The Lord of the Rings‘ Hobbit trilogy was a Hollywood adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien novel. It’s no secret that the movies made plenty of changes to the source material. For one, they added an unnecessary rivalry between Thorin and Thranduil, which padded the running time, but did little else to benefit the story. More importantly, it resurrected Azog the Defiler to be a personal nemesis for Thorin Oakenshield. Years earlier, Thorin had badly wounded Azog in battle, but the Pale Orc returned in the films to hunt Thorin in an insatiable quest for revenge.

Azog the Defiler pursued Thorin throughout the trilogy, and his hunt culminated in The Battle of the Five Armies. Thorin and Azog did battle on Ravenhill, and it ended with both their deaths. Thorin allowed himself to be stabbed so that he could put an end to his nemesis’ reign of terror. However, that’s not what happened in The Hobbit book. Azog had long been dead, so he wasn’t the one who killed Thorin. It was actually a whole slew of some of the deadliest Orcs in Middle-earth: the Orc Berserkers. And while Peter Jackson’s movies emphasized Azog’s ferocity — as well as those of other orc sub-types, such as Saruman’s Uruk-hai — the Berserkers may have easily outmatched even Saruman’s fearsome Uruk-hai who appeared in The Fellowship of the Ring.

Uruk-hai Were Designed to Be Superior Orcs

Type
Created by
First Appeared
Details

Orcs
Morgoth
First Age
Created by torturing Elves.

Uruk
Sauron
Third Age
Sauron’s taller, stronger Orcs.

Uruk-hai
Saruman
Third Age
Saruman’s “perfect” Orcs.

Orc Berserkers
Saruman
Third Age
Created for the Peter Jackson movies.

The history of the Orcs can be found in Tolkien’s supplemental works, specifically The Silmarillion and The History of Middle-earth. They were created during the First Age of Middle-earth by the dark spirit Morgoth — Sauron’s predecessor — by capturing Elves and torturing them in his fortress of Utumno until they became corrupted. The Orcs served as Morgorth’s shock troops during his battles against the Elves in the First Age, then flocked to Sauron’s banner in the Second Age after Morgoth’s defeat. Saurman explains the basics of the story in the film version of The Fellowship of the Ring, and Season 1 of The Rings of Power features Adar: one of the first Elves corrupted and transformed by Morgoth. Adar is an original character created for the miniseries and has no corresponding figure in Tolkien, but his presence is an apt visual representation of the Orcs’ dark creation process.

Various different subspecies of Orc developed in different areas of Middle-earth, most notably Goblins: a term that Tolkien used interchangeably with Orcs, but which tended to refer to those dwelling beneath the Misty Mountains. It also includes “Uruks” or Black Orcs, whom Sauron bred in Mordor during the Third Age as he prepared for his war on Middle-earth. They are taller and stronger than the Orcs who served Morgoth, with straighter limbs. Jackson’s version of The Return of The King features Uruks in its depiction of Mordor, particularly in the tower of Cirith-Ungol where Frodo and Sam confront them on their path to destroy the Ring.

Then there are the Uruk-hai, whom Saruman created in his fortress at Isengard in the lead-up to the War of the Ring. They are taller and stronger even than the Uruks, and are not impaired by the sunlight the way other Orcs were. Tolkien doesn’t go into great detail about their creation, but suggests that they were cross-bred with Men, a detail that Jackson spells out in the movie adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring. Jackson also takes great pains to visually differentiate each subspecies of Orc, with the Uruk-hai taller and darker than their Mordor cousins, and the goblins of Moria sporting larger eyes and a scuttling gait. It fleshes out Tolkien’s writing, which could sometimes be sparse on the specifics but gave the filmmakers a strong set of guidelines to follow.

What Were Orc Berserkers?

Saruman was pretty conceited in The Lord of the Rings. He made his Uruk-hai by breeding Men and Orcs, and he thought that he had invented the idea. Sauron, however, had already done the same thing, following Morgoth’s example when creating the Uruks. Either way, the Uruk-hai were bigger, faster and stronger than regular Orcs, and they could move in direct sunlight, which previous subspecies couldn’t do. But Peter Jackson wanted to take them to the next level. So, he invented the idea of the Orc Berserker.

The Berserkers were massive warriors, who didn’t wear armor into battle. They only wore a helmet, and it was filled with blood before battle, giving them an awful bloodlust. It was an Orc Berserker who carried the blasting powder that destroyed the wall below Helm’s Deep in the movie version of The Two Towers. Other Berserkers rode on the top of the siege ladders the Orcs used to scale the walls: giving their lives just to tie up the human defenders and give their fellows time to climb the ladders safely.

The Orc Berserkers were not a Tolkien invention, but the name has been retroactively (if unofficially) added to the Bodyguard of Bolg. That should give some context to just how deadly Bolg’s warriors were. The Berserkers were even worse than Saruman’s Uruk-Hai, and if Bolg’s Bodyguard were on their level, they must have been pretty special. And they didn’t have any of Saruman’s magic to make them bigger and stronger. They were completely natural, deadly Orcs. That’s why Thorin died at their hands, and that’s why Bolg’s Bodyguard were the deadliest Orcs in Middle-earth.

Who Killed Thorin in Tolkien’s The Hobbit?

Minus some of the flashy effects, the book’s version of the Battle of the Five Armies was pretty similar to the film version. Thorin and his Dwarves were holed up in Erebor and burst out when hope was nearly lost. When Thorin emerged, Dain’s Dwarves and Thranduil’s Elves rallied to him and charged the endless ranks of Orcs. The tide of the battle turned for a time, but they were still sorely outnumbered. It wasn’t long before they completely were surrounded.

It was during that time that Thorin was mortally wounded. The Orcs were being led by Bolg (who was Azog’s son), and his bodyguard was legendary. According to the book, they were “goblins of huge size.” Thorin and his Dwarves attacked the bodyguard, but it was to no avail. They could not break the Orcs’ ranks, and Thorin was wounded multiple times in the process. Things started to look bleak, but the Eagles and the skin-changer Beorn arrived just in time to win the day. When he arrived, Beorn broke the ranks of the bodyguard, crushed Bolg and took Thorin to safety. Sadly, by then it was too late. Thorin died shortly thereafter, a hero of his people.

The Jackson Hobbit movies needed to develop as much of Tolkien’s notes and background material as they could in order to extend the story through three movies. Azog and Bolg became good figures for that: providing nemeses for Thorin besides the dragon (whom the Dwarves never faced), and allowing the movies to flesh out Tolkien’s notes and backstory to more directly serve the drama. Considering that Thorin was one of the trilogy’s two protagonists since the beginning, he needed to face a properly daunting threat in the finale. The Orc Berserkers became an easy way to do that, aided by their previous appearance in The Two Towers and giving Jackson a stronger, scarier Orc variant to punctuate the Battle of the Five Armies. They have become the Orc to beat — despite being limited to the movie universe — and even Saruman’s efforts to “perfect” them with the Uruk-hai can’t quite measure up.