Episode 6 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is now streaming on Prime Video, and "Udûn" finally revealed the backstory of the mysterious villain known as Adar.
"Adar" is the Sindarin word for father, which suggested that the Orcs saw their leader as more of a paternal figure. J.R.R. Tolkien's original history of Middle Earth claimed that Morgoth captured some Elves right after their "awakening" and used dark magic and other twisted means to create a new form of life that would be loyal only to him.
Tolkien would later revise this part of the lore to make the Elves incorruptible, but we found out that the Orcs' original origin did carry over to Rings of Power when Galadriel captured and questioned the enemy commander.
Adar admits that he was indeed one of the first Elves, taken by Melkor and transformed into one of the first Orcs. He refers to himself as an "Uruk," which was the name later given to the "Great Orcs" bred by Saruman in Peter Jackson's trilogy (Sauron created them in the Third Age in Tolkien's novels).
Adar claims to have killed Sauron himself in order to free his "children" and find them a home in the Southlands. Galadriel doesn't believe him, but Adar doesn't seem to have any love or loyalty to The Dark Lord, so perhaps he's telling the truth?
Either way, Adar's plan is put into action when Waldreg uses the sword hilt as a key to open the floodgates and awaken the volcano in Mount Doom, covering the lands that will soon come to be known as Mordor in fire and ash.
Will more of these Uruks emerge, or is Adar the last of his kind? Is he really an enemy of Sauron, or has he been doing his bidding all along? We'll just have to wait and see how these last two episodes play out.