Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
After Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and Halbrand (Charlie Vickers) stop Adar (Joseph Mawle) from escaping in the latest episode of The Rings of Power, they bring him back to the Southlander’s village for an interrogation. Galadriel questions him about his background as she’s already able to deduce a lot of his history just by looking at him. It’s through his responses, though, that viewers can learn the most about what made Adar the way he is and how his Uruk children came to be as well. Despite Adar being an original character to the show, what he went through to become one of the Moriandur, as well as how the rest of the Uruk were created is directly from J.R.R. Tolkien’s lore.
Morgoth Kidnaps Elves to Corrupt
In Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, readers learn how Morgoth would imprison some of the earliest elves in Middle-earth in order to create servants for an army. He coveted the creator Eru Ilúvatar's ability to create life from nothing and, since he could never have that ability, he took some of the lives Ilúvatar had created and twisted them to the core of their beings through indescribable torture and dark magic. When Morgoth is first captured and imprisoned, Sauron maintains his power in the northern fortress of Angband and the number of orcs serving the Dark Lord multiply exponentially. Despite creating other dark creatures like trolls and dragons, the orcs Morgoth brought into existence built up the majority of their army because of their ability to multiply so quickly. During Middle-earth’s last battle against Morgoth, the amount of orcs fighting against the alliance of men and elves was simply uncountable.
The Different Types of Orcs
In Tolkien lore, there were a few different types of orcs, which served specific purposes. The belief is that the different types of torture and dark magic he used resulted in different types of orcs. The lowest class of orc are the laborers called Snaga, which in the black speech of Mordor translates to “slave” or “servant.” This is the most common type of orc, and is usually put on the front lines of battle, since they are seen as disposable. The next type of orc are the Snufflers, named for their broad noses and their keen ability to track any prey. Another type of orc that is only ever mentioned in The Hobbit was the Hobbgoblin, but the way they are described indicates they’re just a larger version of Snaga. A version of orc that fans of The Lord of the Rings movies will recognize are the Uruk-hai, which don’t exist until Sauron creates them in the Third Age. Uruk is the word for “orc” in the black speech, and hai means “folk”. These Uruk-hai are created to be able to travel easily in sunlight and move faster than their orc cousins,
The Revelations of Adar
When Adar is chained up in the barn and Galadriel is interrogating him, he reveals a lot of the origin story of the orcs. Before he speaks, though, Galadriel shares what she can tell based on her observations alone. Based on his age and the minimal physical deformities, she deduces that he must be one of the first orcs created by Morgoth, the Moriandur, which is an ancient elvish word meaning “Sons of the Dark”. These original dark elves were somehow able to retain enough of their intelligence to do the important work the Dark Lord was asking of them. Adar focused solely on the creation of orcs, and his attentiveness to the orcs themselves is how he gained the name Adar, which in ancient elvish means “Father”.
In the narrative that The Rings of Power builds around Adar, it would seem that serving Sauron has its limits. Adar describes Sauron after Morgoth's defeat as obsessed with bringing order to chaos in Middle-earth. In Angband, Sauron was regrouping Morgoth’s forces and making plans for his next moves. It was Sauron’s further experiments on his children to discover how to gain complete control over others that pushed Adar over the edge. Adar claims to have “split” Sauron open and killed him. Even knowing that Sauron hasn’t been completely killed, viewers should keep in mind that everything Adar is doing could be with the mindset that he is at the top of the darkness hierarchy. Through his leadership, his greatest hope was that they could find a land to call home. Galadriel finds this unacceptable, and tells Adar that the Uruk have “hearts that were created by Morgoth”, but Adar reminds her that they were created by the same god that created all things, including herself. His philosophy is that all creatures created in Middle-earth deserve a home, and his plan is a means to that end.