How does Tolkien’s weirdest character fit into ‘The Rings of Power’ season 2?
If you’re all caught up on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2, you’ll have met Tom Bombadil. If his character felt a little odd in the show, that’s because he is!
I’ll be honest with you—the characters within Tolkien’s universe didn’t really know what to make of Old Tom, either. Perhaps the most divisive, bombastic, wonderfully strange, and weirdly powerful character in Middle-earth, Tom Bombadil was as much of a mystery to Frodo and his Hobbit friends as he is to you now, reading this. As far as we know, he isn’t a wizard, he isn’t a Maiar or one of the Valar, and he isn’t a Man, an Elf, or a Dwarf, either. He’s something else entirely, a character who likes to speak in rhyme and the third person. He’s a bearded fellow who wears a pointy hat, a bright blue jacket, and yellow boots, and he prefers to sing. He’s a character who, get this, is immune to the power of the Ring.
What has Tolkien revealed about Tom Bombadil?
In the first of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings novels, The Fellowship of the Ring, Sam, Frodo, Merry, and Pippin come across Tom Bombadil after they set out on their harrowing journey. By this time, Frodo is in possession of the One Ring, but soon after leaving the rolling hills of the Shire, the Hobbits have a run-in with Old Man Willow. Old Man Willow is a tree, you see, a tree that captured Merry and Pippin and threatened to kill Sam and Frodo. Tom Bombadil finds them in a frantic state and essentially sings the tree to sleep, convincing it to let the young, naïve Hobbits go.
In the end, Frodo and his friends spend a significant amount of time with Tom Bombadil and his wife, Goldberry, who is implied to be a river spirit. The Hobbits feel so comfortable with Tom, in fact, that Frodo tells him all about their quest and the Ring in his possession. Astonishingly, Tom is entirely unaffected by the power of the Ring. He doesn’t even turn invisible when he puts it on. This, combined with his old age and the power of his song, makes his history all the more puzzling.
It is said that Bombadil existed before Morgoth, Sauron’s Master, came to Middle-earth in the First Age. For context, The Rings of Power is set during the Second Age, and The Lord of the Rings takes place during the Third Age. In other words, Tom Bombadil is properly ancient, perhaps even older than Fangorn Forest, where the Ents reside. Some have theorized that Tom Bombadil was the first living being in Middle-earth. A few have speculated that Tom Bombadil might be “Father Time,” while others have said that he may be the living embodiment of the song that brought Arda, the world, into being. And yet, despite his legacy, he chose to settle close to the borders of the Shire, where he met his wife and led a relatively quiet life.
Now, of course, you may be asking yourself: “Why didn’t they just ask Tom Bombadil to take care of the Ring?” Believe me, Frodo asked about this, too. Gandalf keeps the answer simple—he just didn’t think that Tom Bombadil would care enough to keep to the task at hand. Given his immortality, the quests of mortals are beneath him, and so he would not feel the need to interfere to such a great extent. All in all, Tom Bombadil is a mystery wrapped up in an oddly musical package.
Since Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy skipped over Tom Bombadil’s character entirely, it was hard to picture how The Rings of Power would handle this all-powerful being, especially since Bombadil isn’t mentioned in Tolkien’s writings about the Second Age.
Who is Tom Bombadil in The Rings of Power?
Minor spoilers ahead for The Rings of Power season 2, episode 4!
Rather than living on the borders of the Shire, Tom Bombadil has instead chosen to settle in the eastern stretches of Rhûn—for the time being, at least—living in a little cottage in the desert. Interestingly, when Tom (Rory Kinnear) and The Stranger (Daniel Weyman) first meet, the scene replicates Tom’s first meeting with the Hobbits in The Fellowship of the Ring. The Stranger is convinced that a tree branch is destined to be his new staff, and as he tries to take it, the tree swallows him whole until Tom comes around and sings the tree to sleep, allowing the wizard to escape. It’s a fun little nod to the source material.
Other than that, the show hasn’t revealed much about Tom’s overall purpose in Middle-earth, aside from the fact that The Stranger is not the first wizard he’s had dealings with. He also guided Rhûn’s so-called Dark Wizard when he first arrived in Middle-earth’s eastern lands, before he began his reign of terror. Whether this Dark Wizard is supposed to be an early version of Saruman or one of the Blue Wizards from Tolkien’s legendarium—not much was written about them but we do know they traveled to the East after they arrived in Middle-earth—is still unclear, as is The Stranger’s true identity (though it seems more and more likely he is, in fact, Gandalf. I’ll be shocked if he turns out to be Radagast or someone entirely new if I’m honest).
The Rings of Power has gone to great lengths to emphasize just how old and powerful Bombadil is. He can manipulate fire and create bread out of paper, and he mentions that he walked the plains of Middle-earth before the stars were even born. Though this version of the character is decidedly less jolly than he is in Tolkien’s book—a wise choice, probably, given the tone of the show—there’s no denying his imposing presence or abilities, even when faced with the power of the Istari.
So where will his character go from here? Once The Stranger, Nori, and Poppy move on from Rhûn, it’s unlikely Tom Bombadil will play a much larger role in the story. Though he does seem to be a little bit more interested in the comings and going of the wizards than he was in the Ring and Sauron in Fellowship, he’ll probably avoid getting involved in the larger conflict. However, The Fellowship of the Ring does imply that Elrond once met Tom Bombadil, too, and given Elrond’s (Robert Aramayo) important presence in The Rings of Power, that may be an additional way to keep Tom Bombadil involved in the narrative, however briefly.
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