Within all the Rings of Power trailers that have been released so far, there have been tantalizing glimpses of new and never before seen creatures. One of the best things about the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit is the wonderful array of creatures, from Ents to Balrogs to Giant Eagles to skin-changers and many more, and it looks like the new Amazon TV series will not disappoint in this regard either.
With other popular fictional universes bringing out whole trilogies based on the mythical creatures of their lore (such as Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them), fans of Tolkien’s legendaruim are excited by the possibility of the franchises very own Magical Creatures Grimoire. Here are just a few of the beasts spotted in the trailers who could enhance such a series.
Giant Woodland Mammals
Many of these scenes are just very quick snippets, with little information about the creatures they contain. One such shot is of two human men walking along the plains of Middle Earth wearing what appear to be giant moose antlers. In the foreground there is a Harfoot disguised in straw, who sends a warning signal to her people that here are humans close by.
This this strange adornment of antlers could point towards a new and unusual creature existing in the woods, who perhaps went extinct when the war of the Second Age wiped out many of the lands and forests of the world. Thranduil himself rides into battle upon a giant Elk, and there are also giant spiders in Mirkwood, so perhaps these large creatures were far more common before Sauron's reign.
Birds of Valinor
There is an iconic scene in the trailer that has caused much speculation around the elves and their attempt to sail back to Valinor. In the scene, the elves can be seen gathered aboard a golden ship that this pointed in the direction of a beam of light bursting through the clouds. From aboard the ship, Galadriel watches a flock of mystical white birds fly towards the light. Galadriel is known in the Lord of the Rings for her affiliation with swans, and the carved wooden boats in Lothlorien reflect this, but perhaps they were never swans at all.
These birds in the Rings of Power trailer are clearly something far less earthly, and come from the golden lands of Valinor rathe than Middle Earth itself. As they fly, their elongated tail feather streaks in the wind behind them like a silver banner. It is thought that these birds may be a sacred emblem of the undying lands, and could have a significant role in Galadriel’s redemption.
Ent-wives / Entings
Another sneaky glimpse has already informed viewers that Ents will be around during the Second and Third Ages of the Rings of Power series. But according to Tolkien’s law, this is a crucial time period for the tree-herders. This is when they lost the Ent-wives, and no more Entings came into existence.
As per Tolkien’s canon, the Ent-wives had a love of small plants, and moved away over the world to the brown-lands, where they made beautiful gardens, grew fruits and flowers, and looked after all manner of small creatures of the forest. But during the Second Age, when Sauron takes over, their gardens were destroyed, and they went missing, never to be seen again. Perhaps the closing shot of the latest trailer, in which Arondir is dragged backwards into a copse of roots, by some very earthy looking hands, could be a glimpse of the Entings. Admittedly, these hands do move very quickly for an Ent species, and do look strangely humanoid, minus what appear to be claws. However, the thick root system from which they emerge has led people to make a connection with the tree-herders of old.
Snow Troll
Probably the most obvious and beastly looking of all the trailer creatures shown so far is the giant troll that Galadriel faces off against in the ice caves of the mountains. The creature is believed to be a snow-troll, something akin to the trolls used to attack the company in the Mines of Moria during the Fellowship of the Ring.
The creature has the same large built, thick shoulders, gray skin, strong arms and beaded eyes, but also has an unusual mouth and some form of tusks, showing that it is a much earlier ancestor than the trolls shown in either of Peter Jackson’s trilogies.
Sea Serpent
It is already known from seeing the devastation that Smaug the terrible causes in Lake Town during The Hobbit, that there are dragons in Middle Earth. However, what some may not know is that some of these dragons were water-born, such as the giant sea-serpent whose tail can be seen flicking behind Galadriel in the most recent teaser as she swims desperately away from what appears to be a shipwreck in the distance.
The serpent is huge, and clearly capable of causing extreme damage. Fans everywhere are interested to see what part these creatures will play in the Rings of Power, and what happened to them for them to have disappeared by the time the Frodo’s quest for the ring starts in the Third Age.