and choreography of the action scenes. Christian Holub graded the episode an "A-" for Entertainment Weekly and said the action worked because of the constant changes in momentum throughout the episode. Key moments that were highlighted by multiple critics include Galadriel's saddle tricks, the fight where Arondir is covered with an Orc's blood, the reveal that the humans have been killing other humans, and the arrival of the Númenórean riders which was compared to the arrival of the Rohan riders in The Two Towers. The brutal, graphic violence in some scenes was also noted. James Whitbrook at Gizmodo said the episode featured "grand action" and he would have considered it to be a "pretty solid episode" if it ended with a victory for the heroes, but was made better by the climactic eruption. Power thought the eruption would be controversial with Tolkien fans but said it worked well as a "momentous event" for the series. Welch felt the visual effects for the eruption were the most impressive put to screen.

Accolades

"Udûn" was listed as one of the best episodes of 2022 by Entertainment Weekly and Mashable.

Companion media

An episode of the official aftershow Deadline's Inside the Ring: LOTR: The Rings of Power for "Udûn" was released on October 1, 2022. Hosted by Deadline Hollywood's Dominic Patten and Anthony D'Alessandro, it features exclusive "footage and insights" for the episode, plus interviews with cast members Owen, Cordova, Clark, Vickers, Muhafidin, Baldry, and Boniadi as well as Brändström, Doble, and McCreary. On October 14, The Official The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Podcast was released on Amazon Music. Hosted by actress Felicia Day, the sixth episode is dedicated to "Udûn" and features Córdova, Payne, and McKay. On November 21, a bonus segment featuring behind-the-scenes footage from the episode was added to Prime Video's X-Ray feature as part of a series titled "The Making of The Rings of Power".