While Lord of the Rings saw orcs being terrifying as a horde army, The Rings of Power spinoff prequel show on Amazon Prime Video sees the terror in a single run-in with such a creature.
[Ed. note: This post contains light spoilers for the end of episode 2 of Rings of Power.]
In the first two episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, our glimpses of orcs are fairly limited. But even so, they’re like nothing like what we’ve seen of them on screen before. Though they’re still a threat, they’re no longer a swarm. Instead, the Amazon show is showing just how scary one of them can be.
Lord of the Rings has taken a turn into horror before, but Rings of Power carves out its own niche here. When Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi) goes to warn the townspeople that a neighboring town fell to who knows what, it feels more classically pulled from a horror movie, as her neighbors wave away her concerns as flights of fancy. But it also marks the differing relationship with the orcs: These people are a few generations removed from the last time anyone would’ve seen an orc around. And the mere idea of it seems unbelievable to them; they’re more afraid of a returning occupying force than the whispers of a myth.
