The Rings of Power: Tom Bombadil's dialogue is taken from the books, so expect some jaunty singing

The second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is coming out right around the corner, and our curiosity is piqued. The new episodes will continue the stories of characters like Galadriel, Elrond, and the Stranger, a wizard-like figure who may or may not be Gandalf. Showrunners J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay are also bringing in other figures from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books, including yellow-booted immortal goofball Tom Bombadil.

Tom Bombadil originally appeared in a poem Tolkien wrote called The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, which was published a few years before The Hobbit, the author's first work officially set in Middle-earth. He shows up later in The Fellowship of the Ring, the first Lord of the Rings book, where he helps the hobbits out of a jam early in their adventure. Most Lord of the Rings adaptations leave Tom out because he doesn't have an impact on the rest of the plot; his inclusion reads like Tolkien is having fun inserting this earlier, whimsical character he made up into what is on the whole a much more serious story.

But The Rings of Power will take him more seriously, for better or worse. "He nudges the Stranger along his journey, which he knows will eventually protect the larger natural world that he cares about," Payne told Vanity Fair. "So I’d say our Tom Bombadil is slightly more interventionist than you see in the books, but only by 5% or 10%."

This is already out of step with The Lord of the Rings, where Tom is non-interventionist to an almost absurd degree; at one point it's said that if he were to come into possession of Sauron's One Ring, he would just lose it, so little would he care. That's one of the reasons Tom Bombadil lifts so easily out of adaptations; he brushes the narrative but doesn't affect it.

Speaking to Games Radar, Payne laid out their plans for Tom, saying that a quarter of the character's dialogue is lifted straight from The Fellowship of the Ring, and that to write the rest they meticulously researched how Tolkien adapted Anglo-Saxon verse. "One of the moments I love best about this season is when The Stranger asks, 'Who are you?' And Bombadil just says, 'Eldest.' He's wacky and sings songs, but when he says that, you get this sense of, "Oh, he's been around for thousands of years.'"

Forbes tracked down the full passage Payne is talking about:

"Eldest, that’s what I am. Mark my words, my friends: Tom was here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He made paths before the Big People, and saw the little People arriving. He was here before the kings and the graves and the Barrow-wights. When the elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless – before the Dark Lord came from Outside."

That's a pretty good monologue, although you have to wonder: since The Rings of Power is set thousands of years before The Lord of the Rings, does it make sense to lift dialogue from a book that is set several millennia into the show's future?

The delightful, baffling problem of Tom Bombadil

Personally, when I hear that we're going to get a bunch of Tom Bombadil's dialogue from Fellowship, the first thing I think of is songs. Tom sings a lot. For instance:

"Hop along, my little friends, up the Withywindle!
Tom's going on ahead candles for to kindle.
Down west sinks the Sun: soon you will be groping.
When the night-shadows fall, then the door will open,
Out of the window-panes light will twinkle yellow.
Fear no alder black! Heed no hoary willow!
Fear neither root nor bough! Tom goes on before you.
Hey now! merry dol! We'll be waiting for you!"

Or this classic jam:

"Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow,
Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow.
None has ever caught him yet, for Tom, he is the master:
His songs are stronger songs, and his feet are faster."

I have no clue whatsoever how this kind of thing will play onscreen, although my instinct is that it will be awkward. I think the producers put themselves in a bind: if they adapt Tom Bombadil as written, he has no impact on the plot, which could annoy people who want to watch a fast-paced, entertaining TV show. But if they change him so he's more hands-on, they risk annoying fans of J.R.R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. It kinda seems like a high-risk, no-reward proposition to me.

But maybe I'll be surprised. We'll find out when the second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres on Amazon Prime Video on Thursday, August 29.

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