The SDCC 2024 trailer for Rings of Power finally brought us the LOTR Entwives

Pre-film adaptations of pop culture have become so commonplace that they are almost parodies in themselves. Do we really need to know how Han got his last name, Solo? Why Poirot grew a moustache? That Cruella de Vil’s mother was murdered by Dalmatians?

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t soft spots worth exploring in the stories we know, and there are about a million of them in Middle Earth. And with this week’s San Diego Comic-Con trailer for Season 2 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Powerwe just saw a new one.

[Ed. note: This is your cue to go watch the trailer before we talk about what was in it.]

Photo: Ben Rothstein/Prime Video

I often called out: “Hey, Rings of Powershow me a de-woman! You could do it! You’re in the right time frame!”

And behold, Rings of Power replied: You’re welcome.

Image: Amazon Studios

Specifically, the show responded with this pretty, flower-covered lady with her knothole eyes, her lipless tree-mouth slit, and her unmistakably feminine voice with which she slowly, slowly intones: “Forgiveness takes forever.”

A dewoman! We are so back.

Susana, what is an entwife?

I mean, it really is what it says on the tin. They are the other half of the Ent species, an entire race of tree women who complement the tree men. They are only briefly mentioned in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towersbut in Tolkien’s books they are constantly present – at least in mentions – whenever characters speak to an Ent.

From the moment Merry and Pippin meet him, Treebeard shows great interest in the Shire and its surroundings because it sounds like Entwives have settled there. He mentions that the Ents have not been able to produce young Entings for many years (which is basically an eon in Ent’s time) because the Entwives have disappeared.

“How sad!” Pippin replies politely in The two TowersHe asks: “How did they all die?”

“They have not die!” Treebeard replies. “I never said died“We lost her,” I said. “We lost her and we can’t find her.”

Over three pages and in a recited song, Treebeard explains that Ents and Entwives once lived together until their interests began to diverge; their “hearts grew no longer the same.” While Ents wandered the great forests and clung to the great wild trees like oaks, elms, and birches, Entwives preferred to make orderly gardens to live in, and loved apple and cherry trees, fields of grain, and herb gardens. The Entwives befriended the humans and taught them farming, while Ents remained to them a mere legend.

Both Ents and Entwives believed their way was best and refused to live together for so long that by the time an Ent finally came up with the idea of ​​visiting an Entwives, all of the Entwives had already departed for unknown lands, their original land having been razed to the ground by Sauron in his battles against Númenor.

“For years we went out now and then and sought the Entwives,” Treebeard tells Merry and Pippin, “we walked far and wide and called them by their lovely names. But as time went on we went less often and wandered less far. And now the Entwives are only a memory to us, and our beards are long and grey.” He then spends a whole page singing a song about an Ent calling an Entwives to come to his wild land that he loves, and she insists that she would much rather stay in her lovely garden.

The Ents are slightly melancholy over the loss of the Entwives, but not in a particularly proactive way. After all, if they had had the motivation to leave their beloved forests and actually go in search of the Entwives, they probably wouldn’t have lost them in the first place. Still, Treebeard’s final words each time he says goodbye to the hobbits include a reminder to let him know if they ever hear of Entwives in the orderly farmlands of the Shire.

Yes, the Lord of the Rings is not guilty tree divorce

Image: New Line Cinema

This might be a good time to point out that it is easy to understand humor Lord of the rings Adaptations are a deviation from the source material, but Tolkien did have some jokes in his epic, and the Ents and Entwives are definitely one of them.

Tolkien created great romances and adventurous women – Eowyn, who wanted an honorable death more than anything else; Lúthien, who traveled miles to save her sworn love from the Dark Lord Morgoth; Galadriel, whose ambitions were too great for heaven – but he also had time for self-parody. Like a whole species of long-winded men who were so obsessed with their interests that they didn’t spend enough time with their women and just somehow… lost sight of them.

With Rings of Power We’re in the middle of a time when the Entwives were still tending their gardens in the lands southeast of Moria and northwest of Mordor – and I’m just happy to see them.