Watcher in the Water

The Watcher in the Water is a fictional creature in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium; it appears in The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of The Lord of the Rings. Lurking in a lake beneath the western walls of the dwarf-realm Moria, it is said to have appeared after the damming of the river Sirannon, and was first recorded by Balin's dwarf company 30 or so years before the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring. The origins of the creature are not described in Tolkien's works, but writers have compared it to squids, the legendary kraken, and even to Tolkien's dragons.

Literature
In The Lord of the Rings, while the Fellowship of the Ring moved towards Mount Doom to complete its quest of destroying the One Ring made by the Dark Lord Sauron, Gandalf was forced to decide which path to take: over the mountain of Caradhras through the Redhorn Gate, or under the mountain, through the treacherous mines of Moria, where the Balrog resided, to the Dimrill Gate. At Aragorn's insistence they first tried the mountain pass, but weather conditions proved too severe for the Fellowship to continue on that path. Though many of the Company were reluctant, they were forced to turn back and instead make for the mines of Moria.

The Fellowship located the entrance to Moria: the Doors of Durin. The Doors were protected, allowing no entrance, requiring a password to be spoken. The Fellowship could not enter until Gandalf answered the riddle on the gates. Unknown to the Fellowship, something resided in the lake outside the gates, the "Watcher in the Water".

Boromir unintentionally disturbed the water by casting a stone into the pool, and the Watcher attacked Frodo as the Fellowship was about to enter Moria. The creature grasped Frodo with a long, pale green, luminous, fingered tentacle. Samwise Gamgee drove the tentacle off with his sword, but twenty other tentacles emerged from the water. The Company retreated into Moria as the tentacles hurled the enormous stone doors shut and uprooted the trees that grew on either side of the entrance. The doors were sealed off, trapping the Fellowship in the mines. The Fellowship had no alternative but to go through the mines and exit them on the other side via the Dimrill Gate. Gandalf privately noted that the Watcher had grabbed only Frodo, the Ring-bearer. Frodo and Gandalf were not sure whether it was one creature or many. As Gandalf commented, "Something has crept or been driven out of the dark water under the mountains. There are older and fouler things than orcs in the deep places of the world."

After journeying further into the mines, the Fellowship found the Book of Mazarbul, a record of the dwarf Balin's failed expedition to reclaim Moria and its eventual downfall. In this manuscript, a scribe relates: "We cannot get out. We cannot get out. They have taken the Bridge and second hall. Frár, Lóni and Náli fell there ... went five days ago ... the pool is up to the wall at Westgate. The Watcher in the Water took Óin. We cannot get out. The end comes ... drums, drums in the deep ... they are coming."

Name
The "Watcher in the Water" is the only name Tolkien gave to this creature in the The Lord of the Rings, and in any of his writings, although Tolkien refers to the Watcher in the Water as simply "The Watcher" for the remainder of the novel.

Concept and creation
An early version of the Fellowship's encounter with the Watcher is found in The Return of the Shadow, part of The History of Middle-earth series, wherein the textual development of Tolkien's Middle-earth-related fantasy is discussed and analyzed by his son and literary executor, Christopher Tolkien. This particular volume focuses upon The Lord of the Rings.

The episode is found in the chapter "The Mines of Moria", equivalent to "A Journey in the Dark" in The Fellowship of the Ring. Tolkien's account of the creature at this stage is practically the same as in the final published version, except for the names of other characters. However, its emergence, physical appearance, abilities, attack on the Fellowship, and rupture of the Moria Gate are already present in his initial writings.

Since Tolkien never explicitly stated what the creature is, others have felt free to speculate on its identity and origins. In A Tolkien Bestiary, David Day calls the Watcher a kraken; however, he also implies that there are some differences between the kraken of Scandinavian folklore and the Watcher in the Water. However, Tolkien never called the Watcher a kraken nor described the presence of krakens in Middle-earth. In The Complete Tolkien Companion, J. E. A. Tyler postulates the Watcher was a cold-drake: "...these dragons rely on their strength and speed alone (the creature that attacked the Ring-bearer near the Lake of Moria may have been one of these)." Another writer compared it to squids.

Essayist Allison Harl speculates that the Watcher may be a kraken created and bred by Morgoth in Utumno. Harl also believes that Watcher in the Water represents itself as gatekeeper whose goal, in the context of the archetypal journey, is to guard the Doors of Durin keeping the heroes from entering into new territory, psychologically or spiritually. This "guardian theory" has also been theorised by other writers such as Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers.

Portrayal in adaptations
The Watcher in the Water appears in both film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings: Ralph Bakshi's animated The Lord of the Rings (1978) and Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). Bakshi's work follows the book relatively faithfully for this sequence, with only the Watcher's tentacles seen. After Sam frees Frodo from its clutches, Boromir rushes forward and hacks at its tentacles for a few seconds. In Jackson's adaptation, the Watcher is portrayed as a colossal, black, giant squid-like monster with a gaping mouth and rows of sharp teeth. Here, too, it grabs Frodo with its tentacles as described in the book, and reaches out for the rest of the Fellowship following Frodo's rescue. Peter Jackson revealed in the commentaries that the original idea was to have Bill the Pony dragged under water by the Watcher but this was changed.

The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game by Games Workshop, based on Jackson's film, calls the Watcher in the Water the "Guardian of the Doors of Durin". Due to the popularity of the creature several other items depicting the Watcher were released after the film.

The Watcher made its first appearance in The Fellowship of the Ring video game and has since appeared in several games. The Watcher is used as power hero that can be purchased by points in Battle for Middle-earth II, but it makes no formal appearance. The Watcher drops rare First Age weapons in The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria, requiring a 12-man raid to beat it.

The Watcher in the Water also appears in the logo at the start of the Battle for Middle-earth games franchise in front of the Moria Gate that leads to the Mines of Moria and subsequently the Balrog. It has since appeared in many other different Lord of the Rings games.