Female Ents? The Rings Of Power Risks Breaking A Lord Of The Rings Taboo

The history of the Ents carries one of the longest-standing mysteries in J.R.R. Tolkien’s mythology, and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is coming close to solving it. Middle-earth’s lumbering, sentient trees played a major part in The Two Towers, assisting Merry and Pippin in overthrowing Isengard and defeating Saruman. The Ents made a very brief cameo in Amazon’s The Rings of Power season 1, but enjoy much greater prominence in season 2. With Adar’s orcs rampaging over the south of Middle-earth and the Southlands now transformed into Mordor, the Ents are on the attack.

One notable difference, however, is that The Rings of Power season 2 incorporates the Entwives, females of the wooden species. In The Lord of the Rings, Treebeard commented on the absence of the Entwives, telling his hobbit companions, “We lost them… We lost them and we cannot find them.” While Tolkien’s writings acknowledge the existence of female Ents, therefore, some mysterious event caused them to disappear, leaving their male counterparts perplexed for thousands of years thereafter. With the Entwives now involved in The Rings of Power‘s Second Age timeline, answers may finally be imminent.

Tolkien Kept The Entwives’ Disappearance Mysterious

Divorce Is An Expensive Business In Middle-earth

The Lord of the Rings and other writings by J.R.R. Tolkien deliberately avoided revealing the fate of the Entwives. Even questioned about the matter directly by Naomi Mitchison (Letter #144), the author only offered speculation as to what might have happened to Middle-earth’s female Ents. In his letter, Tolkien did stress, “What had happened to them is not resolved in this book,” and he compared the Entwives to the ambiguity surrounding Tom Bombadil in The Lord of the Rings, alluding to how both of these two unexplained elements are by design open to interpretation.

Tolkien offered some possible explanations, positing that the Entwives were wiped out by Sauron’s scorched earth tactics during his war against the Last Alliance of Elves & Men at the end of the Second Age. However, the author also suggested some Entwives might’ve fled to avoid such disaster, or even been enslaved and taken far away from their homes. On the topic of whether the Entwives would ever reunite with their Enthusbands after The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien concluded, “I hope so. I don’t know.”

It is, of course, impossible to presume the intentions of Tolkien completely, but not revealing what happened to the Entwives in his literary works was evidently a deliberate decision. To then avoid providing a straight answer in his correspondence further suggests Tolkien wished to keep the Entwives’ story vague. The Rings of Power season 2, having introduced the Entwives and started working toward the War of the Last Alliance, finds itself on the precipice of showing what became of Middle-earth’s female ents in very literal terms, which risks removing the veil Tolkien intentionally left in place.

The Problem With The Rings Of Power Answering The Entwives Mystery

Some Questions In The Lord Of The Rings Should Remain Unanswered

The debate over whether The Rings of Power should or should not reveal what became of the Entwives is about more than just honoring Tolkien’s original intentions. When Treebeard discussed the Entwives being “lost” in The Lord of the Rings, his words conjured fascinating images of giant trees suddenly vanishing from the forest without explanation, creating a mystery unsolved for over 3000 years. Such an unlikely and wondrous event contributes to the fantasy of Middle-earth and the sheer wonder of the universe Tolkien crafted.

Just like the identity of Tom Bombadil, the legend of the Entwives is more powerful than a factual explanation would be. The notion that something made countless trees become “lost” turns the cogs of imagination and speaks to the danger of wandering through the ancient forests of Middle-earth. Tolkien’s explanation that the Entwives were probably burned alive by Sauron’s forces is perfectly logical and, consequently, quite mundane. Like any great myth being debunked, the answer pales in comparison to the mystery.

It also remains to be seen how Tolkien’s proposed solution would work alongside Treebeard’s words in The Lord of the Rings. The Ent insisted his species’ female contingent was lost, rather than dead, and he admonished the hobbits for saying otherwise. More importantly, Treebeard confirmed the Ents had no knowledge of where the Entwives went. It’s hard to fathom quite how Sauron could burn through most of the female Ent population and the males would never discover what happened, which poses an obstacle for The Rings of Power to overcome if it attempts to untangle the riddle.

Looking at the drawbacks and challenges of showing Sauron’s Entwives massacre, it becomes clear why Tolkien might have avoided concrete answers. The author was hardly a stranger to penning detailed explanations for even the most minute events in Middle-earth history, but addressing the Entwives’ fate would only open the door to further questions – chiefly, why the Ents never realized their wives were burned to death. Even worse, Tolkien would have been pulling back the curtain on something that makes Middle-earth feel mystical, perilous, and packed with historical intrigue.

The Rings Of Power Has Plenty Of Other Tolkien Mysteries To Solve In Season 2

More Suitable Corners Of Middle-earth Lore Remain Unexplored

A sizable chunk of The Rings of Power season 1 was dedicated to providing a backstory for Mordor. The formation of Sauron’s land was never addressed in Tolkien’s legendarium, but not because it was some great enigma wrapped into the fabric of Middle-earth. It was simply a chapter the author never covered and, as such, The Rings of Power filling the gap made perfect sense. Something similar is already happening with the Shire’s origin in The Rings of Power season 2, as it appears Sadoc Burrows’ ancestor first envisioned the idyllic hobbit realm and ventured west to find it.

The identities of the nine kings who become The Lord of the Rings‘ Nazgûl is another great example of this. Their names are not deliberately obscured in Tolkien’s mythology – one is actually revealed as Khamûl the Easterling – but the books simply don’t fill out the rest of those black name tags. The Rings of Power can take advantage of that, and it’s highly likely that audiences will know at least some of the Ringwraiths’ identities by the time the show ends.

This is when The Rings of Power is at its best. Rather than attempting to provide answers to questions Tolkien intentionally left unsolved, the Amazon show fares much better when adding chapters the original author simply omitted, of which there are plenty. In this way, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power would feel more like a complement to Tolkien’s story than a contradiction.