Éowyn in the context of "Battle of the Pelennor Fields"

Miranda Otto (born 16 December 1967) is an Australian actress. She is the daughter of actors Barry and Lindsay Otto and the paternal half-sister of actress Gracie Otto. Otto began her acting career in 1986 at age 18 and appeared in a variety of independent and major studio films in Australia. She made her major film debut in Emma's War in 1987 in which she played a teenager who moves to Australia's bush country during World War II.

After a decade of critically acclaimed roles in Australian films, Otto gained Hollywood's attention during the 1990s after appearing in supporting roles in the films The Thin Red Line and What Lies Beneath. She rose to fame in the early 2000s for playing Éowyn in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film series, based on the classic fantasy novel of the same name by English author J. R. R. Tolkien.

The Nazgûl (from Black Speech nazg 'ring', and gûl 'wraith, spirit') – introduced as Black Riders and also called Ringwraiths, Dark Riders, the Nine Riders, or simply the Nine – are fictional characters in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth. They were nine Men who had succumbed to Sauron's power through wearing Rings of Power, which gave them immortality but reduced them to invisible wraiths, servants bound to the power of the One Ring and completely under Sauron's control.

The Lord of the Rings calls them Sauron's "most terrible servants". Their leader, known as the Witch-king of Angmar, the Lord of the Nazgûl, or the Black Captain, was Sauron's chief agent for most of the Third Age. At the end of the Third Age, their main stronghold was the city of Minas Morgul at the entrance to Sauron's realm, Mordor. They dress entirely in black. In their early forays, they ride on black horses; later they ride flying monsters, which Tolkien described as "pterodactylic". Their main weapon is terror, though in their pursuit of the Ring-bearer Frodo Baggins, their leader uses a Morgul-knife which would reduce its victim to a wraith, and they carry ordinary swords. In his final battle, the Lord of the Nazgûl attacks Éowyn with a mace. The hobbit Merry Brandybuck stabs him with an ancient enchanted Númenórean blade, allowing Éowyn to kill him with her sword.

Faramir is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. He is introduced as the younger brother of Boromir of the Fellowship of the Ring and second son of Denethor, the Steward of Gondor. Faramir enters the narrative in The Two Towers, where, upon meeting Frodo Baggins, he is presented with a temptation to take possession of the One Ring. In The Return of the King, he leads the forces of Gondor in the War of the Ring, coming near to death, succeeds his father as Steward, and wins the love of Éowyn, lady of the royal house of Rohan.

Tolkien wrote that of all his characters, Faramir was the most like him: Tolkien had fought in the First World War and had similarly had a vision of darkness. Scholars have likened Faramir's courage to that in the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon, and his hunting green-clad in Ithilien to the English folk hero and outlaw Robin Hood. The Tolkien scholar Jane Chance sees Faramir as central to a complex web of Germanic allegiance-relationships.

The roles of women in The Lord of the Rings have often been assessed as insignificant, or important only in relation to male characters in a story about men for boys. Meanwhile, other commentators have noted the empowerment of the three major women characters, Galadriel, Éowyn, and Arwen, and provided in-depth analysis of their roles within the narrative of The Lord of the Rings.

Weronika Łaszkiewicz has written that "Tolkien's heroines have been both praised and severely criticized", and that his fictional women have an ambiguous image, of "both passivity and empowerment". J. R. R. Tolkien spent much of his life in an all-male environment, and had conservative views about women, prompting discussion of possible sexism. Much of the action in The Lord of the Rings is by male characters, and the nine-person Company of the Ring is entirely male.