The second season of Amazon’s The Rings of Power starts on Thursday. For the first time in 100 years, an important character from The Lord of the Rings will be adapted. However, the actor says that the character will be different from the source material.
Which character is it about? The character in question is the legendary Tom Bombadil. He is one of the most enigmatic and oldest figures from The Lord of the Rings and makes an appearance in The Fellowship of the Ring. Unfortunately, he has not yet made it into either the films or the series adaptation.
In the second season of The Rings of Power, he is now making his debut. More about it and who Tom Bombadil is can be found here: Legendary character from Middle-earth missing in “The Lord of the Rings” films, now making an appearance in The Rings of Power
Bombadil is “representative of everything that Middle-earth is”
Why has the character been adapted now? The actor playing Tom Bombadil, Rory Kinnear, whom you may know from Our Flag Means Death and the James Bond movie No Time to Die
, spoke in an interview with Gamesradar+ about the role. He said he is not surprised that it took so long:
Well, I think with the other adaptations … I believe Peter Jackson said, [Tom Bombadil] doesn’t necessarily move the story forward, especially regarding the narrative. But on the pages and in people’s imagination, he is this incredible figure who carries so much knowledge and so much sense of fun and so much life, just like all of humanity, history, and the earth. He is, so to speak, representative of everything that the earth and Middle-earth is.
Rory Kinnear in conversation with Gamesradar+, 26.08.2024
But within the framework of a multi-season series and episodic storytelling like on TV, there is more time to explore exactly these stories. The showrunners J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay would tell a story, but it may not necessarily be the one that Tom has in the books.
How will Tom be different? The main point of contact for Tom Bombadil is expected to be the character The Stranger
. The actor Daniel Weyman says about Tom:
Even if he doesn’t appear in every scene in the books, he is always somehow present because he is so extraordinary.
He sort of accompanies you on the journey through the books, and I think that’s the great thing about Tom on this journey for The Stranger. His presence is so extraordinary that you still have him in mind even when you are not with him because he interacted with you.
And as Tolkien writes him – he is in some ways so open and opaque that people can project so much onto him. I think that’s his strength, in terms of both the reader’s imagination and the potential in interactions with The Stranger and his role in The Rings of Power.
Daniel Weyman via Gamesradar, 26.08.2024
The Rings of Power starts its second season on August 29. Everything you need to know about it can be read in our overview of the series: The Rings of Power Season 2: Start, Trailer, Cast – Everything about the new season of the Amazon series
