The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: See Pics of Rory Kinnear as Tom Bombadil

Prime Video has released new images of Rory Kinnear as fan-favorite J.R.R. Tolkien character Tom Bombadil in Season 2 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

LOTR S2 Kinnear as Bombadil — The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Rory Kinnear as Tom Bombadil — Photo credit: Ross Ferguson / Prime Video

If anyone can do right by J.R.R. Tolkien, Tolkien fans, and the Tolkien character Tom Bombadil, it’s Laurence Olivier Award-winning and BAFTA-nominated actor Rory Kinnear (“James Bond” films, The Imitation Game, Bank of Dave, Penny Dreadful) — as I see it, an actor’s actor who deserves way more recognition amongst the TV- and film-viewing public than he has currently (based on a very unscientific poll that I conducted).

Anyhoo, Kinnear will be playing the fan-favorite character Tom Bombadil in the upcoming second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Bombadil is a figure of unknown origin in Tolkien’s works, one who often propels characters in a direction to see things more clearly and to help them to better understand the wide world around them. In the lore, he claims to be as old as Middle-earth itself, possessing wisdom far beyond the reaches of others.

Said co-showrunner Patrick McKay of Tom Bombadil:

“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. So weirdly, he’s kind of the most Lord of the Rings thing in Lord of the Rings.”

Added co-showrunner J. D. Payne:

“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. 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.”

Kinnear embraced the opportunity to jump into Tom Bombadil’s famed yellow boots, blue jacket, and feathered hat, stating that while the description of Bombadil was well-known to readers, he relished the opportunity to portray the voice and mannerisms of the enigmatic being for the first time in a filmed iteration of Tolkien’s work.

“There’s this sense of huge experience, huge openness, huge empathy, and having gone through so much that he [Bombadil] 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.”

Most fans know Bombadil as a supporting character in Tolkien’s epic The Lord of the Rings, but he first appeared in print a couple decades earlier, in the 1934 poem “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil,” one of more than a dozen Hobbit-inspired poems by Tolkien, collected in the book The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.

For folks not familiar with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the fantasy series is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books, taking viewers back to the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth’s history — an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness. Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters as they confront the long-feared reemergence of evil to Middle-earth.

In Season 2 of The Rings of Power, Sauron has returned. Cast out by Galadriel (Morfydd Clark, His Dark Materials), without army or ally, the rising Dark Lord must now rely on his own cunning to rebuild his strength and oversee the creation of the Rings of Power, which will allow him to bind all the peoples of Middle-earth to his sinister will. Elves and dwarves, orcs and men, wizards and Harfoots — all are plunged into a rising tide of darkness in a world that is increasingly on the brink of calamity. As friendships are strained and kingdoms begin to fracture, the forces of good will struggle ever more valiantly to hold on to what matters to them most of all: each other.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Season 2 premieres globally on Thursday, August 29, exclusively on Prime Video. (You can add it to your watchlist now.)

In addition to Kinnear, Oscar® nominee Ciarán Hinds (Belfast, Kin) and Royal Television Society Breakthrough Award winner Tanya Moodie (Motherland, A Discovery of Witches) join the cast in Season 2, as do Oliver Alvin-Wilson (Murder in Provence), Stuart Bowman (Versailles), Gavi Singh Chera (The Lazarus Project), William Chubb (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell), Kevin Eldon (Sanditon), Will Keen (His Dark Materials), Selina Lo (One Child), Calam Lynch (Bridgerton), Gabriel Akuwudike (1917), Zates Atour (Young Wallander), Ben Daniels (The Crown), Amelia Kenworthy (Messenger), Nia Towle (Rocketman), Nicholas Woodeson (The Living and the Dead), and Sam Hazeldine (Masters of the Air), who takes over the role of Orc leader Adar.