“War of the Rohirrim” features cameos from Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan

You won’t pass…unless you’ve seen The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. This article contains Big spoilers.

The world of Middle-earth is expanding. “Rings of Power” gave us one of the greatest tragedies in the legendarium with the fall of Celebrimbor the creation of the Nine Rings of Powerand there’s also the upcoming film “The Hunt for Gollum” waiting to fill in unnecessary gaps in the story.

This is what makes “The War of the Rohirrim” so exciting. This is the first animated Middle-earth project since Rankin/Bass’s “The Return of the King” in 1980. The film is also technically a prequel, like “Rings of Power,” but instead of being an explanation for a major event full of cameos appearances and references, this is a standalone film about a relatively important but not monumental chapter in the history of Rohan. In fact, the main question the film answers is just “Why do people call the Hornburg ‘Helm’s Deep’?” and not much else. Sure, it’s a question that gets answered, but it feels different than, say, the obsession in Rings of Power with spending far too long keeping the audience guessing how Gandalf got his name.

That’s what’s special about “War of the Rohirrim”: Even if you have little knowledge of Peter Jackson’s trilogies, you can enjoy this as an animated fantasy epic about a princess who assumes her role as a warrior and leader in the middle of a war with mountain tribes. The film has everything you would expect from a Lord of the Rings film – fantastical creatures, epic speeches, last minute speeches Cavalry ex machina arriving at sunset to save the daylasting sieges with great action and yes, even rings.

While the film’s incessant references to lines of dialogue from Peter Jackson’s trilogy weigh down the film, there are no real guest appearances in The War of the Rohirrim (except… a single appearance by Christopher Lee’s Saruman that actually makes sense in the context of the film). However, there are two cameos from beloved Hobbit cast stars that you might have missed if you were thinking too much about second breakfast.

That’s right, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan play surprising roles in the film that you’ll quickly miss!

Boyd and Monaghan have worked together a lot since the release of the Lord of the Rings trilogy: I do a very funny podcastGoing to conventions together and putting together an upcoming travel show.

The cameo takes place in the second half of the film, when the people of Rohan take refuge in the Hornburg, when out in the snow Héra encounters two orcs – Shank (Boyd) and Wrot (Monaghan) – who are looting rings from corpses. It turns out that Treebeard was right, and they have always been little orcs.

This is the kind of silly yet cool Easter egg that’s possible in animation. For example, instead of bringing Legolas back in The Hobbit for no reason at all, this cameo pays homage to the Lord of the Rings trilogy by bringing back two beloved actors who have continued to represent that cast over the past two decades. And instead of forcing them to repeat their roles even though it doesn’t make sense, or even having them play other roles with a lot of makeup that would break the immersion and distract, it’s unobtrusive to just have them voice two small roles let. To the uninitiated, these orcs are just two more characters portrayed by actors that not everyone knows.

Well, the fact that two little orcs appear in The War of the Rohirrim is all well and good, but what they do near the Hornburg is fascinating and also funny as hell. They see Wrot collecting rings from dead hill tribesmen and dropping them onto a bag that is already full of them. “What does Mordor want with rings?” Wrot asks.

This has absolutely strange effects. At this point, about 200 years before the War of the Ring, Gollum had owned the Ring for centuries. Meanwhile, Sauron has spent the last thousand years or so rebuilding his forces as the Necromancer of Dol Guldur. All he’s missing is his ring, so of course he would send his troops to look for it.

However, it’s one thing to send your armies and the Nine on a quest to find a hobbit and kill everything they come across, and quite another thing to send out random orcs to spread across Middle-earth with only the command to do so Collect as many golden rings as you possibly can. It’s very unlikely that they have a description of what the One Ring looks like, because Sauron doesn’t want an orc knowing what they have and putting it on. So the orcs simply collect every single piece of jewelry they find and put them in bags without regard to quality, material or style.

How many hundreds of thousands of orcs are there across the land, randomly stealing rings from an honest innkeeper in Bree, a minor lord of Eregion, or perhaps even a random child with a pretend ring made from a piece of string? There must be a complete shortage of rings throughout Middle-earth, and people just happen to find out that their jewelry collections have been robbed for some inexplicable reason, and no one has any idea why.

And then what happens to all those rings? There must be millions and millions of Rings coming to Mordor in huge carts, accompanied by another legion of Orcs (who, remember, are people too) just has the daunting task of searching through each individual ring, dividing them into categories (everyone knows the Orcs of Mordor are great at organization), and then testing each ring to find the one before sending it to the Dark Lord brings.

Or maybe (and this is much, much funnier) Sauron won’t allow them to test the rings, so he himself has to put on every single ring on his finger (if he even has one) to see if it’s right – every second of every day for decades and then centuries. It’s not easy being a former student of Aulë.