Bringing the Harfoots - an early breed of hobbits - into Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power could prove Amazon's biggest mistake in translating Middle-earth to Prime Video. The Rings of Power isn't your standard TV prequel. With its budget bigger than Smaug's mountain horde, Amazon's Middle-earth venture is set over 3000 years before J.R.R. Tolkien's most famous stories starring Bilbo and Frodo Baggins in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. That mammoth gap means The Rings of Power will inevitably offer a wildly different experience. Most iconic Lord of the Rings characters haven't been born. Most iconic Lord of the Rings locations haven't been built.
One of Amazon's biggest creative liberties with The Rings of Power is adding Harfoots. In Tolkien's mythology, Harfoots are an early breed of hobbits who gravitate across the Misty Mountains and eventually establish the Shire during the Third Age (still long after The Rings of Power). Though Tolkien intimates that Harfoots were around long beforehand, almost nothing is written about their existence. The Rings of Power takes advantage of this ambiguity by introducing a Harfoot clan featuring Nori Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh), Poppy Proudfellow (Megan Richards) and Sadoc Burrows (Lenny Henry). By all accounts, Harfoots will play a deeply significant role in The Rings of Power's narrative. And therein lies Amazon's hairy-footed problem...
While the Harfoots' presence doesn't inherently contradict Middle-earth canon (as long as they don't behead Sauron, conquer the elves, and establish a sprawling empire where second breakfast is compulsory), the Second Age is not their story. Whatever the Harfoots did or didn't do, nobody knew about it. Though the dwarves and men of Middle-earth all played their part, Tolkien's Second Age is really about elves and Númenóreans. Gil-Galad's pointy-eared folk and the mythical mortal islanders are the most dominant species during this era, and almost every major happening runs through them. Explaining why The Rings of Power's Harfoots have such a pivotal role, co-showrunner Patrick McKay (via Vanity Fair) argued, "Does it feel like Middle-earth if you don’t have hobbits or something like hobbits in it?" In seeking to recapture the rural charm of Lord of the Rings' hobbits and the rambunctious heroism of Frodo, Bilbo, et al., The Rings of Power risks diminishing or downplaying the importance of elves and other races the Second Age should be more concerned with.
Is Rings Of Power's Harfoot Problem Bigger Than Its Timeline Issue?
The Rings of Power faces a tricky balance. Can Amazon's Lord of the Rings TV series give casual audiences their hobbit fix without making these halflings so important the elves end up unjustly sharing their rightful spotlight? For a more authentic experience, maybe The Rings of Power should've embraced the differences between its own Second Age setting and Lord of the Rings' Third Age, instead of identifying which parts of Peter Jackson's trilogy "feel like Middle-earth" and parachuting them into a narrative that belongs to a different race. One needn't search far to see how this approach can easily backfire. Peter Jackson's decision to include Legolas in the Hobbit movies (for reasons similar to The Rings of Power with Harfoots) drew criticism aplenty.
Keeping those pesky Harfoots from stealing the show could become a major factor in whether The Rings of Power succeeds - but Amazon may face graver danger elsewhere. Showrunners Patrick McKay and JD Payne have confirmed that The Rings of Power will condense J.R.R. Tolkien's Second Age - which should take place over a period of 3441 years - into a single point of time. That contentious decision could prove even more damaging than tossing Harfoots where they don't belong. Tolkien's mythology taking place across millennia contributes toward the epic, expansive quality readers have loved for decades. The lengthy timeline also allowed Tolkien to craft a richly detailed, immersive fantasy realm. A make-believe land where everything of note happens inside 10 years and the other 3431 are completely uneventful doesn't have quite the same impact.
Neither the Harfoot problem nor the condensed timeline are impossible obstacles to overcome. Handled right, The Rings of Power can make both changes without diluting its story. Both, however, are precarious pitfalls that require Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power to tread carefully.