The Rings of Power does something new with orcs by going full Alien

polygon.com:

[Ed. note: This post contains light spoilers for the end of episode 2 of Rings of Power.]

In the first two episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, our glimpses of orcs are fairly limited. But even so, they’re like nothing like what we’ve seen of them on screen before. Though they’re still a threat, they’re no longer a swarm. Instead, the Amazon show is showing just how scary one of them can be.

Lord of the Rings has taken a turn into horror before, but Rings of Power carves out its own niche here. When Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi) goes to warn the townspeople that a neighboring town fell to who knows what, it feels more classically pulled from a horror movie, as her neighbors wave away her concerns as flights of fancy. But it also marks the differing relationship with the orcs: These people are a few generations removed from the last time anyone would’ve seen an orc around. And the mere idea of it seems unbelievable to them; they’re more afraid of a returning occupying force than the whispers of a myth.

And so, Rings of Power treats its orcs in these early episodes with distinction. They’re no longer the horde introduced in The Fellowship of the Ring, tumbling off a cliff in their haste to attack their enemy, but a singular, terrifying monster quietly climbing into Bronwyn’s home. The orc’s introduction has all the hallmarks of a slasher villain, received in bits and pieces: an eye through the floorboards, a hand clacking as it hits the ground, a close-up of a mouth and its grotesque tongue. We can make out its skull mask in fuzzy profile, but we only see its full monstrosity once it’s found Bronwyn hiding in the cupboard.

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The orc here still holds to the general canon — it’s a malicious creature,