The Lord of the Rings movies are some of the greatest things ever to happen to celluloid, and that’s just a scientific fact. The trilogy changed the way studios make movies and the way the public consumes them. Fans don’t have to stop with the movies, either. There are cartoons, games, and TTRPGs, never mind the actual library of literature created by Tolkien himself on the subject.
All of that lore is not going to fit in The Lord of the Rings movies, and as a result, there’s a lot of Middle Earth that never appears in live-action adaptations. That applies to locations as much as the residents. The movies do a stellar job of including an impressive number of races, but here are a few that never made it beyond the pages of the original trilogy. A number of them don’t even appear in there but take important roles in The Silmarillion or Tolkien’s various notes.
6 The Drúedain
This race is not to be confused with the Dúnedain, the humans who survived the sinking of Númenór, also known as the Men of Westernesse. The Drúedain were an ancient race of humans that also might have been connected to Hobbits but were believed to be extinct by the time the War of the Ring.
Known also as the Drughu, this race was slightly taller than Hobbits but not as tall as humans, and they had a Dwarven talent for craftsmanship. They weren’t exactly friendly, but they weren’t evil either, counting Orcs as their mortal enemies and standing as allies with humans when Orcs attacked them. Their eyes glowed red when they were angry, and they had a boisterous laugh that didn’t seem to fit with their rough demeanor.
5 The Entwives
Here’s a case where they don’t exactly appear in the books either, but Treebeard does talk about them in much more detail in the literature, even naming and describing specific Entwives in detail. These were the female counterparts of the Ents, and they came to prefer cultivation and gardening with the humans to the wild forests of their husbands.
The most elusive race in all of Middle-earth, the Elves sang that the Ents and Entwives were destined to meet again, but by the end of The Return of the King, even Treebeard seems to have lost hope. Tolkien also mentioned them in some letters he wrote in 1981, and he was equally pessimistic. His determination was that they had either died or been enslaved during the War of the Last Alliance.
4 The Valar
The movie version of Gandalf is human. Exceptionally gifted, certainly, but just a mortal human being. Fans of the literature understand that Gandalf and his fellow Wizards are more like angels given their origins and overpowered abilities, and were sent to Middle Earth at the bidding of the Valar. Not all of the Valar were benevolent, however. Melkor, also known as Morgoth, was one of the Valar and the first Dark Lord.
The Valar are the ancient gods of Middle Earth, the original race of beings that created this world and the creatures that live there. They are divided into a separate race of Kings and Queens, except the Dark Lord Morgoth and his favorite henchman, Sauron, who live in exile.
3 Easterlings
Also known as People of Rhûn or the Wainriders, the Easterlings are one subclass of humans that lived in Middle Earth for the duration of the War of the Rings. They lived in the east and historically fought in the armies of Morgoth and Sauron, their culture and fighting style based on Attila the Hun.
The Easterlings appear in the books as part of the earlier wars where they fought for Morgoth, then for his servant Sauron. The Haradrim, another race of humans often associated with Sauron and Morder, make a brief appearance at certain points in The Two Towers and The Return of the King but the Easterlings always seem to be absent in the movies.
2 The Water Spirits
Apparently, there’s a whole race of various elemental spirits in Middle Earth. There are two water spirits in the books but neither of them appears in the movies. One of them is Goldberry, Tom Bombadil’s eternal companion, and the other is her mother, a character who is only mentioned briefly.
Tom Bombadil refers to Goldberry as “River Daughter” and her mother is the personification of the River Whithywindle. Their wedding was attended by a host of woodland creatures that included both spirits and wild animals. This gives some clue as to Tom’s identity as a fairy creature of the woodlands.
1 The Falathrim
The Falathrim are a branch of Elves in Middle Earth that don’t appear in the movies, but a prominent location in their realm takes center stage in one of the closing scenes. They’re also known as the Coast people or the Elves of the Havens, and when the Elves depart for the Undying Lands it is the ships of the Falathrim that carry them.
These were some of the first Elves to take up the culture of sailors, explorers, and mariners. One of the most notable elves of Middle Earth history was one of their leaders, Círdan the Shipwright. He was the original keeper of the ring Narya before entrusting it to Gandalf. He is one of the oldest of his kind and one of the last Elves to leave Middle Earth in the Fourth Age.
