Warning! Spoilers for Rings of Power season 2, episode 4 ahead!
Tom Bombadil has officially been introduced in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2, and his big debut has a clever connection to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings book. This character in and of himself is a beloved feature of The Fellowship of the Ring, and his presence in the Prime Video series is especially exciting since Peter Jackson’s film trilogy left him out. However, Rings of Power took a different approach to Tom Bombadil, placing him in Rhûn rather than his typical home in the Old Forest. Still, there is something familiar about Old Tom’s eastern home.
In Rings of Power season 2, episode 4, the Stranger finally found the constellation he was looking for, though not in the way he expected. It turns out everything had been leading him toward a meeting with Tom Bombadil, who, in Rings of Power‘s version of events, has a home in Rhûn. Immediately after stumbling across this strange, jovial being, the Stranger saw an old tree with a branch that would be perfect for a wizard’s staff. However, when he tried to break the branch away, the tree came to life and began to swallow the Stranger up into its trunk—a rather specific event that was highly familiar to Lord of the Rings book fans.
Tom Bombadil’s Debut Perfectly Reflects His Original Lord Of The Rings Intro
This Isn’t The First Time Tom Bombadil Saved Someone From A Tree
Tom Bombadil ultimately saved the Stranger from the tree, playfully calling the thing “Old Man Ironwood.” This was the perfect debut for the magical and musical character since this is nearly exactly how he was introduced in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. In the book, Frodo, Merry, Pippin, and Sam entered the Old Forest shortly after leaving the Shire and quickly found themselves under assault by a willow tree. It absorbed them into its trunk and roots until Tom Bombadil came along and sang to it, telling “Old Man Willow” to let the Hobbits go.
Old Man Willow & The Rhûn Tree’s Connection Explained
Rings Of Power Implies Tom Bombadil’s Trees Share Something In Common
Tom Bombadil and Old Man Willow were memorable features of the Fellowship of the Ring book, which makes it all the more meaningful that Rings of Power‘s version of the character has a similar tree near his Rhûn home. Old Tom may be far from the Old Forest in this adaptation, but Old Man Ironwood was the perfect way to create cohesiveness between the two variations of Bombadil’s character. He’s still the sing-song, mysterious being with a strange connection to nature. Of course, there may be even more to these trees than just this.
Perhaps they are something like brothers, spirits of nature with some unseen magical connection.
The name Old Man Ironwood implies a connection between this Rhûn tree and Old Man Willow in the Old Forest. It’s certainly not the same tree—Bombadil didn’t bring the things with him on his mysterious journey east. However, the implication seems to be that Old Man Ironwood would have a similar origin as Old Man Willow. Perhaps they are something like brothers, spirits of nature with some unseen magical connection. Perhaps this is how Tom Bombadil continues to have power in Rhûn, despite the implication in Lord of the Rings that his magic only extended to the limits of the Old Forest.
Rings Of Power Season 2, Episode 4 Pays Homage To LOTR’s Old Forest
Bombadil & Tree Spirits & Wights, Oh My!
Regardless of the in-world connection between Old Man Ironwood and Old Man Willow, the Rhûn tree is meant to be an homage to Bombadil’s debut in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. In fact, the entirety of Rings of Power season 2, episode 4, is an homage to the Old Forest sequence from Tolkien’s books. This ancient and mysterious forest is where the Hobbits met not only Tom Bombadil and Old Man Willow but also the Barrow-wights, which also came into play in this installment of the Prime Video series.
New episodes of
Rings of Power
season 2 release weekly (Thursdays) on Prime Video.
In the Fellowship of the Rings book, Tom Bombadil also saved the Hobbits from the Barrow-wights. It was he who explained that they must cover the Barrow-downs with the weapons hidden within the graves to keep the wights from returning. It was also Tom Bombadil who gave the Hobbits four of these blades, one of which would later be used to magically injure the Witch-king of Angmar. Unfortunately, all of this was cut from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies. Despite being a story set in an entirely different age, Rings of Power has managed to pay tribute to these moments with a beautifully constructed episode.
