When it comes to page-to-screen adaptations, you can’t do much better than Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. The director’s approach to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien is considered thematically and narratively perfect — and for good reason — but Jackson did have to take some creative liberties with Tolkien’s three novels. The Lord of the Rings is an epic adventure, and not every element of the story could fit into three feature-length films. Every omission and change served the trilogy well, but there was one in particular that, even 20-plus years later, felt like a missed opportunity.
The Fellowship of the Ring boasts a massive ensemble, which means that some minor characters from the source material were cut or combined with others. That’s especially the case for Tom Bombadil, a fan favorite that pops up throughout Tolkien’s novel. There evidently wasn’t enough time to include the character in the adaptation, so a few of his characteristics lived on in characters like Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen), Fellowship’s resident wizard. It’s a choice that ultimately served the film well, but it’s also created an opportunity for future stories set in the Lord of the Rings universe — particularly its prequel series, The Rings of Power. And with the impending Season 2 of Rings of Power, Tom could be the key to turning the Stranger into the Gandalf we know.
Tom Bombadil’s origin
Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring only features two wizards in Middle-earth: Gandalf and his former mentor, Saruman (Christopher Lee). In the source material, though, the realm is populated by all kinds of mysterious, magical figures. Tom Bombadil is one of them: he resides on the outskirts of the Shire, deep in the Old Forest. He’s introduced as an off-beat, zany old man who frequently speaks in casual rhymes. But, his carefree attitude elides his true importance to this world. He may be the oldest and most powerful figure within Tolkien’s lore.
Tom’s exact age and origin is a mystery, but it’s said that he came to Middle-earth long before Sauron or the first Dark Lord, Melkor. The Elves call him “the Oldest and Fatherless,” and other legends refer to him as the “First”... as in, the first being to exist in Arda altogether. He might even pre-date the Valar, Middle-earth’s equivalent to angels. “Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn,” he says in Fellowship. “He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless — before the Dark Lord came from Outside.”
As the oldest being in the realm, Tom also boasts an untapped mastery over magic. It turns his home into a haven for the hobbits in Fellowship; Tom is even able to try on the One Ring without facing any repercussions. Not only does he seem immune to the Rings’s power, but he’s one of only three characters that willingly returns it to Frodo.
Despite being able to resist Sauron’s magic, he’s notably not recruited as a member of the Fellowship. As Gandalf tells Frodo later on, Tom is really in his own little world. He’s somewhat removed from the drama between Sauron and the Free Peoples; if he were to become the steward of the Ring, he’d either forget all about it and dispose of it entirely, or have to face the might of Sauron alone. He’s a fascinating character, but it makes sense that Jackson and his co-writers would choose to cut him from Fellowship of the Ring.
Tom Bombadil before The Fellowship
The Rings of Power’s co-showrunners more or less agree. In a conversation with Vanity Fair, JD Payne admitted that Tom “is challenging to integrate dramatically in that he doesn't have an agenda. He’s not driving forward and pushing people to arrive at any particular end.”
That’s certainly true for the Tom we meet in The Fellowship of the Ring — but as The Rings of Power takes place a few thousand years before Frodo encounters the One Ring, Payne and his co-showrunner, Patrick McKay, could speculate on what a younger, more active version of the character would be like. We’ll see their take on Tom in The Rings of Power’s second season. Played by Rory Kinnear, this incarnation of Tom is positioned as a guide to a fledgling wizard known as The Stranger (Daniel Weyman). And it's in this idea that it seems like Tom could transform The Stranger into Gandalf proper.
Does Tom Bombadil create Gandalf?
The Stranger is working hard to recover lost memories and learn who he truly is after falling from the sky in Season 1. Is he actually a younger version of Gandalf, or a different kind of wizard from Tolkien’s lore? Payne and McKay promise to answer that question definitively in Season 2, and Tom may be the key to unlocking that mystery.
“It was a challenge to incorporate him,” McKay recently told GQ, “but we found that he fit right in as someone who can help the Stranger realize his own potential.”
25 years is a long time to wait for a character to appear on-screen, but you can’t rush a good thing. It’ll be interesting to see just how Tom fits into the Lord of the Rings prequel, and whether we’re actually witnessing the birth of Gandalf the Grey through his mentorship.
