Lord of the Rings fans are all very familiar with Hobbits. And while the new prequel series The Rings of Power doesn’t have any Hobbits that we’ll recognize, it does introduce Harfoots, proto-Hobbit characters that certainly look like they’ll stand in for the Second Age equivalent of Frodo and Sam.
Since Rings of Power’s ensemble is rather enormous, Prime Video has released this video focusing on just the Harfoots—according to Dylan Smith, who plays Largo Brandyfoot, they’re “arguably the biggest secret of the show,” since J.R.R. Tolkien didn’t write too much about them—to give viewers a sense of who they’ll be meeting when the series arrives.
As you can see, the Harfoots are very connected to the “earth” part of Middle-earth—able to live and hide in the woods so cleverly that many other inhabitants of the realm don’t even know they exist. This is obviously a contrast to the village in the Shire we see in the Peter Jackson movie (no adorable little hillside houses here), and it sets up the adventure for the Rings of Power characters when they’re drawn out of their forest habitat and into the widespread turmoil we’ll see on the show. Also, as you can see from the photo up top, the hairy feet were present even in the earliest Hobbits.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power arrives September 2 on Prime Video.
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