Watcher in the Water

Watcher in the Water
Tolkien character
Book illustration by John Howe
In-universe information
Race	Unknown
Book(s)	The Fellowship of the Ring (1954) The Return of the Shadow (1988)

The Watcher in the Water is a fictional creature in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth; it appears in The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of The Lord of the Rings.^{[T 1]} 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,^{[T 1]} and its presence was first recorded by Balin's dwarf company 30 or so years before the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring.

The origins of the creature are not described in Tolkien's works, but critics have compared it to the legendary kraken and to Odysseus's passage between the devouring Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis. Its presence in combination with the barrier lake and the formidable Doors of Durin have been likened to the multiple obstacles often found in Norse mythology.
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