Feb 04 2025 34 mins
In this episode of The Tolkien Podcast, The Return of the Balrog, we take a breakneck-speed look at the history of Tolkien's fantasy realm of Middle-earth and its context in Arda. The super-quick tour isn't concerned with names and dates but aims to provide a big-picture glance to provide context for history's most cinematic balrog — called the Flame of Udûn by Gandalf.
That run of history transitions into history of another kind: cinematic history, including when that balrog met the public eye for the first time, touching on movie fan sites.