Why are there so many men in The Rings of Power?

It’s the grandaddy of franchises, and yes, I’m using the male gender there because The Lord of the Rings almost completely ignores just over 50 per cent of the human population.

Women barely get a look-in, with the notable exception of Eowyn, the slayer of the biggest nasty of the ringwraiths, and Galadriel. Purists nearly had fits when Peter Jackson dared to beef up Arwen’s role (a bit) in his Oscar-winning trilogy of movies.

Amazon’s The Rings of Power, the world’s most expensive TV series, presented a gift-wrapped opportunity to redress the balance, working as it did from information contained within the books’ appendices. This gave the creators more space to play around without attracting opprobrium from the substantial cohort of incels within Rings’ fandom.

And it may appear that things have improved. Morfydd Clark, who plays Galadriel, has emerged as the star of the series, having created a striking, flawed, obsessive and perennially fascinating character, whose presence helped keep the series afloat during its mid-season sag when you wondered where on (middle) earth its various plots and subplots were actually going. We also had Elanor “Nori” Brandyfoot the Harfoot hobbit; Bronwyn, the southland healer turned leader of her people; Miriel, the queen regent of Númenor, and a smattering of other supporting characters.

But while that’s an improvement, they are still outnumbered by the boys. Women are under-represented among the secondary characters, too. Just look at the cast list. And this looks set to be even more true of the future. I’ve been getting press releases containing details of additional characters ahead of season two, which we’ll probably have to wait a couple of years for. The first of these featured five men and two women. The imbalance was even greater with the second, which contained headshots and bios for eight actors, only one of whom was a woman.

At this point, the incels will snarl that I’m “virtue signalling” or worse. But I’m OK with that. I believe in equality. But it’s not just about equality. The fact is, the presence of female characters makes these shows, and their expansively (and expensively) realised worlds, more interesting. Their absence is not only jarring, but it deprives us of stories needed to properly bring those worlds to life.

It’s true, the creators of these shows have just about got beyond tokenism. It’s not only Clark’s Galadriel who was a highlight of The Rings of Power. I was particularly taken with the haughty queen regent, played by Cynthia Addai-Robinson. Nazanin Boniadi’s Bronwyn, meanwhile, had one of the more interesting character arcs. Female characters these days do more than bring the warriors their post-battle beers. But they still don’t exist in a world where they are half the population – and that must also be true of elves, dwarves, and hobbits, just as it is of humans.

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This is still a problem that persists across the entertainment industry. With awards season looming, this raises another point. Emma Corrin, the non-binary star of The Crown who played the late Princess of Wales, recently called on the Academy Awards to make its Best Actor and Best Actress categories gender-neutral on the grounds of making them “more inclusive”. Both the Academy and Bafta have indicated that they are engaged in discussions on the subject. Those discussions should be shelved.

I’m sorry that Corrin feels uncomfortable, but taking the gender out of acting categories would make them less, not more, inclusive. If you want more evidence, look at the non-gendered awards. There still hasn’t been a female winner of the best cinematography Oscar. There hadn’t been so much as a nominee until 2017, with the second following only in 2021.

It’s clear how it’s going to go with the acting categories, particularly when you consider the power dynamics in the industry, and the continuing scarcity of good female roles coming out of it. Because just as in Tolkien’s world, we’re clearly not there yet when it comes to fair representation of women in Hollywood.