How The Rings of Power episode 6’s explosive ending was brought to life
>
Full spoilers for The Rings of Power Episode 6 to follow. You have been warned.
The Rings of Power has officially arrived. Sure, the high-fantasy Prime Video show actually launched on September 2, but it took a hugely important episode to really announce itself on the prestigious TV stage.
Episode 6 is the epic and explosive entry Amazon’s Lord of the Rings TV series and audiences have been waiting for. Packed with frenetic and fraught set pieces, it tells a story with multiple twists and turns, and culminates in a stunning finale that will keep viewers jaws on the ground long after the credits have rolled.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of work went into designing and crafting Episode 6’s shocking ending. And, as fellow showrunners Patrick McKay and JD Payne told TechRadar during an exclusive preview screening, the episode’s final moments were slated to be Season 1’s tentpole moment as early as 2018.
“[It took] four years,” says McKay. “We’ve known about that series for a long time… That long.”
“When we blocked season 1, we had a whiteboard with character arcs for Galadriel, Elendil, Isildur, Arondir, Bronwyn – all the main characters in this episode,” Payne adds. “All those journeys led to this point when we finally introduced Mordor.”
That’s right, The Rings of Power episode 6 shows us how Mordor – and its iconic volcano, aka Mount Doom – eventually came to be.
Viewers had already speculated that Mordor’s introduction wasn’t too far off, with previous season 1 episodes just as teasing. In Episode 3, Galadriel and Elendil cast some old maps of Middle-earth, showing that the region known as the Southlands is right on top of where Mordor exists in JRR Tolkien’s Hobbit and Lord of the Rings novels. Adar’s orca army has been stationed in this location throughout Season 1 – an area where they dug tunnels and deforested large tracts of land – further evidence of Mordor’s eventual arrival.
Read all our Rings of Power recaps
What audiences didn’t expect is that Mordor and Mount Doom would be born so early in the series. However, those familiar with the extensive history of Lord of the Rings would have guessed that this iconic location would be part of Episode 6. The official title – Udûn – is also the name of a barren valley in the north west of Mordor, so it wouldn’t have taken much for diehard Tolkien fans to make the connection.
Still, the birth of Mordor and Mount Doom in The Rings of Power is a truly shocking and visually spectacular moment for casual Lord of the Rings fans and general public alike. So, how was the sequence developed?
The eruption of an idea
The Udûn finale was a seismic venture for everyone involved in The Rings of Power. The final edit of the explosive sequence consists of multiple VFX shots, complete with a massive volcanic eruption, scalding hot rocks raining down from the sky, a storm-fuelled ash cloud and fires that break out as the Southlands and its inhabitants are consumed by the cataclysmic event. .
Before the visually arresting effects could be added in the post, The Rings of Power’s main creative team had to ensure that events leading up to the eruption could cause the mountain – which becomes Mount Doom – to forcibly blow upwards. After all, such a movement is only possible through the collision of its huge lava pit with water from the deep reservoir of Ostilith. That happens after Southland defector Waldreg uses the sword hilt, which Adar gets back from the Southlanders in episode 6, as a key to unlock part of Ostilith’s dam. It’s a move that sends a torrent of water flowing through countless tunnels – dug by the orcs – and making its way to the ice-covered mountain, which becomes Mount Doom.
All those journeys led to this point
JD Payne, co-creator of Rings of Power
Could a combination of a huge amount of water and a gigantic pool of lava cause such an explosive eruption? According to real world science, yes.
“One of our writers knows a geologist,” Payne explains. “So we asked them if water and lava could unite to create this giant explosion, and they could. They said, ‘If you have enough steam pressure building up in a confined space, the entropy in the volcano will increase, causing blow it eventually.”
“We’ve been closely studying what really happens during volcanic eruptions,” adds VFX producer Ron Ames. “We looked at photos and read historical documents about Pompeii so we could get a clearer picture of the magnitude of these naturally occurring explosions.”
Backed by the backing of real science, The Rings of Power’s massive crew set out to create a finale that would herald the show’s epic arrival on the world stage. Typical pre-production work, such as concept art, storyboarding and site exploration, was done well before the main photography. Once those elements were in place, multiple camera crews set out to capture remote shots — sweeping and expansive landscapes, as well as close-ups — to use throughout the sequence.
“It was important for us to use real-world locations,” Ames reveals. “The actual mountain itself is based on a real location. The cliff Ostilith sits on is a real location. We went to those areas and made backdrops with helicopters. We also landed in those areas and took pictures and records. Even the water that You see in the last sequence is real – it’s just mixed in with some CGI elements to help the flow of this massive deluge as it hurtles down the valley.”
Warming up in the mail
With pre-production and the main photography in the can, the lengthy post-production process could begin.
Like many of The Rings of Power’s VFX-laden sequences, the episode 6 finale was developed by multiple animation studios. Weta Digital, who worked on Peter Jackson’s Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movie trilogies, produced the Ostilith section on the cliff. Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) created the underground sequence leading to the violent explosion. Meanwhile, Australia-based studio Rising Sun was tasked with creating the post-eruption scene, including the spewed lava rocks and fast-traveling ash cloud.
“Once all the suppliers have mixed each part together, you can’t tell where one shot starts and another ends,” Ames says. “It’s all seamlessly connected and I couldn’t be more proud of the teams who worked together to put it together and knit it. It’s one of my favorite sequences in the entire show.”
Crunching has become a hot topic of conversation in the film and TV industry, with big-budget projects — including She-Hulk: Attorney at Law on Disney Plus — and studios coming under fire for employee working conditions.
We looked at pictures and read historical documents about Pompeii
Ron Amex, Rings of Power VFX producer
Given the magnitude of this sequence and 9,500 other VFX-based shots in Season 1, it seems inevitable that The Rings of Power’s backstage crew will have to crack at some point. However, Ames was adamant that no one under his supervision should be forced to work any longer – at the expense of their physical and mental well-being – to ensure sequences like Mount Doom’s were completed on time.
“Having seen the movie industry change and being a supporter of technology, I would say that mindfulness and a burden-sharing approach are extremely important,” Ames says. “In general we didn’t work more than 12 hour days. In some cases I had to send crew members home to sleep and shower – they all worked extremely hard, but everyone had to go home, to see their family, to have weddings attending and doing everything people have to do. I think the future of filmmaking requires us to look at mindfulness in the workplace and how we can move forward in a balanced way to get the most creativity out of our artists.”
Udûn’s latest series is a visually striking sight to behold. It’s the brainchild of multiple creators and studios, all of whom have worked diligently to collaborate on The Rings of Power’s most gripping spectacle yet. “It was the creation of ILM VFX supervisor Jason Smith,” Ames says, but the countless artists, animators, renderers, and other crew members deserve equal credit for creating such a devastatingly beautiful moment in Middle-earth history.
With two more episodes in Season 1 – not to mention four more seasons of storytelling – The Rings of Power will feature more shocking, big budget series, like the episode 6 finale. Right now, though, Udûn is the explosive show-defining entry. that the Prime Video series needed – and it will take something great to appropriate it.
The first six episodes of The Rings of Power are now available to stream on Prime Video.