15 reasons Amazon’s Lord of the Rings will be the next Game of Thrones
By Corey Smith
Witch King: You fool. No man can kill me. Die now.
— viceanglais.bsky.social (@viceanglais) November 8, 2017
[Merry stabs the Witch King from behind; the Witch King shrieks and falls to his knees. Éowyn rises and pulls off her helm, her hair falls down over her shoulder]
Éowyn: I am no man. pic.twitter.com/8RRcAOAhyQ
15. Amazon can take the opportunity to bring more female representation to Middle-earth
Let’s be honest: as great as The Lord of the Rings is, it’s severely lacking in female characters. In the mainline series, it’s pretty much just Galadriel and Éowyn holding the torch; Peter Jackson had to beef up Arwen’s role so the movies weren’t a total sausage fest, and for The Hobbit he invented Tauriel out of thin air so there would at least be one woman with more than two lines. If Amazon wants its show to be the next Game of Thrones, it’s got to make like George R.R. Martin and feature a mix of excellent male and female characters.
From Cersei to Daenerys, to Sansa and Arya, from Brienne to Margaery Tyrell, Game of Thrones has no lack of interesting female characters, and Amazon would do will to follow suit. They need not all be warriors or even initially be capable or heroic characters; they just need to be compelling characters who can grow into someone we can root for…or against.
Amazon is admittedly more hemmed in by Tolkien’s source material than HBO was by Martin’s, but that doesn’t mean they are without options. Tolkien’s legendarium is vast, and includes many characters worth exploring, and some un-remarked upon ones who could be explored. And there’s always the option to invent new characters; if Amazon is intending to show us something we haven’t seen before in this universe, it’s going to be doing that anyway, and it might as well correct Tolkien’s imbalance or male-to-female characters while it’s at it.