Full of mysteries, The Lord of the Rings proposed the question of where the entire female population of one of its species had gone, but digging into the legendarium sheds some light on it. In the wide world of The Lord of the Rings, the Ents were just one species, but they have always been one of the most memorable. Brought to light by Treebeard in J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1955 masterpiece novel, The Lord of the Rings, the Ents were anthropomorphic trees. And the novel left many wondering where the female Ents had gone.

The Entwives are the much-storied female versions of the Ents, the high fantasy species popularized by Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, which adapted Tolkien’s work. Published in three parts between 1954 and 1955, Lord of the Rings provided Jackson with an enigmatic species to adapt. So slow to speak that it took them minutes to say hello, Ents were ancient, wise, and suffering a great tragedy. Part of Ents’ ongoing mystique is the loss of all Entwives, which has been debated by fans for years. Tolkien addressed this in a letter.

Lord Of The Rings Raises The Mystery Of The Entwives But Doesn’t Tell Us Where They Are

Lord Of The Rings Leaves Ents An Enigma

Dropping readers and viewers into the last heavily explored part of The Lord of the Rings timeline, the Third Age, The Lord of the Rings novel and movie trilogy showed the Ents mourning the females of their species. In trekking through Fangorn Forest, Merry and Pippin encountered Fangorn himself, otherwise known as Treebeard. The Hobbit duo eventually found out from Treebeard that all Entwives had been lost. When questioned further, Treebeard gave few straight answers and was unable to say whether they had left or been kidnapped.

Treebeard seemed very adamant that the Entwives had simply been “lost.” It was as if half of their species had just disappeared one day. The backstory of this strange loss was that the Entwives had traveled en mᴀsse away from the Ents to farm their own patch of land, given they had different plans from the Ents. When Treebeard went looking for his wife, Fimbrethil, he found no trace of her or any other Entwife. The Lord of the Rings movies offer no more solution than the novel does in terms of what happened to them.

J.R.R. Tolkien Revealed What He Thought Happened To The Entwives In A Letter

The Entwives’ Fate In Lord Of The Rings Was Probably A Sad One

Despite the enigma presented by The Lord of the Rings novel and movies, J.R.R. Tolkien suggested the fate of the Entwives in a letter. The Lord of the Rings novel gave a hint of what Tolkien clarified in the letter when it indicated that the Ents had to cross the river Anduin to get to the land they had chosen to farm. War had pᴀssed over this land, which came to be known as the Brown Lands. Treebeard recalled that this happened at a time when The Lord of the Rings’ Sauron warred with “the Men of the Sea.” It is this content that links to Tolkien’s letter.

Tolkien claimed that the Ents were mysteriously missing any women because they were probably “destroyed with their gardens in the War of the Last Alliance.” As he often did, Tolkien speculated on his own story rather than providing certainty, which added to the mythopoeic effect of the various formats he used to create his legendarium. Stating “I think that in fact the Entwives had disappeared for good,” Tolkien implied that the female Ents had been destroyed in Lord of the Rings’ Second Age during Sauron’s conflict with the Last Alliance.

The Entwives’ Whereabouts Were Too Complicated To Include In The Lord Of The Rings

Lord Of The Rings Was Right To Withhold Some Information

Tolkien could have clarified the Entwives’ most likely fate in The Lord of the Rings, but the huge gaps in lore were precisely what made the world-building so impressive. Tolkien said it himself in a letter – “I think it is good that there should be a lot of things unexplained.” Tolkien thought this was especially the case if there was, in fact, an explanation. In building the larger myth of Middle-earth, the unfortunate Entwives played a large part. Creating a wider mythopoeia than just one novel, the Entwives’ mystery spoke volumes and resisted overcomplication of the plot.

Regardless, the Entwives’ disappearance was entwined with the far larger lore of the Last Alliance, one of Lord of the Rings’ toughest armies. The 2001 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring movie adapted part of this war in its prologue, showing Sauron’s defeat. The details of this war weren’t fully covered by The Lord of the Rings novel but were dived into by The Silmarillion, the 1977 compilation of different Middle-earth myths. Tolkien couldn’t really cover the Entwives’ fate without revealing more about the Last Alliance.

As per The Silmarillion, the Last Alliance was led by the Númenórean Elendil and the Elf Gil-galad, pulling together Elves, Men, and Dwarves to defeat Sauron in his Second Age rise to power. The Brown Lands were east of the Anduin, below Mirkwood, and above the Emyn Muil hills, demonstrating the reach of Sauron’s advance in the face of the allied forces. It was better for the overall story for Tolkien and Peter Jackson to leave these details out and ensure a simple and emotionally impactful tragedy in The Lord of the Rings that would stay with readers for generations.