After being excluded from both the 1978 animated movie and Peter Jackson's trilogy, The Lord of the Rings will finally put the spotlight on Tom Bombadil in live-action when The Rings of Power returns for season 2 this August.
He first appeared in The Fellowship of the Ring, helping save Merry and Pippin from Old Man Willow, an angry tree in the Old Forest, that swallows them. In this series, we'll meet a younger version of "Old Tom" who has left Withywindle behind to make a second home in the ravaged Rhûn.
"There’s a reason why he hasn’t been in prior adaptations, because in some ways he’s sort of an anti-dramatic character," showrunner J.D. Payne tells Vanity Fair. "He’s not a character who has a particularly strong agenda. He observes drama, but largely doesn’t participate in it."
Fellow showrunner Patrick McKay adds, "He has no clear dramatic function that would justify his inclusion in a really great movie adaptation. He’s whimsical and magical, and almost verging on silly...So weirdly, he’s kind of the most Lord of the Rings thing in Lord of the Rings, and also the first thing you would cut if you were adapting it as a film."
"But we have the advantage of a television show, and hence we are going to find a way to tap into that."
From there, finding a way to insert Tom into The Rings of Power became a priority. Payne explains, "We started thinking, What does he care about? And how can that be a doorway to drama? We know he cares about the natural world. And we know he is a helper. He’s not going to push you, but he will help you."
Who will he be helping in the series? Halflings Nori, Poppy, and the amnesiac wizard known as the Stranger (who is widely believed to be a very early iteration of Gandalf).
"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," Payne says. "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%."
Rory Kinnear, best known for playing M's chief of staff in the last four James Bond movies and Frankenstein's creature in Penny Dreadful, will be playing the character in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2.
You can check out a first look at Tom by following the link in the X post below.