War Of The Rohirrim Features Billy Boyd & Dominic Monaghan Cameos

You shall not pass … unless you’ve watched “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,” that is. This article contains major spoilers.

The world of Middle-earth is expanding. “Rings of Power” gave us one of the biggest tragedies in the legendarium with the fall of Celebrimbor and the creation of the Nine Rings of Power, and there’s also the upcoming “Hunt for Gollum” movie 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 the 1980 Rankin/Bass “The Return of the King.” The film is also technically a prequel, like “Rings of Power,” but rather than serve as an explanation for a big event, filled with cameos and references, this is a standalone movie about a relatively important yet not monumental chapter in the history of Rohan. Indeed, the biggest question the movie answers is just “Why do people call the Hornburg ‘Helm’s Deep?'” and not much else. Sure, it is a question being answered, but it feels different than, say, the obsession in “Rings of Power” with spending way too long having audiences guess how Gandalf got his name. 

That’s what makes “War of the Rohirrim” special: that even if you have little knowledge of Peter Jackson’s trilogies, you can enjoy this as an animated fantasy epic about a princess embracing her role as a warrior and a leader in the middle of a war with hill tribes. The movie has everything you come to expect from a “Lord of the Rings” movie — fantastical creatures, epic speeches, last-minute cavalry ex machina that arrives at sunset to save the day, lasting sieges with awesome action, and yes, even rings.

While the incessant callbacks to lines of dialogue from Peter Jackson’s trilogy weigh the movie down, “The War of the Rohirrim” doesn’t really feature cameos or guest appearances (other than a single appearance by Christopher Lee’s Saruman that actually makes sense within the context of the movie). Except, there are two cameos by beloved hobbit actors stars you might have missed if you were too worried thinking about second breakfast.

That’s right, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan have surprising blink-and-you’ll-miss-them roles in the film!

Boyd and Monaghan have been working together a lot since the release of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy: doing a very fun podcast, going to conventions together, and putting together an upcoming travel show.

The cameos come during the second half of the film as the people of Rohan take refuge in the Hornburg, when Héra encounters two orcs — Shank (Boyd), and Wrot (Monaghan) — out in the snow looting rings off of corpses. Turns out Treebeard was right, and they were little orcs all along.

Now this is the kind of silly yet cool easter egg that’s possible in animation. Rather than, say, bringing back Legolas for absolutely no reason in “The Hobbit,” this cameo pays tribute to the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy by bringing back two beloved actors who have continued to represent that cast for the past two decades. Plus, rather than forcing them to reprise their roles despite it making no sense, or even having them play other roles with heavy makeup that would break immersion and be distracting, having them just voice two small roles is inconspicuous. To the layman, these orcs are just two more characters voiced by actors not everyone will recognize.

Now, having two little orcs appear in “The War of the Rohirrim” is all well and good, but it’s what they are doing near the Hornburg that’s fascinating, and also funny as hell. You see, Wrot is seen collecting rings from dead Hill Tribesmen and dropping them on a bag already full of them. “What does Mordor want with rings?” Wrot asks.

This has absolutely hilarious implications. At this point in time, about 200 years before the War of the Ring, Gollum has had the ring for centuries. Meanwhile, Sauron has spent the past thousand years or so building up his forces again as the Necromancer of Dol Guldur. All he lacks is his ring, so of course he would send his forces to search for it.

Except, it’s one thing to send his armies and The Nine to look for a Hobbit, killing anything they come across, and a whole other thing to dispatch random orcs to scatter throughout Middle-earth with only a command to collect as many golden rings as they possibly can. It’s very unlikely they have any description of what the One Ring looks like, because Sauron wouldn’t want an orc to know what they have and put it on. So, the orcs simply collect every single piece of jewelry they find and put them in bags, with no regard for quality, material, or style.

How many hundreds of thousands of orcs are there across the lands, stealing random rings from an honest innkeeper in Bree, a petty lord of Eregion, or maybe even some random kid with a pretend ring made out of a piece of string? There must be an entire shortage of rings across Middle-earth with people randomly finding out that their jewelry collections have been inexplicably robbed and nobody has any idea why.

And then, what happens to all those rings? There must be millions upon millions of rings coming in massive carts in Mordor, with another legion of orcs (who, remember, are people, too) tasked only with the massive endeavor of sorting through every single ring, separating them into categories (everyone knows the orcs of mordor are great at organization), and then testing each ring to find the One before bringing them to the Dark Lord. 

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