So, here’s a question I didn’t think I’d be dealing with at 9:11am on a Monday morning - Are there actually female Orcs in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring?
While I can personally say that I have not looked between the legs of an Orc, I can point you to an answer if this question has been burning a hole in your grey matter.
The Lord of the Rings will be back in cinemas soon with an anime adaptation
This question has come up over on Reddit because the Amazon show, The Rings of Power, showed a female Orc holding a baby in a recent episode of season two.
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This has fans wondering if there were any female Orcs shown in Fellowship and the other parts of the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Of course, this brings us to how Tolkien felt on the subject. When the original novels were written, the author did all he could not to humanise the Orcs too much - they were supposed to be an inherent evil.
However, as media has changed and grown over the years, audiences like to see a more human side to enemies, making them sympathetic in some way.
Tolkein “writes in Silmarillion that orcs breed like elves and men do” according to turpaaboden on Reddit.
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This had the original poster wondering if female Orcs were in the film trilogy as some look more feminine than others.
Well, SthlmGurl says, “It’s true you don’t see many orc women. And in fact, they are so alike in voice and appearance, that they are often mistaken for orc men.”
With this in mind then, the answer would be yes, but you probably wouldn’t know unless you looked closely.
Essentially, there isn’t a definitive answer as Thealbumisjustdrums says, “They could be, not like Tolkien went into detail on how female orcs were supposed to look.”
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Let’s be real, Orcs don’t just pop out of a hole in the ground, there must be some kind of breeding, which the Amazon show is trying to hint at.
Topics: The Lord Of The Rings, TV And Film, The Rings of Power