The friendly Orcs in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power are controversial, but are fully supported by the work of high fantasy pioneer JRR Tolkien. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were working towards this conclusion, with Tolkien explaining his stance on Orcs in other stories and letters he wrote throughout his life. However, a little known Lord of the Rings publication lays this out in clear detail. This is 1962 The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, the third of just four Lord of the Rings books that Tolkien published during his lifetime.
Together with 1937 The Hobbit1954 The Lord of the Ringsand a 1967 songbook called The road always goes on, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil forms the undeniable and Tolkien-approved canon of The Lord of the Rings. Subsequent publications form a glorious mythopoeia of mixed legends, occasionally contradicting each other in the style of true myth, leaving the canon to be debated. Tolkien’s support The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is irrefutable, making your varied, emotional”bad“creatures a clear model for The Rings of Power Friendly orcs.
The adventures of Tom Bombadil set a precedent for the “evil” creatures of Middle Earth to be more complex
Trolls are friendly and dragons are depressed in the 1962 Lord of the Rings book
Samwise Gamgee wrote about “The lonely troll” in “Perry-the-Winkle”, confirming that Morgoth’s creatures were not considered soulless nor black and white by the residents of Middle-earth. Seeking companionship through rejection, this troll finally befriends Perry-the-Winkle. In the universe, The Lord of the Rings’ Tales were recorded by Hobbits (sometimes translated from Elvish lore) in the Red Book of Hesperia. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is an anthology of poetry included in the Red Book of Hesperia. The book introduces another friendly creature normally associated with evil – the floppy-eared, deadly-joyful dragon in “The Treasure.”
The Lord of the Rings doesn’t have friendly orcs, but the moral complexity of the Rings of Power makes sense
JRR Tolkien confirmed that orcs have rights in Lord of the Rings
In The Lord of the Ringsthe Orcs weren’t cool, nor were they particularly likable, but they were more than the automatons that Peter Jackson’s films portrayed them to be. The Lord of the Rings The films define high fantasy, and their influence is far-reaching for good reason. However, the indiscriminate and trivialized killing of Orcs throughout the films is less a reflection of the source material than The Rings of Power more nuanced representation of Orcs. As Halbrand pointedly said in Season 1: “If you want to murder Orcs… don’t see it as heroism.“
The Rings of Power the original character, Glûg, and his Orcish wife and baby, courted backlash by risking creating sympathy for Sauron’s side. But The Letters of JRR Tolkien confirmed that “Orcs are not of evil origin,“with the right to peace and respect. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil supports this immensely, displaying Morgoth’s creatures with a variety of emotions and moral views. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power gives his Orcs a logical moral complexity consistent with what Tolkien increasingly believed as he grew older.