Over at Vanity Fair, they have a first look—a first look arillo!—at Tom Bombadil, who joins the second season of The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power along with several images of the peculiar man.
In this iteration of the strange, dancing-and-singing ancient one, Bombadil doesn’t live near the Old Forest, but rather by an oasis in the desert, presumably where Baby Gandalf (aka The Stranger) and the Harfoot, Elanor Brandyfoot, will make their way to as they journey east. It’s unclear if the fair Goldberry, River-woman’s daughter, slender as the willow-wand, clearer than the water, will be in the show.
“When he finally crosses paths with the Stranger, you could say he has a desire to try to keep the destruction that has happened there from spreading to his beloved lands in the West,” showrunner J.D. Payne tells Variety. “He nudges the Stranger along his journey, which he knows will eventually protect the larger natural world that he cares about. So I’d say our Tom Bombadil is slightly more interventionist than you see in the books, but only by 5% or 10%.”
In many ways, the mysterious Bombadil is the exact opposite of Sauron. Tolkien described him in The Lord Of The Rings as “older than old” and in a letter as ““the spirit of the (vanishing) Oxford and Berkshire countryside.” If Sauron is the rise of industrialism and the bending of the natural world to an iron will and toward destruction, Bombadil is everything that stands against. And unlike Gandalf and the elves, he does not join the fight.
I was always disappointed that Bombadil didn’t make an appearance in the Peter Jackson trilogy—though cutting the Scouring of the Shire was a far greater sin—and a part of me is a little bit excited to see him in Rings Of Power, as I always found him one of the most fascinating characters in The Lord Of The Rings. He’s able to ask Frodo for the Ring without argument. He can see Frodo when he’s wearing it, and he’s able to put it on without any issue. He’s immune, basically, to all of Sauron’s evil. No other character in Middle-earth possesses this ability.
The rest of me is just bracing for disappointment. After Season 1, I have exactly zero faith that Payne and his co-showrunner Patrick McKay will do right by Tolkien and Middle-earth. The first season was such a horrendous misfire, such an insult to fans, it would genuinely shock me if they didn’t screw up Season 2 just as badly. We shall see on August 29th when the first episodes drop.
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