‘THE RINGS OF POWER’: WHO IS ADAR? HAVE WE SEEN SAURON YET?

‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ introduces us to Adar, the villain of his first season, but who is he? What relationship does he have with Sauron?

If you were left wanting more after traveling through our map of ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power , and you already know everything about Númenor, the island of the great men, we review everything we know that Adar, the mysterious villain of the first season of the Amazon Prime Video series that returns us to Middle-earth.

As we saw in the last chapter, and we reflect in our who’s who in ‘The Rings of Power’ , Adar has been presented to us as the leader of the orcs who, without clarifying his relationship with Sauron, is clearly equivalent to the first great antagonist of the story but what do we really know about him?

Adar: what is already known

Adar is the leader of the group of orcs that, little by little, is taking over the Southern Lands, the region occupied by humans, heavily guarded by the elves who do not forgive those who did not fight on their side hundreds of years before. . This is where we meet Arondir, the wood elf who, before finishing his long watch, discovers that evil lurks underground, delaying his retirement but allowing him to extend his romance with Bronwyn a little longer.

In its idyllic landscapes, which Sauron plans to turn into that insidious quagmire that we will later know as Mordor, is where an Arondir prisoner finally meets Adar, an enemy at the height of the epic that the series proposes and who is presented under a a name which, in elvish, literally means “father” .

Joseph Mawle, the actor who plays him and whom we know for having been Benjen Stark in ‘ Game of Thrones ‘, appears in the production dressed in sinister clothing, pointed ears and skin full of burns, which the experts seem to have led to. to conclude that it is a dark elf, those eldar who succumbed to the charms of Morgoth and now fight on the opposite side to their brothers.

“Why do the orcs call you father?” Arondir wonders. ” You have been told many lies. Some are so deep-rooted that even the stones and roots believe it “, Adar replies. “Unraveling all of that would require the creation of a new world. And only gods are capable of that. And I’m no god. At least not yet… Not yet.”

Adar, a Tolkien dark elf?

There are two known dark elves in Tolkien’s legendarium. On one side is Eöl, a First Age blacksmith who, after developing a black alloy known as gallon, murdered his wife, cursed his son, and was sentenced to death.

On the other, we have precisely his offspring, Maeglin, the Tolkien character who has the most ballots to be hidden under the pseudonym Adar. As twisted as his father, Maeglin was raised by his uncle in Gondolin, fell in love with his cousin, and joined Morgoth so that the incestuous and forbidden relationship would prevail as he seized rule of the city. . Unfortunately (for him), Gondolin was taken and he was thrown off a cliff and into flames.

Can Adar be Sauron?

By proxy, of course you can. Sauron is a shapeshifter and will be directly involved in the plot of the series but, if we take into account his role as an infiltrator, it doesn’t make much sense for him to hide among orcs and present himself to us already.

In Tolkien’s canon, the return of Morgoth’s lieutenant at this time occurs under the identity of Annatar, the lord of gifts, a supposed envoy of the gods who will trick the elves and end up convincing Celebrimbor to forge one more ring. of which he intended to build.

Adar could indeed be the future body of the dark lord. That “I’m not a god. At least for the moment… Not yet”, makes us think of a deal with Sauron to be his future bearer but, on the other hand, it would be a lost opportunity for the creators of the series to play introduce us to a presumably neutral character who ends up discovering himself as Sauron himself.

Although at the moment everything is speculation, our bets after seeing the fourth chapter would focus on defending Adar as Sauron’s new right-hand man, a dark elf willing to burn Middle-earth for his lord .