A new rumor from The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power claims the show will depict Morgoth and Ungoliant as Tom Bombadil and Goldberry.
Shelob in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the Kings Extended Version (2004), New Line Cinema
This latest rumor comes from TheOneRing.net’s Cliff Broadway. Broadway shared a direct quote from what he’s calling his spy network, “Tom Bombadil and Goldberry are in an episode. They are played by the same actor and actress as Melkor/Morgoth and Ungoliant. The show will confirm the long-held fan theory that Tom and Goldberry are Melkor and Ungoliant serving out their punishment bestowed on them by Mandos.”
As Broadway notes in his coverage there is no such fan theory.
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil by J.R.R. Tolkien
Tolkien has made it very clear how he views Tom Bombadil. In Letter 119 to Stanley Unwin, he describes him as the “spirit of the (vanishing) Oxford and Berkshire countryside.”
In Letter 144 to Noami Mitchison, Tolkien also made it abundantly clear he left Tom Bombadil as an intentional enigma.
He said, “And even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are. Tom Bombadil is one (intentionally).”
J.R.R. Tolkien via Sidh Aniron YouTube
As far as Tom Bombadil’s place in the narrative, Tolkien also informed Mitchison in Letter 144, “Tom Bombadil is not an important person – to the narrative. I suppose he has some importance as a ‘comment’. I mean, I do not really write like that: he is just an invention (who first appeared in the Oxford Magazine about 1933), and he represents something that I feel important, though I would not be prepared to analyze the feeling precisely. I would not, however, have left him in, if he did not have some kind of function.”
Tolkien elaborated, “I might put it this way. The story is cast in terms of a good side and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kinship, moderated freedom with consent against compulsion that has long lost any object save mere power, and so on; but both sides in some degree, conservative or destructive, want a measure of control. But if you have, as it were taken ‘a vow of poverty’, renounced control, and take your delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself, watching, observing, and to some extent knowing, then the question of the rights and wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you, and the means of power quite valueless. It is a natural pacifist view, which always arises in the mind when there is a war. But the view of Rivendell seems to be that it is an excellent thing to have represented, but that there are in fact things with which it cannot cope; and upon which its existence nonetheless depends. Ultimately only victory of the West will allow Bombadil to continue, or even to survive. Nothing would be left for him in the world of Sauron.”
Furthermore Tolkien shared, “He has no connexion in my mind with the Entwives. What had happened to them is not resolved in this book. He is in a way the answer to them in the sense that he is almost the opposite, being say, Botany and Zoology (as sciences) and Poetry as opposed to Cattle-breeding and Agriculture and practicality.”
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil by J.R.R. Tolkien
In Letter 153 to Peter Hastings, Tolkien wrote, “In historical fact I put him in because I had already ‘invented’ him independently (he first appeared in the Oxford Magazine) and wanted an ‘adventure’ on the way. But I kept him in, and as he was, because he represents certain things otherwise left out. I do not mean him to be an allegory – or I should not have given him to particular, individual, and ridiculous a name – but ‘allegory’ is the only mode of exhibiting certain functions: he is then an ‘allegory’, or an exemplar, a particular embodying of pure (real) natural science: the spirit that desires knowledge of other things, their history and nature, because they are ‘other’ and wholly independent of the enquiring mind, a spirit coeval with the rational mind, and entirely unconcerned with ‘doing’ anything with the knowledge: Zoology and Botany not Cattle-breeding or Agriculture.”
Daniel Weyman as The Stranger in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022), Prime Video
READ: Gandalf Roasting Rings of Power: Charlie Hopkinson’s YouTube Channel Explodes
Bombadil was previously rumored to appear in the second season by TheOneRing.net’s source named Green Dragon Gossip. During a livestream on their YouTube channel Justine Sewell said, “Spotted on set is an actor who in the dialogue is being called Tom.”
When asked if this was in reference to Tom Bombadil, Sewell answered, “It’s 100% Tom Bombadil. That’s what they are saying. Tom Bombadil has been cast and will show up in Season 2.”
On top of this rumor, Broadway also shared the the second season of the show will depict Gandalf meeting Shadowfax. He also shared, “Although these characters/animals did not exist in the Second Age, evidently we are getting the story of Felaróf the ‘Very Valiant,’ if not also the story of the father of Eorl, a Man by the name of Léod.”
For those unfamiliar with these characters, Felaróf the “Very Valiant” was the steed of Eorl the Young, the first King of Rohan. All of the horses of Rohan are descended from him. The horse was captured by Léod while it was still a foal.
While Léod was able to capture the horse, he was unable to tame it. When attempting to mount it, he was thrown from the horse and killed. With his father dead, Eorl recaptured the horse and demanded its freedom in payment for the death of his father.
The horse would be ridden by Eorl to the aid of Gondor and the victory would see the Steward Cirion grant him the land that became known as Rohan.
Ian McKellen as Gandalf and Shadowfax in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), New Line Cinema
What do you make of these rumors for The Rings of Power Season 2?
“You’re going to play a giant spider”, wow, looks food on a resume.