Who is the guy in the meteor from The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power?

Is the meteor man Tom Bombadil?

Tom Bombadil is the weirdest thing in The Lord of the Rings books by a wide margin. A merry forest dweller, he first appeared in a poem by J.R.R. Tolkien published in 1934, a few years before The Hobbit. It never appeared like Tom was supposed to be a part of Tolkien’s wider Legendarium, and indeed, he doesn’t really fit into The Lord of the Rings. Frodo and company encounter Tom early in the story, he is apparently a being of limitless power, and he never shows up again, nor is it ever revealed how he fits into Tolkien’s wider cosmology. Honestly, it kind of just seemed as though Tolkien liked him and wanted to shove him in the book, and he’s been confusing readers ever since.

Tom claims to be one of the oldest creatures in Middle-earth. He could be the oldest. Hell, he could have existed before Middle-earth came into existence. When it comes to Tom Bombadil, we will ever have more questions than answers. The point is that he would have been around — somewhere — during the Second Age. Could he have also flown up in a meteor and crashed near some hobbits? Sure, why not?

All that said, this is our least likely candidate yet. Most adaptations of The Lord of the Rings exclude Tom on account of how confounding a character he is, and I don’t expect The Rings of Power to kick that hornet’s nest by exploring his backstory.

So who is the meteor man?

I don’t know. I don’t know. We’ll just have to watch and find out together, won’t we?

But if I had to guess, I’d say that Meteor Man is an unnamed Maia who has come to Middle-earth for some purpose. What purpose it is we know not, or not yet. Remember that the meteor came out of the west, so Meteor Man is probably from far Valinor. But was he sent by the Valar, the gods of that realm, to help the people of Middle-earth? Or is he a wicked Maia who is fleeing Valinor? No one but Jeff Bezos and friends know for sure, but I certainly want to find out.

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