Including Tom Bombadil may be a no-win scenario for The Lord the Rings: The Rings of Power

By far the strangest interlude in J.R.R. Tolkien's beloved Lord of the Rings trilogy comes near the start of The Fellowship of the Ring, right after Frodo and his friends leave the Shire with the One Ring in tow. They cut through a forest and run into a jolly stranger named Tom Bombadil. Tom wears a blue jacket and yellow boots. He sings a lot. He talks to trees. And he's apparently so ancient and powerful that the One Ring, the item everyone in Middle-earth is freaking out about, has zero effect on him.

Tom helps the hobbits out of a few jams, sends them on their way, and then is barely ever mentioned again. He doesn't fit neatly into any of the extensive lore Tolkien so painstakingly crafted, nor does he have any appreciable effect on the wider plot. That's why most adaptations of The Lord of the Rings, including Peter Jackson's movie trilogy, leave him out entirely. Seventy years The Fellowship of the Ring was published, a lot of fans still don't know what to make of him.

My opinion is that trying to make much of anything of Tom Bombadil is a mistake. He first appeared in Tolkien's poem "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil," which was published before The Lord of the Rings or even The Hobbit. I think Tolkien included Tom in his epic trilogy for no deeper reason than because he thinks Tom is funny and felt like it.

And yet, the Lord of the Rings prequel show Prime Video has opted to include Tom Bombadil, played by Penny Dreadful veteran Rory Kinnear. In this show, set thousands of years before The Lord of the Rings story we know, Tom is living in the desert land of Rhûn, and looks like he's going to try and train the Stranger — who may or may not be Gandalf, he has a bad case of TV amnesia — to use his magic powers. It's implied that he also trained the mysterious Dark Wizard, who keeps a tight grip on these lands.

This is all fun enough in that Rings of Power way where I'm mildly entertained if rarely thrilled. But I can't help thinking that the show would have been better off leaving Tom Bombadil undisturbed.

Why including Tom Bombadil is destined to please no one

As someone who's a big fan of Tolkien's books, I know that Tom Bombadil's appearance on The Rings of Power is out of step with what the author intended for the character. Bombadil's whole ethos in The Lord of the Rings is that he is unconcerned with the rest of the plot. At one point, someone suggests giving the One Ring to Tom for safekeeping, but Gandalf says Tom would just lose it, so little does he care about it, and eventually it would find its way back to Sauron.

And keep in mind: the One Ring is the hinge on which the whole of The Lord of the Rings turns. And Tom doesn't give a shit. It doesn't affect him and he doesn't affect it. This is why Tom lifts out so easily whenever someone wants to adapt The Lord of the Rings: he doesn't care about the story, he's barely part of the story, so an adaptation of the story doesn't lose much by losing him.

But on The Rings of Power, he cares. He cared enough to train the Dark Wizard, who is involved in the wider story. He cares enough to train the Stranger, who is involved in the wider story. So already, this version of Tom Bombadil is diametrically opposed to the version we meet in The Lord of the Rings. (Also, for what it's worth, he doesn't spend nearly as much time singing silly songs.)

If you're a devoted Lord of the Rings fan who wants to see a book-accurate version of Tom, this will not please you. I've already made peace with the fact that The Rings of Power isn't trying particularly hard to respect Tolkien's mythology; I could list all the differences but this post would be longer than one of Tolkien's books. The Rings of Power is its own thing and I've decided to just try and enjoy it for what it is.

But here's the rub: if fans can't enjoy this version of Tom Bombadil as a manifestation of the character they know from the books — and we can't, he's too different for that — then we have to enjoy him as an original creation who fits in the context of this TV show. But as of yet, I'm not sure he works in that way, either.

I try to put myself in the shoes of someone who's never read The Lord of the Rings and is just watching The Rings of Power as a TV show. So the Stranger, this important, latently powerful character, travels to Rhûn in search of his destiny, and runs into...a complete rando living in a cottage who can teach him all about magic. We don't fully know where the story is going yet, but I think this would strike me as strange and anticlimactic.

So that's the corner I think the show has written himself into with Tom: he's just similar enough to the book version of the character to remind fans that he's extremely different, but he's not sufficiently built out as an original creation in a way that's going to entertain newbies.

Might that change in the back half of the season? I hope so, but I fear the season going to end with Tom not having pleased anyone.

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