Adar was inspired by a surprise Alfred Hitcock movie, Rings of Power showrunners reveal

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Warning: The following contains spoilers for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power episode 7! Turn back now if you have not seen the latest installment in Amazon's epic series.

Adar, the villain of The Rings of Power's first season, is something quite new in Middle-earth. While Tolkien wrote about the origins of Orcs – that they were once Elves twisted by the evil Morgoth – the author never detailed what one of those ancient creatures would look like. However, the showrunners behind Amazon's new series took Tolkien's words as inspiration to create the creature who haunts The Southlands in The Rings of Power.

During a Q&A session following a screening of The Rings of Power, Total Film asked J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay about creating Adar, and they revealed the surprising Alfred Hitchcock movie that inspired their villain.

"Tolkien talks about the creation of the Orcs, and there's a couple of different possible origin stories for them," Payne says. "The one that really felt fascinating to us was the idea that they are corrupted Elves. And so we said, 'What is that like? How does that process work? And what if we were to meet one of those Elves? Who was the first, or one of the first, and were still in Mordor?' They were the fathers of the entire Orc race and that idea felt so just pregnant with possibilities to us. As we started developing the character Adar, which literally means father, we said, 'Well, what would it be like?' You would get this ancient character who had been around, almost since the very beginning. He would have this weight of days, and years and millennia on his brow. 

"As we went to design work, we ranged all over the place, we did some that were far more Orcish and nightmarish, where he had gone