It looks like racist right-wingers have found a new fantasy epic to obsess over.
A few months ago, white supremacists found plenty to like in The Northman, a movie about a Viking seeking revenge for the death of his father. Director Robert Eggers said the “right-wing misappropriation” of Viking culture almost turned him off to the project in the first place, but that didn’t stop those same people from applauding the all-white cast and the comforting values of Scandinavian mythology that Eggers served up in his film.
Buoyed by fears over “replacement theory,” these hate-mongers have now set their sights on the new Amazon Prime series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Except they’re not as happy with what they’re seeing on screen.
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The show has cast a number of people of color in key roles—a move that’s as much about improving representation in Hollywood as it is about being faithful to J.R.R. Tolkien’s source material, which describes Harfoots, a breed of hobbit in Middle Earth, as being “browner of skin.” But the casting extends to other species in Middle Earth: Puerto Rican actor Ismael Cruz Córdova plays Elven warrior Arondir, while Sophia Nomvete, who is of South African and Iranian descent, plays the first female and Black dwarf ever seen in any adaptation of Tolkien’s work. In an interview with Esquire published last week, Córdova revealed that he’s gotten “pure and vicious hate speech” on social media for the past two years after landing the role.
You don’t have to peek into his DMs for proof. The hate is on display for anyone online to see, with so-called fantasy fans complaining that Amazon is trampling on their culture by allowing non-white fans to see themselves reflected in a make-believe world.
One Twitter user compared Córdova’s casting to the idea of making a “White Panther.” Even Elon Musk took to Twitter to opine that Tolkien is “turning in his grave.”
The Rings of Power has subsequently become the subject of a “review bombing”—in which trolls sink TV shows and films they dislike by flooding the internet with negative reviews—that led Amazon to pause all critiques on the show’s page. So far, 25 percent of the show’s user reviews are one-star missives, some of which are clearly nothing more than thinly veiled, racially charged commentary on the show’s cast. “Not Tolkien. Not Tolkien’s Characters. Not Tolkien’s Themes,” one reviewer wrote. Another one said: “There is so much politics and deviation from Tolkien’s original work that it is hard for me to even follow along with this one” (a confounding assessment, considering the setting of the show—in a fictional land thousands of years before the events of the original The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit—doesn’t allow much room for modern politics).
The backlash has been so strong that it’s prompted a response from the show’s Instagram account, which was forced to acknowledge the mounting criticism on Wednesday.
“We, the cast of Rings of Power, stand together in absolute solidarity and against the relentless racism, threats, harassment and abuse some of our castmates of color are being subjected to on a daily basis,” the show’s statement read in part. “We refuse to ignore it or tolerate it.”
That same day, Elijah Wood, who starred as Frodo in Peter Jackson’s film trilogy, posted a photo alongside his LOTR co-stars Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd. In the photo, the former hobbits pose in T-shirts that read, “You are all welcome here,” written in the fictional Elvish language above hobbit ears of different skin tones.
It’s unlikely that such statements of support—from Hollywood, no less—will do anything to change anyone’s minds. Writing for The Conversation, Deakin University lecturer Helen Young says it’s not surprising that bigoted and bigot-adjacent fans have found a cause in The Rings of Power. She cites Tolkien researcher Craig Franson, who argued that outwardly racist fascists are riling up a base that includes a voracious right-wing press and gullible right-wingers to attack any piece of entertainment that dares to taint the pure white bloodline of its characters with people of color, even if race isn’t specifically mentioned in the source material.
Young further points to a long history of far-right fascination with Tolkien. In the 1970s, Young writes, Italian fascists held a Camp Hobbit festival based on the books to promote their political views. And though Tolkien spoke derisively of Adolf Hitler, he simultaneously exalted the meaningfulness of the “supreme contribution to Europe” and the “noble Northern spirit”—ideas that may have seeped into his writing and that continue to feed the darkest corners of his fanbase.
The commotion over The Rings of Power is just the latest casting-related outrage steeped in post-Trump conservatism, in which right-wingers attempt to control the discourse, usually centering their arguments on how the left is trying to erase or demonize white people, men, or straight people.
We saw the same thing happen after Black actress and singer Halle Bailey suffered racist attacks upon being cast as Ariel in Disney’s upcoming live-action remake of The Little Mermaid. It also happened to Leah Jeffries, who was cast as Annabeth Chase in the Disney+ series Percy Jackson and the Olympians; so brutal were the comments about her casting that Rick Riordan, author of the original book series, had to come to her defense. And Moses Ingram was criticized in much the same way for her role as a Jedi hunter Inquisitor in the recent Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Despite the backlash, Amazon says The Rings of Power drew a whopping 25 million viewers in its first day. The series also boasts a 71 percent rating on Metacritic and an 84 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, crowning it a critical and commercial success.
