For casual fans of The Lord of the Rings, the jolly character of Tom Bombadil serves as a quirky detour in the first half of the book version of The Fellowship of the Ring. But up until The Rings of Power Season 2, Bombadil had never appeared in any mainstream English-language movie or TV adaptation of Lord of the Rings, ever. That’s right, even Ralph Bakshi's 1978 version didn’t bother to include Old Tom, all of which certainly contribute to the mainstream perception that this character is inconsequential.
But true Lord of the Rings fans know better. Not only is Tom Bombadil more than just a deep-cut from the pages of the books, he’s a foundational character for all of the lore of Middle-earth. In the fourth episode of The Rings of Power Season 2, we finally get an in-the-flesh version of Tom. However, instead of utterly clarifying the character, his origin feels somehow even stranger than Tolkien imagined.
Spoilers for The Rings of Power Season 2 Episode 4 ahead.
Tom Bombadil crashes The Rings of Power
In episode 4 of Rings of Power Season 2, after being separated from his halfling friends in Rhûn, The Stranger (Daniel Weyman) is rescued from a hostile tree by Tom Bombadil (Rory Kinnear). This scene directly parallels Tom rescuing Merry and Pippin from a different tree called Old Man Willow in Chapter 6 “The Old Forest” in the first half of The Fellowship of the Ring. However, the Rings of Power tree is not Old Man Willow, but rather Tom calls that tree “Old Man Ironwood” here, indicating we’re not in the same place that Tom will end up in by the time of Fellowship, which is about a thousand years in the future. (It also should be noted that the sentient trees like Old Man Willow and now, Old Man Ironwood, are unrelated to the sentient trees known as Ents. Which is confusing since Ents also appear in this season of The Rings of Power.)
The version of Tom that The Stranger encounters in this episode is clearly younger and different than the constantly singing version from Tolkien’s text. But, many things that Tom says about himself are directly lifted from Chapters 6, 7, and 8 in Fellowship, including the idea that “Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn” and that he refers to himself as “Eldest.” But, are Tom’s origins clearer now than the vague myth-making from Tolkien’s original writings?
The enigma of Tom Bombadil
Oddly, Tom Bombadil is the only character from Middle-earth who surprisingly pre-dates the 1937 publication of The Hobbit. In 1934, Tolkien penned and published a poem called “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil,” which established most of the details about the character that we find in Fellowship, including the fact that he is married to the magical “River daughter” Goldberry and that he lives by the Withywindle river. Tom doesn’t appear in The Hobbit at all, as Bilbo, the Dwarves, and Gandalf don’t seem to go near that area, and only repurposed by Tolkien two decades after creating him in the first place. In Fellowship, Tom is the one who rescues the four Hobbits from certain doom, first from Old Man Willow, and then again from the Barrow-wights. And unlike the familiar narrative from the Peter Jackson films, it is Tom who sets Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin on the correct path to the village of Bree and the inn of The Prancing Pony.
The hobbits also spend time in Tom Bombadil’s house where they meet Goldberry, who serves them fine food and drink, and they listen to tales of long ago, even though they don’t really remember everything Tom says.
Presumably, some of the tales heard by the hobbits in Fellowship are what we’re seeing now in The Rings of Power. But, just like in Fellowship, this slightly younger Tom is deeply enigmatic and elusive when it comes to straight answers. He’s also considerably less holly and hilarious than the Tom found in Fellowship, which we could interpret as a result of this being a darker time for Middle-earth than the events of the actual Lord of the Rings. Infamously, when the hobbits are in the house of Tom Bombadil, Tom can put on the One Ring without it affecting him one iota. Clearly, he is a being from another realm, with deeper magic than any wizard is capable of.
And yet, Tom seems to need people at slightly lower levels of magic to help out with saving Middle-earth from darkness. Just as he sets the hobbits on their quest in Fellowship, in The Rings of Power he’s tasking The Stranger with dealing with both Sauron and the as-yet-unnamed “Dark Wizard” character. “You’re not the first Istar who’s eaten by my fire,” Tom tells The Stranger, indicating he knows this other wizard, too.
And on top of not actually wearing yellow boots, we have to wonder about Tom’s ethereal wife, Goldberry. Although The Stranger hears a woman singing, and we’re meant to think that it’s Goldberry, we never see her in this episode. If Tom hasn’t met Goldberry at this point in the timeline, this detail is confusing. And, since it seems that Tom isn’t near Old Man Willow and Withywindle River, how this moment fits into his backstory is equally unclear. Tom makes a point to tell The Stranger that the desert was once a forest, but what The Rings of Power is now tasked with answering is whether or not the greenery of this part of Middle-earth will return, or if Tom Bombadil will be forced to move.
