LOTR: What Happened to the Ents After the War of the One Ring?

As one of the ancient races of Middle-earth, the Ents are almost a forgotten legend in The Lord of the Rings. They are first seen when the Hobbits Merry and Pippin try to escape from the Orc Grishnákh by climbing up the trunk of what they think is a tree, but which turns out to be Treebeard instead, “the oldest living thing that still walks beneath the Sun upon this Middle-earth”. It is believed that the Ents were born from J. R. R. Tolkien’s frustration with “the shabby use made in Shakespeare of the coming of Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill” – he wanted to create a setting where “the trees might really march to war”.