Note: Spoilers for “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” Episode 4 – titled “The Great Wave” – follow below.
Four episodes into its first season, “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”, introduced its major villain: Adar. While Sauron still lives up to the events in the prequel series, Adar poses a real, physical threat in The Southlands as the leader of the Orcs who are hunting Sauron’s Blade.
This week, Adar was revealed, and if that sounds familiar there’s good reason. Adar is played by actor Joseph Mawley, who played Benjen Stark (aka “Coldhands”) in “Game of Thrones”. Ned Stark’s brother, Benjen, appeared in the show’s first season before disappearing north of the wall and reappearing in the final season of the HBO series – albeit with a slight frostbite on his face as he begins to transform into the White Walkers. Were.
But back to Adar – who is this dude? Well, that’s not in the books, we can tell you.
Adar is clearly an elf, and Arondir (Ismail Cruz Cordova) is shocked when his gaze falls on her for good reason. In JRR Tolkien’s Middle-earth saga, the elves are known to fall prey to the “dark side”, so to speak, leading an orc army to bring a new world to Andar is a huge deal.
“You have been told many lies,” Adar tells Arondir when Arondir asks who he is. “Some run so deep that even rocks and roads believe them now. To solve it all, everyone would need to build a new world. And this is something that only gods can do. I am no god. at least not yet.”
So Adaar is an evil elf who wants to remake the world… in a very dark fashion. He even gives Arondir an ultimatum to give it to the people of the Southlands. “Your people can survive if they renounce all claims to these lands and take an oath of allegiance to it,” Arondir tells Bronwyn (Naznin Boniadi).
Does Adar know where Sauron is? Is he planning on taking an oath of allegiance to Sauron, or hoping to run things in his place? And what is Adaar’s backstory? All good questions that we hope to learn the answers to in future episodes.
