Well, that was... completely ludicrous. On the plus side, Spider!Shelob is pretty scary. She has a nice angular shape which looks much more intrinsically menacing than the standard bulbous one.

On the minus side... everything else.

... I have to preemptively correct myself here. I was all ready to say that Ungoliant absolutely couldn't change hershape, but then I went to the source text in the Silm. Here's the introduction of the Unlight herself:

The Eldar knew not whence she came; but some have said that in ages long before she descended from the darkness that lies about Arda, when Melkor first looked down in envy upon the Kingdom of Manwë, and that in the beginning she was one of those that he corrupted to his service. But she had disowned her Master, desiring to be mistress of her own lust, taking all things to herself to feed her emptiness; and she fled to the south, escaping the assaults of the Valar and the hunters of Oromë, for their vigilance had ever been to the north, and the south was long unheeded. Thence she had crept towards the light of the Blessed Realm; for she hungered for light and hated it.

In a ravine she lived, and took shape as a spider of monstrous form, weaving her black webs in a cleft of the mountains. There she sucked up all light that she could find, and spun it forth again in dark nets of strangling gloom, until no light more could come to her abode; and she was famished.

So. Ungoliant isn't a Maia - she's said (by Tolkien, here, so we have to take it as canon) to have come down before Melkor - which means before any of the Valar. That places her in a special category with Tom 'before the Dark Lord came from outside' Bombadil, so very select company.

But... yes, it seems that Ungoliant could explicitly and canonically change shape. Can that be inherited? The mearas seem to have gotten some traits from their potential forefather Nahar, steed of Orome; Huan is clearly more than just a big dog, despite being born as a puppy; and Luthien the Nightingale had enough power to bind Melkor himself in sleep, which must(?) have come from her mother, who once lived in the gardens of Irmo Lorien. So tentatively, yes, it's possible for 'divine' traits to be passed down to children, and that could include shapeshifting.

I really don't like saying that. >(

Fortunately, I get to agree with Nesh on the other part: there is absolutely no way Ungoliant or her spawn were gifted with Sight of any kind. Ungoliant got whipped by Balrogs for lack of it; Shelob got stabbed by a midget. Forward planning was never their thing. And, yes, it goes directly against their whole theme: even Manwe's Sight couldn't see through the Unlight of Ungoliant, and that sort of thing always goes both ways (witness Frodo's troubles with being spotted by Sauron in the Mirror of Galadriel, or with Amon Hen - and the bi-directionality of the palantiri).

Nesh is right that Ungoliant and Shelob are Tolkien's embodiments of Hunger. They may help others, but only for direct personal gain. Since Shelob clearly doesn't have her mother's light-eating abilities (Ungoliant lusted for the Silmarils, while Shelob runs from the trapped essence of the distant light of one of them), that means food. Of course, Talion and Celebrimbor don't look especially edible...

There's a couple of other things in the trailer that make me even more :O (in a bad way). It seems that Minas Ithil is a Gondorian fortress at this point - you know, the one that's been the Tower of Sorcery for thousands of years? Yeah, that one. Timeline hypercompression is in full swing. But let's ignore that! We have something else to attend to:




This is either Celebrimbor (from his appearance) or Sauron (from the fact that he shows up over the line 'The Great Deceiver will pay for his betrayal'). Of course, Shelob claims the two of them 'are one', so depending on how literal she's being, that might not even be a sensible question.

Either way, whoever it was hung out with Shelob... and is certainly implied to be offering her that three-stoned Ring. Which... could be anything. It's not one of the Movieverse Three or Seven, and obviously isn't the One or Brim's Other One, but after that...

My best guess is that it's either one of the Nine, or a lesser ring. Whether it's being offered to Shelob as a bribe in the present or the past, I don't know.

Oh, and speaking of Rings... guess what Shelob got hold of:



That's Brim's Ring on her finger. We get a few good looks at it throughout the trailer, and I remember that it's inscribed in English using a Tengwar font (not English in Tengwar, you understand, but English keymappings with Tengwar letters)... I wonder if I can get more of the inscription off.

I thought I couldn't. 'r-e-j', it read, and I slumped. Then a couple of letters letter I had a capital I, so clearly it was just gibberish now. Nevertheless, I persevered to the end of the word, flicked the font from Tengwar to English, and saw:

'rejoice.'

... okay then! Let's do this.

Here's what I've been able to read. Unlike the first trailer, we get a good look at both the inner and outer inscription, so:



Which you can type into your preferred Tengwar font and read as:

Outer: You [...] light undiminished, All shall fear me and rejoice.

Inner: I renounce the Blessed Realm. To redeem the Land of Shadow.

Things to note:

-Yes, that's a misquote/inversion of Galadriel there on the outside.
-This is a seriously messed-up message, with Celebrimbor basically refusing to go to Heaven in order to... mind-control some orcs or something.
-I filled in parts of the latter half of the inner message from the previous trailer (this version shows 'to red... adow', so I'm preeetty confident). Which means...
-They've reversed the Ring from last time! You can't see the image any more (PHOTOBUCKET! [Shakes fist]), but you can watch the original trailer yourself and see portions of that 'inner' text on the outside of the One More Ring. That's... I don't even know why you'd do that.

The tagline at the end of the trailer is 'Nothing will be forgotten'. Between Shelob, Minas Ithil, and now getting their own Ring inside out... I tend to doubt that. ;)

hS

PS: Is it bad that I kiiiiiind of want to write the story of Bombadil and Ungoliant fighting it out on Arda before the Valar arrive? She's the Dark Before the Stars, he's the Song of the Earth... it could work!