The Rings of Power episode 4 conjures a surprising form of Lord of the Rings villainy

polygon.com:

Conventional storytelling wisdom dictates that a good story needs a good villain. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay lean into this truism hard with episode 4, “The Great Wave,” pushing several new and previously established antagonists into the spotlight as the Prime Video series hits the halfway mark. It’s a move that pays off, too. Not only do The Rings of Power’s baddies prove suitably compelling in their own right, but they also further delineate the show from the J.R.R. Tolkien novels that inspired it.

New arrival Adar (Joseph Mawle) embodies the virtues of episode 4’s villain-centric approach best. Created especially for The Rings of Power, the orc leader is arguably unlike any Middle-earth evildoer we’ve encountered before — either in Tolkien’s writings or Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning big-screen adaptations. True, Adar has comparatively little screen time in “The Great Wave,” yet Payne and McKay, together with director Wayne Che Yip and writer Stephany Folsom still manage to sketch an impressively nuanced character.

Adar isn’t someone obviously corrupted by his lust for power like Morgoth, Sauron, or Saruman, nor is he driven by a pathological desire to wallow in a Scrooge McDuckian vault of gold, like Smaug. Instead, his motivations come across as disarmingly layered, particularly his cryptic remarks to Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) about Middle-earth’s history being whitewashed, which hint at a more personal agenda. Toss in Adar’s unique aesthetic (Is he an orc? An elf? Something in between?), his apparent aspirations to godhood, and Mawle’s restrained performance and he’s instantly one of The Rings of Power’s most interesting characters.

The rank-and-file orcs