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Not My Tom Bombadil
The Rings of Power’s version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s most inscrutable character is a failure of imagination.
TROP falls victim to this particular prequel flaw, too, refusing to deviate from the familiar forms of The Lord of the Rings by lifting direct dialogue from the novel and mimicking frames and moments from Peter Jackson’s films. All of these contradictions are what make Bombadil such a rich character, simultaneously a roguish scamp who converses with trees, birds, and badgers and worships his probably river-spirit wife, and an ancient whose ability to discern the era’s most dangerous object while being unbothered by it suggests that there is a path forward where the ring doesn’t matter at all. TROP making him a spirit guide who speaks in corny riddles and gets an Avengers-assemble-style zoom in on his face when he puts on a pointy wizard’s hat not unlike the one Gandalf will wear in The Fellowship of the Ring is to expunge Tolkien’s most captivating outlier in favor of a personality sapped babysitter.
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