Rings of Power season 2 is a win for better gender representation in Middle-earth
polygon.comThe prequelization of pop culture has become so common it’s nearly a parody in and of itself. Do we really need to know how Han got the last name Solo? Why Poirot grew a mustache? That Cruella de Vil’s mom was murdered by dalmatians?
But this doesn’t mean that there are no soft places in the stories we know that are worth exploring, and there are about a million of those in Middle-earth. And With this week’s San Diego Comic-Con trailer for season 2 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, we’ve just seen a new one.
[Ed. note: This is your cue to go watch the trailer before we talk about what was in it.]
Oft I have cried: “Hey, Rings of Power, show me an Entwife! You could do it! You’re in the right time period!”
And lo, Rings of Power has answered: Here you go.
Specifically, the show has answered with this lovely, blossom-covered lady with her knothole eyes, her lip-less tree mouth slit, and unmistakably female voice as she slowly, slowly intones, “Forgiveness takes an age.”
An Entwife! We are so back.
I mean it’s really what it says on the tin. They’re the other half of the Ent species, a whole race of tree women to compliment the tree men. They’re touched on only briefly in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, but in Tolkien’s books, they’re a steady presence — in mentions, anyway — anytime characters are talking to an Ent.
Right from the moment Merry and Pippin meet him, Treebeard shows a great interest in the Shire and its countryside, because it sounds like a place Entwives might have settled. He mentions that the Ents haven’t been able to produce any young Entings in many years (which, as Ents count time, is basically an eon), because of the loss of the Entwives.
“How very sad!” Pippin replies politely in The Two Towers. He asks “How was it that they all died?”
“They did not die!” Treebeard replies. “I never said died. We lost them, I said. We lost them and we cannot find them.”
Over the course of three pages and a recited
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