Amazon Studios The Rings of Power is here. The Second season will debut on Amazon Prime on August 29th of this year. We want all Spoilerites to have the best viewing experience possible and have the widest knowledge base about the Second Age of Middle-Earth. This is a weekly Let’s Get Nerdy article series highlighting a different piece of Tolkien I think you need to know about!
This post contains potential spoilers for The Rings of Power’s second season. At the time of writing these are based on what we’ve seen in trailers and early looks, but if you may want to avoid spoilers come back later and see if I was right!
Spoilerites, we return to the Battle of Bywater at long last! A couple weeks ago we got the premier trailer for the upcoming Tales of the Shire cozy hobbit video game which revealed the setting for the highlight anticipated release: Bywater! Annnnnnnnnnd J.R.R. Tolkien readers went wild! Bywater is an incredibly significant location within The Shire if you know your Scouring of the Shire/The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King canon. My plan was to write in further detail about The Battle of Bywater and its significance, however a bunch of things came up in our little Lord of the Rings bubble in the interim – including the first trailer for the second season of The Rings of Power! – so this week we are finally making our return to Bywater.
As mentioned a couple weeks ago, The Battle of Bywater was the largest and final battle of what is referred to from The Fourth Age of Middle-Earth forward as “The Scouring of the Shire.”
This conflict was led by Meriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin Took (yup, Merry and Pippin, themselves, as Esquire of Rohan and Knight of Gondor command their peoples’ efforts in fighting back against the forces of “Sharkey” a.k.a. Saruman the White), with Farmer Cotton joining them in these positions of leadership.
The Battle of Bywater is additionally significant because it sees the death of Grima Wormtongue (you’ll remember him as the false advisor to King Théoden of Rohan, tormentor of Éowyn, and spy for Saruman who was introduced in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and played in the original film trilogy by Brad Dourif).
The Battle of Bywater is the execution of an effect trap by the hobbit leadership. Merry, in a move which very much seems to be a nod to his fallen protector, Boromir, blows a horn to call forth Bucklander forces to their cause. While 20 combatants set out to engage in the initial conflict, 200 showed up in response – including The Cottons, hence the leadership role ascribed to Farmer Cotton above. Farmer Cotton additionally served as bait to lure in Sharkey’s men.
In subsequent days Pippin arrived with hundreds of hobbits from Tookland and with strategic aid from Merry, they were able to fight back additional enemy forces coming at them from Waymeet. Sharkey’s forces (which did include from human beings, I’m sad to report), suffered much higher casualties than the native hobbit forces and ultimately lost the battle.
In the following years it took to rebuild not only The Shire, by Bywater itself to its former glory, Samwise Gamgee spread some of the blessed soil he had been gifted by Galadriel over the healthy earth and Bywater came to see plentiful harvest, slowly recovering, and coming back to itself.
How does this relate to Tales of the Shire?!
Thank-you so much for asking!
TL;DR very little. I think it will ultimately be set dressing for a video game full of vibes. The rebuilding and reconstruction of Bywater is smart and in-canon way to justify the game mechanics from design, to gathering, to purchasing. Personally, I think it’s a very clever choice. For Tolkien book readers this is a lovely and significant Easter Egg and for non-book readers there shouldn’t be much context lost by the same token.
In past articles I have answered the question:
- Remembering Théoden Actor, Bernard Hill
- The Rings of Power Season 2 Trailer Easter Eggs
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