Then a terrible realization dawns upon our heroes: Mixed in with the orcs were their own people, the ones who foolishly accepted Adar’s offer of peace in exchange for swearing fealty. The visual is as important as it is disgusting, for Arondir can’t help noticing a nearby corpse covered in the more familiar red while assessing the enemy’s casualties.
He’s saved at the last moment, but not before the orc has spilled black, viscous blood all over him. Though yet to show as much personality as some of the show’s other characters, Arondir can always be counted on for a balletic action sequence. He’s right, of course, but he failed to anticipate the trap he’s just walked into: With a few arrows and graceful movements, Arondir brings the whole place down via a booby-trapped tower as he makes his nimble escape, presumably wiping out Adar’s forces in one fell swoop. The tower is abandoned, and yet Adar is sure that Arondir remains - “I can smell him,” he tells one of his officers. Just as Saruman learned this the hard way in “The Two Towers,” Adar does in the opening moments of “Udûn.” He and his battalion of orcs and human conscripts march on Ostirith, the watchtower where Bronwyn, Arondir, and their people have taken shelter the battle promises to be a short one, with little hope of survival for the good guys, except there’s no battle at all. It would appear that having a stronger, larger army matters little when attacking a fortress in Middle-earth.
It’s the most focused episode to date, as two of the main narrative threads are conspicuous in their absence: Elrond and Durin’s odd-couple bromance and the hobbitses’ migration.
Anyone who’s been waiting for “The Rings of Power” to pick up the pace will have their wish granted by “Udûn,” an hour-long battle sequence with a few brief interludes thrown in for viewers to collect their thoughts.
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