The premiere of ‘Udûn’ has been a revolution for ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’. It is true that we had already had important details such as everything related to mithril, but the end of this episode has taken everything to another level by tell us an essential event for the future of Middle-earthwithout which ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings’ would never have existed.
Beware of spoilers from here.
The origin
Those who have already seen the episode will surely remember that Adar’s plan was to erupt a vowel in the Southlands. That leads to an impressive denouement that will take many lives and territories ahead. The problem is that the volcano in question is vital in the history of this universe, since it is the Mount of Destinyso we could talk about this chapter as if it were his origin story.
Mount Doom is where Sauron will end up forging the One Ring., the same one that Bilbo recovered from Gollum’s hands in ‘The Hobbit’ and that Frodo received the mission to destroy in ‘The Lord of the Rings’. An object of incalculable power that represents the tremendous power of Sauron and controls the other Rings of Power that the title of the Amazon series alludes to and that will be given to humans, dwarves and elves.
Mount Doom is also located in Mordor, the lair of Sauron and his tremendous army of orcs, so that wave of destruction that he has unleashed in the Southlands is only the first step towards those territories being controlled by Sauron. Now we will have to see how long it takes to take over the area and corrupt it.
What is Udun?
By the way, the title of the chapter is not a coincidence either, since Udûn is a place that we could already see in ‘The return of the king’, since it is about a plain that gives access to Mordor on its western sidebeing because Frodo and Sam passed through disguised as orcs during their journey to destroy the One Ring.
Also, Udûn has other meaningssince in the Sindarin language it translates as hell or dark pitbut it is also another way of referring to Utumno, Morgoth’s first stronghold, being destroyed after the defeat of the previous Dark Lord of Middle-earth. Everything indicates that its use as a chant by the orcs implies that the great objective of Adar was to create a new Utumno.
The next logical step in the series is the revival of Sauron.whose identity remains an enigma, but the eruption of Mount Doom is the ultimate proof that his arrival is just around the corner. In Espinof: