Season 1 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Energy promised a balrog, and whereas the tragic sacrifice of King Durin within the mithril-rich depths beneath Khazad-dûm might need been transient, it was definitely spectacular. However there’s one factor it didn’t do, and that’s give Rings of Energy’s reply to a easy query: Can balrogs fly?
At this level, you would possibly surprise if I’m joking. Of course balrogs can fly; they’ve wings. They’ve at all times had wings. The one within the Peter Jackson motion pictures has wings. However what if I informed you that when Peter Jackson and crew selected to depict the balrog with wings, they have been making a considerably controversial alternative?
What if I informed you that the query of whether or not balrogs have wings in any respect has been vexing Tolkien students for many years?
Picture: Amazon Studios
The supply of the issue is that all the language that Tolkien used to confer with the “wings” of balrogs and their “flight” is open to interpretation.
The primary description of a balrog’s type comes within the Moria sequence of The Fellowship of the Ring. And the primary reference to it having “wings” comes after a number of paragraphs that merely describe it as an unlimited, maned, man-shaped determine, wielding a sword in a single hand and a whip within the different, obscured in hearth, shadow, and smoke. And on this first point out, Tolkien explicitly doesn’t say that the balrog has wings. He says the darkness round it seems to be like wings: “the shadow about it reached out like two huge wings,” as the balrog squares up with Gandalf on the bridge of Khazad-dûm.
The following reference, two paragraphs later, describes the balrog’s hearth dying down, and the shadow round it growing, till “instantly it drew itself as much as an excellent peak, and its wings have been unfold from wall to wall.” In isolation, this language is extra literal. However taken with the primary reference, it may be argued that Tolkien is solely elegantly referring to the earlier simile, with out intending a literal which means — which is a typically observable sample within the descriptive writing by way of his novelistic work.
A couple of paragraphs later, the bridge crumbles underneath Gandalf’s employees, and the balrog falls into the abyss. Tolkien writes: “its shadow plunged down and vanished.” Which raises different good arguments for flightless balrogs: If the balrog might fly, why couldn’t it fly up out of the chasm? Why would Gandalf have even tried smashing the bridge underneath its toes within the first place, if he knew it was able to flight?
And to not get too deep into textual evaluation, however suffice to say, for each time Tolkien referred to balrogs in The Silmarillion as “flying with winged velocity” or “passing over” an excellent distance, there’s a counter-example of him utilizing “flight” merely to imply “escape” or referring to entire land-bound armies as “passing over” a rustic. And there are lots of references, in Tolkien’s early writings that embrace balrogs, to balrogs being a part of ground-bound armies, of the powers of evil containing no flying monsters to match the Nice Eagles, and many others.
However on the different hand, The Silmarillion was printed posthumously, as compiled from Tolkien’s most full writings, not essentially his hottest. And we might preserve going round in circles on this means for hours.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Energy, a present that appears to wish to align itself visually with the Peter Jackson motion pictures, has a balrog that appears a useless ringer for the one in Jackson’s Moria, full with curved horns, a skull-like face, and nice winged appendages lined in cascading smoke. However can it fly? The present has not but clearly put a foot down in that area: We don’t see it fly in its transient look, however we do see it fall, flapping its wings in both an unsuccessful try to rise into the air or in a profitable try to manage its descent. So it too is open to interpretation, a minimum of for now.
Folks will debate whether or not balrogs have wings and might fly till humanity is a fairy story in books written by rabbits, as a result of there are compelling textual arguments for either side and the “actual” reply won’t ever be identified. It’s the “Is a sizzling canine a sandwich?” of Tolkien research/fandom, the “Do you say it gif or jif?” It’s a query that’s enjoyable to contemplate, as long as you are taking it with the burden of a Buddhist koan, and never the best thread within the historical past of boards, locked by a moderator after 12,239 pages of heated debate.
Probably the most open fact is that Tolkien wrote quite a lot of descriptions of balrogs that might be interpreted as giving them wings and the flexibility to fly, however he additionally by no means explicitly said that they’ve wings and might fly, not in any materials that he himself noticed all the best way to publication. Each side are doubtlessly proper and doubtlessly mistaken in equal measure.
You possibly can even maintain each concepts concurrently, like this: “Yeah, the textual assist is proscribed in sure methods, however, in all earnestness, the wings look cool as hell, and it’s all made-up fantastical mythopoeic opera anyway, so why not? The balrog in The Fellowship of the Ring isn’t described as having horns, both, they usually look nice. Perhaps the chasm underneath the bridge of Khazad-dûm was too slender for the balrog’s wings to work?”
Anyway, that’s my tackle it. Now to take a pleasant leisurely sip of this scrumptious water, and take a look at the feedback part…