Ungoliant

The Silmarillion gives Ungoliant one sentence: of her fate no tale tells, yet some have said she devoured herself at last. The famous line about her fleeing south and perhaps living still isn't in the published book. It comes from the Annals of Aman, a draft Christopher Tolkien chose not to print. Tolkien wrote four endings for the spider who drank the Two Trees, and they're datable. Earendil kills her in 1926 and again around 1930. She abides yet in 1951. She devours herself in the late 1950s. Survival is his penultimate word, not his final mysterious one. And for a few weeks in May 1944, the monster above Cirith Ungol was still named Ungoliant, until a letter to Christopher turned her into Shelob. Beren, Nan Dungortheb, Torech Ungol, the forgotten south, and a live scholarly fight over whether her evil can be a mere absence of good.

Published

11 August 2026

Runtime

32 min 43 sec