Adar’s (Joseph Mawle) clawed hand digs into the dirt to plant a collection of alfirin seeds. “New life,” he whispers, “in defiance of death.” In “Udûn,” the brutal sixth episode of Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the stakes are truly life and death. Through bloody battles, fleeting victory, and persistent tragedy, the Southlanders create new families and lose loved ones, protect their lands and see them ravaged. How can they find the light when the shadow blots out the sun?

Adar stands in front of a sea of fire, hundreds of orcs holding torches aloft in the night, with the murderous Waldreg (Geoff Morrell) in the front row. “Before this night is through, some of us will fall. For the first time, we do so not as unnamed slaves in faraway lands, but as brothers, as brothers and sisters in our home,” Adar calls out. War drums and the orc's guttural growls score their march to the elven fortress, Adar at their head. But when they push open the doors, the courtyard is abandoned.

As the orcs scour the fortress, Adar glares at the carving of the hilt and Sauron’s skeletal visage. Groveling to his “lord father,” Waldreg asks “What happened to Sauron?” Adar turns, face as stony as the carving behind him. But before he can answer, Arondir (Ismael Cruz Cordova) pops up from behind a parapet, like the most graceful whack-a-mole you’ve ever seen, to fire arrows into the orcs below and into the rope that holds the tower’s scaffolding together. He leaps down to the bridge with cat-like agility and takes off. Also cat-like? His nine lives. Beams from the scaffolding fly off the tower as the ropes snap. As Waldreg begs an impassive Adar to move, the tower finally collapses in on itself, seeming to trap Adar and his army beneath its crushing, burning weight. From the valley below, the Southlanders cheer, but Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi) knows the fight’s not done; they “have to make ready the village.” It’s not the last time their celebrations will be cut short.

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On the Sundering Seas, Númenor’s ships glide through the night. While Halbrand (Charlie Vickers) lies awake, Isildur (Maxim Baldry) rises to clean the stables and share an apple with his horse buddy Berek. He wanders up on deck, where armor-clad Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) — “Commander” to Isildur — spots him. “Humility has saved entire kingdoms that the proud have all but led to ruin,” she tells him as he admits with shame that his rank is “stable sweep.” Meanwhile, Elendil (Lloyd Owen) updates Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson). It’s a day’s sail up the river and then another day’s ride to the Southlands. She wants to make haste.

They’ll need to. Back in Southlands, Arondir hides the unbreakable hilt while the villagers booby trap their home. After a pep talk from Arondir, Bronwyn sends the fighters to their positions and Theo (Tyroe Muhafidin) into the barricaded tavern to protect those inside who can’t fight. Theo has chafed against his mother’s protection and grappled with the hilt’s influence. But now, he’s a frightened boy who just needs his mom to tell him everything will be alright. While villagers hold their loved ones, their babies, each other, she tries: “In the end, this shadow is but a small and passing thing… Find the light, and the shadow will not find you.” She clutches and kisses her own baby before they say farewell.

Arondir and Bronwyn share a moment of calm before the coming storm. He presses two of the alfirin seeds she gave him into her palm. “It is a tradition among the elves. Before a battle begins, plant one,” Arondir tells her. But she knows: “New life, in defiance of death.” Arondir places her hand on a tree and gently holds it. “The rest we shall plant after the battle is over in a new garden,” he whispers. “You and I and Theo. Together.” But words have never been this pair’s forte. When Bronwyn asks for his promise, Arondir’s only answer is to kiss her (FINALLY) in the garden they have now.

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Night. Wind. Silence. And then Arondir sees it — pinpricks of fire coming over the hill. The surviving orcs cross the bridge, and the battle commences. Burning wagons smash into the orc’s ranks, while archers on rooftops rain down arrows. Villagers with pikes rush into the fray. Arondir sinks a knife directly into an enormous orc’s face, but he gets Arondir by the throat anyway. Arondir grabs at the knife still stuck in the orc’s eye, raining black blood as it pours (and when I say “pours,” I mean POURS) out of the ruined socket. The orc turns the blade to Arondir — an eye for an eye. But before he can sink it in, Bronwyn stabs the orc from behind. They return to the sound of celebrations — the villagers have declared victory. But when Arondir looks at the bodies, he sees something strange: red blood pooling beneath a fallen orc’s helmet. He pulls it off to reveal not an orc, but a man. One by one, villagers remove animal skulls and chain-mail masks to reveal their neighbors, friends, fellow refugees. Fires dance on rivulets of blood, black and red alike, spattering the sweat-soaked Southlanders as they realize what this means.

Suddenly, arrows whistle through the air from the trees, felling Southlanders left and right — including Bronwyn. Arondir carries her to temporary safety in the tavern, where her blood drips red through the planks of the table. Theo and Arondir treat her wounds with those same seeds and a burning piece of wood. But Bronwyn falls limp and silent. For a long, long moment, they watch her lifeless face. Finally, she stirs. Theo throws an arm around Arondir, who cradles Bronwyn’s face. She and he and Theo. Together. For the moment, at least. Outside the tavern, the orcs have overrun the village, and an obviously-not-crushed Adar walks between the flames to the tavern. He asks Arondir for the hilt, but Arondir will only consider it if he lets the villagers go. In answer, an orc guts one. Then another. Then another. Adar looks to Bronwyn. Arondir still won’t break, but as a blade arcs toward her neck, Theo does.

Thunder rumbles as Adar lays his eyes on what he’s been seeking. He leaves the tavern with the hilt and a job for Waldreg, only to find that it’s not thunder: It’s the Númenorean cavalry flooding into the village. They mow down orcs with chains, swords, spears, and hooves. Theo and Arondir fight on their feet while Galadriel hangs sideways off her horse to avoid an arrow and take the head of its shooter. From the hilltop, gold-plated Míriel watches, a restless stable sweep at her side. But not for long — with her permission, Isildur races into battle. Amidst the chaos, Galadriel spies Arondir. “Soldier,” she asks, “where is their commander?” He nods to Adar, who is trying to get out of Dodge on a Númenorean horse. Galadriel takes off in pursuit, leaving a deeply star-struck Arondir and Theo in her wake.

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Galadriel chases Adar through the woods; it was suspiciously easy for him to abandon his children. Just as she catches up, Halbrand arrives and trips Adar’s horse, then skewers his grasping, ungloved hand with a spear. “You remember me?” Halbrand asks. Adar does not. “Did I cause someone you love pain?” Adar whispers, smiling cruelly. “Eat your tongue,” Galadriel spits, which is my new favorite way to say “shut your damn mouth.” But she wants Halbrand to put the spear down — she needs Adar alive.

Back in the village, the captive orcs are chained, and Númenoreans, their white scaled armor splashed with black blood, are cleaning up. Valandil (Alex Tarrant) has gotten himself and Isildur spots in Galadriel’s company hunting down escaped orcs. Sweet summer child Ontamo (Anthony Crum) has seen enough battle for his whole sweet summer life and will be staying behind to help the villagers. Meanwhile, Galadriel interrogates Adar. She heard that Morgoth tortured elves into new creatures, “the sons of the dark, the first orcs.” Adar has one note: “Uruk. We prefer Uruk.” She seeks his master, Sauron. “After Morgoth’s defeat, the one you call Sauron devoted himself to healing Middle-earth,” Adar claims. Flashes of the fortress in the snow, littered with the twisted skeletons of orcs. “For my part, I sacrificed enough of my children for his aspirations. I split him open. I killed Sauron.”

Galadriel is not buying it — nor is she moved by his parental care. She kneels to his face, light reflecting off her silver armor, and with deadly calm vows to kill every orc. “Before I drive my dagger into your poisoned heart, I will whisper in your piked ear that all your offspring are dead and the scourge of your kind ends with you.” Ice-cold, Galadriel. But Adar is unfazed. “Perhaps your search for Morgoth’s successor should have ended in your own mirror,” he taunts. Galadriel is only stopped from killing him by Halbrand’s arrival, leaving a thin ribbon of blood on his throat. Adar asks who Halbrand is, and Halbrand does not answer. Who is he, indeed?

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Galadriel and Halbrand share a tender moment by the sun-dappled stream — at least, as tender as either of them can manage. Fighting side by side felt right to them both. Back in town, the villagers celebrate properly; pipes and drums underscore an outdoor banquet and the clinking of beer mugs. Arondir guides a grateful Bronwyn to the gracious Míriel, who introduces Bronwyn to Lord Halbrand. When she spies his winged crest, she immediately leads a cheer “to the true king of the Southlands.” Halbrand smiles, seemingly free of his burden. Arondir spies Theo sitting alone, feeling both guilt and the loss of the power the hilt stirred in him. They are a family now, and Arondir trusts him accordingly: he gives Theo the wrapped hilt to deliver to the Númenoreans to toss into the sea, freeing himself from its hold. But the weight of it in Theo’s hands feels wrong. He unwraps the burlap and finds a simple ax.

At that moment, back at the crumbled watchtower, true dirtbag and my sworn enemy Waldreg stares up at the carving of Sauron’s face, the missing hilt in hand. Adar had a job for him, after all, and acted as a decoy to allow Waldreg to do it. The hilt is pulling black smoke into itself, reforging its blade from the blood of Waldreg’s arm. He plunges the remade sword into the stone; it slides in as smooth as glass and turns. The stones all around him begin to rumble, and the river erupts, spilling over bridges, and careening down the mountain.

Just as Isildur and Elendil finally share a moment of understanding in the valley, geysers explode throughout the village as the orcs chant, “Udûn.” Beneath them, the water crashes through the crude tunnels. They weren’t only a way to sneak from village to village; they were a course for a new river, leading to a green mountain reaching into the sky. The water spills into a cavern of angry red lava in the mountain’s belly, sending a new river of fire and smoke powering out of the mountaintop. Fireballs arc through the air and crash through the village, exploding the all-too-brief celebration in bursts of red and black. Elendil races for the queen; Isildur calls for Berek; Ontamo runs through the smoke. But one figure does not move. As Adar stood and watched the tower crumble, so Galadriel now stands amid the fires and destruction, watching as a wave of black and billowing smoke, shot through with blood-red, crawls down the mountain and across the grass. When her boat reached Valinor, the clouds parted and the sun blinded her. Now, the clouds of smoke blot out the sun. Now, she stands still. Now, they swallow her.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres new episodes weekly every Friday on Prime Video.