Take another look at those battle scenes in Rohan.
When Éomer leads the Riders against Sauron’s forces, the camera quickly moves among hundreds of armed warriors. No one stops to look at them closely. But as Collider revealed in December 2024, a large portion of those riders galloping and fighting on screen were played by women, even though their characters within the story are men.
It was not a casting accident. The reason, according to the article, has a name: Éowyn. The princess of Rohan, played by Miranda Otto, disguises herself as a soldier to join the army and ends up facing the Witch-king in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, one of the saga’s most memorable moments. If other female warriors had been visible as such within the plot, her act would have lost its narrative force.
Of the three women with a truly significant role in the original trilogy —Galadriel, Arwen, and Éowyn— only the latter wields a sword. The rest of the actresses were hidden beneath men’s armor, present in every battle but invisible to the story.
