A new preview has come for Amazon’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power TV series, confirming the show will curiously include female orcs.
“There’s some female Orcs that I truly loved,” executive producer Lindsey Weber said to IGN. While the new photos show off their vision of male orcs, we likely won’t see female orcs until the next trailer – or perhaps when the show premieres this fall.
It’s worth noting this addition in Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will likely make everyone upset as legendary author and Lord of the Rings creator J.R.R. Tolkien famously never explained explicitly how orcs were made – nor how they procreated, if they did at all.
In the earliest notes and appendices, Tolkien teased that orcs were “bred by Melkor” from the “subterranean heats and slime” and that their hearts were “of granite and their bodies deformed.” Later suggestions from Tolkien expanded this by saying orcs were possibly captured, tortured, and mutilated elves that were bred into a new race.
We learned, though, that only the supreme creator Eru can give life and free will to new beings – like when the dwarves were originally made from stone but later given true life from Eru. Other possible explanations from Tolkien say orcs were possibly even corrupted men, or later interbred with men (like the later Uruk-Hai), but nothing is certain.
Peter Jackson’s iconic and timeless film trilogy for Lord of the Rings directly recreated the original explanation for where orcs come from – directly bred from the slime and the rock. This also helps explain how Morgoth was able to breed hundreds of thousands of orcs in a single fortress, Angband.
Since Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power takes place in the second age with orcs having long-since been a staple foot soldier for evil, it’s confusing why Amazon is not only adding female orcs but suggesting the orcs are new and even light-skinned, from somehow not being outside.
We really don’t have anything else to go off with Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and how it will depict these female orcs, but most fans are concerned this is Amazon yet again checking off boxes for representation in the new adaptation – much like their previous castings.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is set to premiere exclusively via Amazon Prime Video on September 2nd, 2022.
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