Though the many big, small and no-screen adaptations of JRR Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings and associated tomes, footnotes and apocrypha have offered portrayals of a wide variety of characters for fans to relish/debate, one has been notably absent. Well, fret no more, Tom Bombadil hive, because the all-singing, magic-slinging master of the yellow boots will finally get his due in the form of Rory Kinnear on The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power Season 2.
Bombadil appealed to Rings Of Power executive producers JD Payne and Patrick McKay, and they have him encountering the Halflings and Gand… Sorry, The Stranger (Daniel Weyman) on their quest.
"He’s whimsical and magical, and almost verging on silly. But also has the wisdom of the ages and the music of the spheres and deep emotional wells of ancient history and myth, and his conception and function are tied to Norse myths and have deep roots in European fairy tale, McKay tells Vanity Fair. "So weirdly, he’s kind of the most Lord Of The Rings thing in Lord Of The Rings.”
"Tom is sort of a curiosity within that structure because while it is darker, Tom Bombadil is singing and saying lines that could be nursery rhymes from children’s poems," Payne adds. "So, he sort of defies the tonal shift of the rest of the season and is a real point of light amidst an otherwise sea of darkness."
As for Kinnear, probably best known for the likes of Men and playing Tanner in the Bond movies, he seems excited to be tackling the role: "There’s this sense of huge experience, huge openness, huge empathy, and having gone through so much that he knows it’s the small things that are important. That felt actually quite domestic, felt quite reachable in terms of my understanding of who he was."
Will he Bomb-badil or be embraced by the fans? We'll find out when Rings Of Power returns to Prime Video's screens on 29 August.