Aren’t the orcs just purely evil beings who could have no love in their hearts? Well, we suppose that’s a fair question to ask. But The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has long been veering away ...

So, did J.R.R. Tolkien invent the Orc as we know it today? Well, yes and no. Although the word "orc" is actually derived from the Old English "orcneas" as it first appeared in Beowulf, Tolkien only ...

Season 2 of Amazon’s The Rings of Power sparked controversy and online debate after the series depicted a sympathetic orc family, a subject that The Lord of the Rings film trilogy largely avoided. In ...

In demonising orcs, the ugly, monstrous enemy of the elves, did JRR Tolkien betray a belief that “some races are worse than others”? That’s the debate that has been at the heart of claims in the ...

Editor's note: The below contains spoilers for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is finally back, and it has already rattled some cages in ...

The sympathetic Orcs in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power are controversial, but they are fully supported by the work of high fantasy pioneer J.R.R. Tolkien. The Hobbit and The Lord of the ...

The creatures of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings possess a bewildering variety of names and terms, which can cause confusion. Orcs and Uruk-hai, for example, are essentially the same species, ...

Caitlin PenzeyMoog was a senior copy editor at Vox. Before that she was managing editor of The A.V. Club. She is also the author of “On Spice.” In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Sauron is ...

J.R.R. Tolkien brought us the orc, and like most things Tolkien, it has become a staple of the fantasy genre. They were the perfect evil mercenaries for an epic fantasy battle: growling, ugly, ...

While Tolkien's world of Middle-earth is expansive, if there's one thing it's lacking in, it's female characters. While there are a few important women throughout the Lord of the Rings series, they ...

One little orc/uruk baby is in the middle of much discussion among the lovers of Middle-earth in our world. During The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season two’s first episode, we got to meet ...