Marketing for the second season of Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Power of the Rings appears to be ramping up following the release of the first trailer this month, and now it’s officially confirmed that fan-favorite (but currently absent from live-action) character Tom Bombadil will appear.
Fans have been speculating for months about the happy, long-lived man who lives in the Old Forest and what he does in the show, so the confirmation comes as no surprise. However, the actor chosen to play him is a bit of a shock: Rory Kinnear (most recently known for his role in Shemales ) is one of the most recognisable British faces in the industry.
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The show’s social media channels and Vanity Fair jointly announced the news on May 29, offering the first insight into Kinnear’s vision for the role and how showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay approached him.
Our first impressions are generally positive, as Kinnear is one of the most flexible TV and film actors currently working, but Bombadil’s clothes are usually described as bright and colorful, but they look a bit dark in these photos. Note that production stills are often very different in overall appearance from the later-production shows/films they belong to, even Old Tom looks more like another Istari than one of Tolkien’s most goofy and charismatic characters at the moment.
“There’s a reason he hasn’t been in the adaptations before, because he’s an anti-drama character in a way,” Payne told Vanity Fair. “He’s not a character with a particularly strong agenda. He observes the drama but doesn’t basically participate in it.” The co-producer went on to explain why Bombadil’s presence in The Fellowship of the Ring didn’t really add to the larger story, which goes a long way to explaining why Peter Jackson didn’t include him in his excellent big-screen adaptation. In fact, even Tolkien himself admitted that Bombadil wasn’t that important a character in the grand scheme of the stories he was telling.
Yet, in a way, Bombadil’s passivity makes him all the more fascinating. The fact that he’s been around in Middle-earth for so long, seemingly wielding immense power without actually taking part in world-changing events, makes him one of the great mythical figures of this universe, and it’s why Payne and McKay finally decided to explore him in live-action: “We started thinking, what does he even care about? How could this be a gateway to drama?” The choice to include him feels like another difficult task that the creators and writers wanted to tackle, and it’s a philosophy that could make the show more interesting in the long run than if they had played it safe entirely.
The full interview is well worth a read, especially if you’re curious about the behind-the-scenes creative process behind arguably the biggest TV show we’ve ever seen. Of course, Amazon’s efforts with the Middle-earth IP are completely unrelated to the upcoming Lord of the Rings-related films from Warner Bros. Discovery and New Line Cinema, which is being overseen by Embracer.
