The Ents are one of the most beloved creatures in Tolkien’s legendarium, because they stand for peace, nature, and a love of things that grow rather than a need for fire and destruction as many races in Middle Earth possess. The original Rings of Power trailer showed a brief glimpse of these ancient beings, which got fans very excited about the prospect of exploring some of the lore surrounding the shepherds of the forest, but unfortunately this same brief glimpse was all that was shown within the series itself too. This has led to many questions and discussions surrounding whether or not season 2 of the Amazon show will finally give fans a long-awaited exploration of their origin story.
Already in Rings of Power, the writers and directors of the show have touched upon the importance of trees among the elven race, both with the desperate acquisition of Mithril to heal the Lindon leaves that are sick and dying, and also with the pain that Arondir feels as he is forced to cut down the tree by the orc army that enslaves him in the early part of the season. And it is known from the Lord of he Rings that at some point in Middle Earth history, the elves began ‘waking up the trees and teaching them to speak.’. So, surely it can only be a matter of time until these significant events begin to culminate in the portrayal on-screen of these trees who can talk, and their guides who keep them safe in the quickly mechanizing world.
This becomes especially prevalent when considering that the Rings of Power series is set to portray the Battle of the Last Alliance during its future series, and this battle is believed to have had a huge part to play in the Entwives disappearing. According to Tolkien’s lore, The Entwives began to travel east during the Second Age of the world, so that they would pass on their teachings and their love of flowers, vegetables, and moss, to the men and the hobbits of Middle Earth.
They did this to honor Yavanna, the Valar who is responsible for nurturing and thriving the natural world. She is the Valar who Arondir tells Bronwyn about when he teaches her the significance of the Alfirin seeds, and she is the patreon of the Ents and their wives. After the fall of Morgoth, when the Entwives first went east, their gardens were said to hve blossomed into full and beautiful lands where they raised their Entings and lived in harmony with the surrounding races. This is roughly the point in time at which the current Rings of Power series has just finished, especially considering that many fans are convinced that the Ent seen fleetingly in the first episode was holding the hand of an Enting child.
However, the revelation of Sauron is the start of disaster for these peaceful beings, because Sauron’s growing strength and spreading of evil is what is thought to have destroyed the Entwives just before the start of the Third Age. The Battle of the Last Alliance is an amalgamation of the forces of king Gil-galad and his elven army, paired with Elendil and Isildur, who lead an army of men from Pelargir which will later become the Lord of the Rings kingdom of Gondor. These combined forces march to the site that will later become the Dead Marshes to meet Sauron at war, a war that rages for over seven years. And within that time, there are many casualties before Isildur cuts the ring from Sauron’s finger.
These casualties are thought to include the Entwives, because their beautiful gardens were suspected to have grown on the lands around the River Anduin. These lands were burned to a crisp by Sauron in a raging fire that he sent for miles, in order to make them impassible by the Alliance marching against him, and prevent them from crossing the river. During the blaze, it is entirely possible that the Entwives couldn’t escape, and were caught in the middle of this war that was never theirs.
This patch of land where their gardens once grew strong and beautiful is now known as the Brown Lands, because of the scorches on the earth that will never heal. The Entwives deaths were never confirmed, which is why the Ents still search for them, believing them only to have gone missing, and why Treebeard asks Merry and Pippin if they have seen any in their lands. But the fact that they haven’t been around for over a thousand years, and that there have been no new Entings born in all that time suggests that this terrible theory about their death may be true. If they were not burned during the Battle of the Last Alliance, this remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of Tolkien’s works. So maybe the next series will detail more of the Ents and their search for their long-lost loves.