Could Lord Of The Rings' Gollum Appear In The Rings Of Power?

When anyone talks about Gollum these days, it's natural to think about Warner Bros.' upcoming "The Hunt for Gollum" film, which fits nicely between "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" on Tolkien's timeline. That means it's around three thousand years after the Second Age, which is when "The Lorrd of the Rings: The Rings of Power" takes place. But the showrunners for Prime Video's tentpole Middle-earth show apparently want in on the Gollum action, too. 

Despite the chronological challenges, when asked recently by Empire magazine if we could see a Gollum origin story in a future season of their show, co-showrunner Patrick McKay said, "We have lots of ideas for future seasons. Stay tuned, is all we'd say right now."

Despite its vague nature, McKay's remark caught like wildfire. Many of the comments on social media were negative and quick to point out that Gollum's origin was already in Peter Jackson's movies — in the part of Middle-earth history where they belong.

Strictly speaking, the unhappy fandom is right. Gollum's story takes place nowhere near the Second Age. The Prime Video show is following the creation of the One Ring and the other Rings of Power. We did some quick math, and in Tolkien's timeline, the One Ring (which will be forged in the upcoming Season 3) takes place 1,841 years before the end of the Second Age. Sméagol kills his friend and seizes the One Ring 2,463 years into the Third Age that follows. Add them together, and Sméagol doesn't really start his transition into Gollum until over 4,300 years after this point in the show.

Complicating things further is the fact that Gollum is a mortal Halfling. Up until he finds the Ring in the Great River, he ages normally. He can't naturally appear in a story that takes place more than four millennia before his birth. Even if you fast forward to the point where Sauron loses the One Ring at the end of the Second Age (the whole "Isildur cuts off his finger with a broken sword" bit), you're still talking about a 2,500-year gap.

But there's still a way he could get into the show. Two factors come to mind. The first is that the showrunners don't mind telling Tolkien's story out of order. They already introduced the Balrog (and are even giving it a voice) in their story, even though that creature doesn't appear in Tolkien's writings until almost 2,000 years into the Third Age — not long before Sméagol finds his ring.

There's the mortality issue, too. The Balrog is an immortal being, so waking it up a few millennia early works. But Gollum is mortal, and he can't really get his story going until Sauron loses his Ring. Here's where the other factor comes into play: time compression. J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay have shown that they aren't afraid to change the Tolkien timeline in "The Rings of Power." Along with scrambling the order of events, they are condensing a Second Age story that plays out over a few millennia into just a handful of years. If they do that, once Sauron loses his ring in their show, they could have a young Sméagol find it much faster than in the original timeline the author created.

The showrunners could work Gollum into the existing "Rings of Power" story in real time (by condensing the timeline), in an epilogue (showing what happens after the Second Age), or even via a spin-off or extension of the show's original five-season Second Age story arc. Whatever the case, the show has already laid one important part of Gollum's backstory in place: the Stoors.

Two of the three proto-Hobbit communities have already been featured in "The Rings of Power" — the Harfoots and Gollum's own people, the Stoors. In Season 2, Nori (Markella Kavenagh) and Poppy (Megan Richards) left their Harfoot community and traveled into the East with Gandalf (Daniel Weyman). While there, they found another Halfling community, the Stoors, led by their matriarch, Gundabale (Tanya Moodie). This is a key fact in Gollum's life, because his own grandmother is a matriarch of the Stoors and plays a crucial role by kicking him out of their clan when he starts to break bad with the One Ring.

Last we saw the Stoors, they were following Nori back west, toward the Harfoots and the area where Gollum will eventually be born. It's already been confirmed that we won't see more of the Little People in Season 3 of the show. Nevertheless, the showrunners have managed to move Gollum's people into prime position to carry out the rest of his origin story in later seasons of the show — if their cryptic response means that really is part of the plan.