THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER Season 2 Will Reportedly Include a Young Version of a Classic Villain

An interesting new detail has surfaced regarding The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2. According to a report from Fellowship of Fans, a younger version of a classic villain will appear in the fantasy epic. That character is a young version of Shelob.

The report says that Young Shelob will have a "small" or "limited" role in the season, but will be "featured." Shelob is a monstrous Spider and the offspring of Ungoliant, the primordial spider. In the Third Age of Middle Earth she lived on the borders of Mordor and would feed indiscriminately, preying on the inhabitants. In The Lord of the Rings, she encountered Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee while on their quest to destroy the One Ring as they passed through her lair on the border of Mordor, in the pass of Cirith Ungol.

When it comes to Shelob’s history, there’s not much known, but by the Second Age, “she often feasted on her own children, and that at some point after fleeing from Beleriand, yet long before Sauron took the land of Mordor for himself she spun a dark lair in the Ephel Dúath (Mountains of Shadow) in Cirith Ungol. For thousands of years she resided there, making a labyrinth of webs within a network of caves to better trap her prey, which included all creatures great and small. She feasted primarily on those who wandered into her webs, though if a particularly juicy morsel was available, she would silently pursue and kill it.”

It will be interesting and cool to see how exactly the creative team behind The Rings of Power will utilize the character in this next chapter of their series.

The series is being developed by showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, and it’s been explained that Season 2 is ramping up the pace of storytelling and the scope of battle scenes. Producer Vernon Sanders previously explained:

“We now get to have the fun of seeing the story ramp up as Sauron is revealed. And I think audiences can look forward to a show that, while it feels true to itself, feels like the stakes are ever higher and now that the rings are in play, seeing what they can do and seeing how the various factions within the world deal with those implications. I think it’s going to be really compelling.”

When talking about the pacing and scope of the upcoming season, he went on to say:

“We’ve never done anything like this. So the whole production model, how to produce a show like this, the scale work, all that were things that we needed to learn for the first time in the process of making the show. We are going to be faster. We are going to be able to put more money on screen, just in terms of the scale and scope of what we’re doing now that we know how to do it. And I also think the pace of our story is going to increase in part because the story is demanding that now that everyone’s been established, the stakes are established, that we’re going to watch some characters in some lands go to war.”

He also teased even bigger battle sequences, saying: “Yes, I can say you will see bigger battles in season two including some iconic moments from the appendices and the books.” It’ll be interesting to see those moments play out!

The series is based on the appendices from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of Rings books, and the story is set in the Second Age of Middle-Earth, “thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien's pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness. Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth. From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone.”

What are your thoughts on Shelob being introduced in The Rings of Power series?