Tom Bombadil to Appear in Rings of Power
Rumours can be glorious things. One some time ago went so far as to suggest that Melkor/Morgoth will appear in Season Two of Rings of Power… disguised as Tom Bombadil.
And now we know that crazy rumour had a grain of truth to it. He might not be Melkor/Morgoth, but Tom Bombadil will indeed feature in Rings of Power:
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/tom-bombadil-the-rings-of-power-first-look
For those keeping track at home, this will be the fourth time Tom Bombadil has appeared in a screen adaptation of Tolkien’s work, though the first time in an English language adaptation. For the ‘full’ appearances of Tom:
https://phuulishfellow.wordpress.com/2021/04/08/the-complete-screen-tom-bombadil-1971-1993/
Well and good. But what to make of Tom’s appearance here? I feel there are arguments for and against.
On the positive side of the ledger, Tom is canonically Tolkienian, is within the texts that Amazon has the rights to, and exists in Middle-earth during the Second Age. In fact, alongside Galadriel, Elrond, Gil-galad, Celebrimbor, Celeborn, Cirdan, Sauron, Tar-Palantir, Miriel, Pharazôn, Elendil, Isildur, and Anarion, he’s a genuine native to the setting, and not an invented character (Southlands), or someone dragged in from later (Blue-Gandalf and the Harfoots). Nor is he even a name that the show must flesh out (Durin III and IV). Tom has an author-defined personality, and a place within Tolkien’s world.
And considering this is an episodic television series, with a storyline where Blue-Gandalf cannot interfere with the main Annatar-related action… having the wizard encounter Tom Bombadil, who exists very much in his own time and place, feels right. Better Blue-Gandalf meet Bombadil than Elrond, Galadriel, or Sauron. Tom is out the way, non-interventionist, and offers a chance for something both light-hearted and thematic. No questions then arise about why we can’t give him a Ring, or something – he’s just there, in his house, being Tom Bombadil.
Tom can also give us some exposition on the state of affairs out East, since he’s someone who can safely do that and only that. He doesn’t need an invented storyline to accommodate him, so once Blue-Gandalf and Nori are on their way, he can vanish again. And best of all, he’s a creature from Tolkien’s books, rather than Jackson’s movies, so all those online critics obsessing about lore… they actually have to put their Jackson-derived visions of Middle-earth to one side. We are going places Jackson didn’t, which cheers me immensely.
On the negative side, Rings of Power (by necessity) have moved Tom out East, away from the peculiar slice of countryside he belongs to. Tolkien’s Tom Bombadil is a creature of the Old Forest, the last relic of something truly ancient and mysterious, on the border of the mundane Shire community. Tom Bombadil without Old Man Willow, the Withywindle, Badger-brock, or the Barrow-downs, is missing something. He seems like he will be missing Goldberry too, the other half of that peculiar nature-spirit duo. In context, he might as well be a less grumpy and more verse-happy version of Beorn.
And speaking of verses… that is possibly the main risk of Tom on screen. He will certainly be light-hearted, an effective contrast to the grimness of the Annatar story, but he might also come across as overly silly. One can show the magic of song, of course, without sliding into nonsense, but Book-Tom does straddle the line, to the point where many book-readers can’t stand him. “Fa la the willow. Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo,” and all that. We shall have to see how the show pulls this off.
As a final note, two bits of the Vanity Fair article jumped out at me:
- Rings of Power Bombadil will be running with a Cornish accent, to reflect a truly ‘old’ part of Britain. Remember that famous line “Eldest, that’s what I am… Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn… He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless – before the Dark Lord came from Outside“. I now have visions of Tom commenting on the days of Phoenician tin mines.
- The Vanity Fair article is wrong about ‘wight’. Despite modern Dungeons and Dragons connotations, it doesn’t mean ‘ghost’. It is just an old word for ‘man’. You see it used as such in the prose of William Morris, for example.
A Phuulish Fellow 
Guess we’ll finally get to see how Tom Bom Jolly Tom fares in a live action adaptation. My view on adapting Tom is to tone down the twee ‘hey dol’ aspects and lean more into the mysterious aspects of him. As a thematic figure, Tom’s interesting, but Tolkien definitely misjudged his characterisation somewhat. I thinking Singing Tom needs more “banishing the barrow-wight” and “commanding willowman” energy and less “hey dol derry dol hop along me hearties derry dol frolic with the willows!” energy.
Admittedly there chosen narrative (investigating the dying Rhun) has given me flashbacks to Jackson’s bird-dropping stained Radagast investigating the corruption in Mirkwood with his bunny sled and hyperactive manner. I hope it’s not like that. Please… t seems very likely he’ll be giving the
Based on the limited information we have, it seems to me he’ll likely give the Stranger his wizard hat, and maybe meeting Nori will set him off for greener Harfoot lands where trees aren’t dying.
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Glad as I am to hear that they’ve got the guts to bring Tom to the screen, I foresee one disaster coming. Thanks to a long Hollywood tradition, Americans associate a Cornish accent with pirates.
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Cornwall is a very different place to Oxfordshire and Berkshire, which are inland counties. There is actually a Berkshire accent, made famous by the poetess Pam Ayres. I didn’t want to write the standard anti-ROP moan but… this sounds like a top-down character design, ripped out of any context it might have had. What is Tom doing in Tenerife, sorry Rhun? Where is the Withywindle (which McKay confuses with the Old Forest). Where is Goldberry? OK end of moan.
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