Rings Of Power Can Finally Solve An Old Tolkien Mystery (Here’s Why It Shouldn’t)

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will have the chance to solve an old Tolkien mystery, but there’s a good reason why it should steer clear. The Prime Video series Second-Age setting means that several big events of Middle-earth’s history are being brought to the screen for the first time. This allows Rings of Power to expand on some of the vaguer aspects of Tolkien canon, elaborating on and imagining what these years centuries before The Lord of the Rings would have looked like. Naturally, not everyone will be happy with Prime Video taking these kinds of liberties.

The Lord of the Rings fandom has been split over Prime Video’s The Rings of Power, with some believing the series has made too many changes to Tolkien’s stories while others see this as all part of the fun of exploring fiction. Tolkien’s work is uniquely fit for such expansion since he structured his stories like “found history“—it’s meant to look as if the beings of Middle-earth wrote all these stories down, and we found them thousands of years later. Just like real-world history, this means there are several unsolved mysteries, and series like Rings of Power have the opportunity to tell their own version of the “truth” and answer some of the oldest Lord of the Rings questions—but should it?

Rings Of Power Can Finally Reveal What Happened To The Entwives

One of Tolkien’s unsolved mysteries in The Lord of the Rings is the fate of the Entwives. In the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers book, Treebeard the Ent explains that all the female Ents left Fanghorn Forest during the Second Age to establish a garden in the Brown Lands. However, they never returned. Treebeard and his fellows went looking for a time but returned to Fanghorn with no definitive answers. Centuries went by, and they never discovered what had happened to the Entwives. The Lord of the Rings books and Tolkien’s other works never solved this mystery.

Given the time that the Entwives disappeared, and based on the wasteland the Ents found at the Brown Lands at the start of the Third Age, it is often assumed that the female tree guardians were burned during Sauron’s war. Since The Rings of Power has condensed the Second Age timeline, the fate of the Entwives is something we could feasibly see in the Prime Video series. This is especially true since The Stranger and Nori are traveling across Middle-earth as of the end of The Rings of Power season 2. They could potentially come across the Entwives and witness either their destruction or their possible escape to a different region of Middle-earth.

Tolkien Purposely Left The Fate Of the Entwives Ambiguous (So Rings Of Power Should Steer Clear)

Given how long the fate of the Entwives has been a mystery, it would certainly be interesting to see their stories play out on screen. Confirming that Sauron’s forces burned the Entwives wouldn’t even be entirely contradictory to Tolkien’s works since he said in Letter 144 (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien) that this is most likely what happened to them. Still, this is among the bits of information that the author purposely provided no definitive answer. The Ents weren’t creatures that the historians of Middle-earth took much interest in, so their stories were only vaguely told in Bilbo and Frodo’s records. Therefore, it makes sense that no one would have written down the fate of the Entwives.

Of course, screen adaptations like The Rings of Power don’t take Tolkien’s “found history” approach, so it isn’t limited to only including the information that historians would have written down (like Tolkien was). However, the potential problem with doing this is that it mucks up what the author established by leaving unsolved mysteries throughout his work. It brought a sense of authenticity to the stories of The Lord of the Rings, and this is why fans have been able to discuss and debate the legendarium for nearly 100 years. Sometimes, too many answers will cheapen a story, and this is something Rings of Power should avoid.

There Are Other Tolkien Mysteries That Rings Of Power Should Avoid

The Entwives are far from the only unsolved mystery of Tolkien’s works. The author limited his answers to what would feasibly have been written down by Middle-earth historians, and this means plenty was overlooked. Of course, some of these mysteries revolve around knowledge that some Lord of the Rings characters would have despite never having recorded it. For example, The Rings of Power is likely to provide its own answer regarding the identities of the Nazgul. This would make sense, considering Sauron—a primary character in the Prime Video series—would know this. He just wouldn’t have written it down.

On the other hand, there are mysteries in The Lord of the Rings that no one in Middle-earth would have had the answer to. An example of this is the true identity of Tom Bombadil. This spirit-like being of the forest had mysterious power, and even Gandalf seemed to look up to him—but no one had any recollection of where he had come from or why. He was surely in Middle-earth, but if Prime Video brings him into Rings of Power and tries to reveal his origin, it would immediately cheapen the series plot. After all, as Tolkien said in another of his letters, “Even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are.“