It’s safe to say that The Lord of the Rings franchise is undergoing a bit of a resurgence right now. Even as Prime Video continues to pump out new seasons of its prequel series, The Rings of Power, Warner Bros. is moving ahead with multiple new movie spinoffs. We already knew about The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, which will feature Andy Serkis both in front of and behind the camera. But now we’ve learned of a second Rings project. The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past is a sequel to 2003’s Return of the King, and it’s co-written and produced by none other than Stephen Colbert.
As exciting as it is to see so much new Middle-earth content, we’re not entirely sold on the concept of Shadow of the Past. After all, the ultimate Rings authority – J.R.R. Tolkien himself – was against the idea of doing a sequel to the classic trilogy. Maybe he was onto something? Let’s explore what Shadow of the Past will actually be about and why Tolkien wasn’t too keen on exploring the Fourth Age of Middle-earth.
What Is The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past About?
The story chronicled in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy is only the tip of the iceberg as far as the mythology of Middle-earth is concerned. Tolkien famously spent decades fleshing out the history of this fantasy world via thousands of pages of material that only saw publication after his death. Most notably, there’s The Silmarillion, a book that provides a detailed history of Middle-earth’s First and Second Ages and the original war against the Dark Lord Morgoth.
But when it comes to the post-Return of the King timeline, Tolkien was comparatively tight-lipped. We really only know basic details surrounding the lives of characters like Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and the Hobbits after Frodo and Gandalf sailed into the West. And what we do know doesn’t suggest that they faced any major struggles on the level of battling Sauron’s armies.
Essentially, Aragorn presides over an era of peace and prosperity for mankind, even as the elves continue to fade from Middle-earth. While there are various wars and skirmishes with the surviving orc tribes and rival kingdoms of men, Aragorn is largely able to unify the realm and put an end to the constant cycle of bloodshed.
Meanwhile, Legolas and Gimli continue their bromance, travelling the land and getting into new adventures. Samwise and friends continue to live a peaceful existence in The Shire (though book readers will remember that there’s a lot of rebuilding that has to take place that the movies never got into). Eventually, Sam follows his friend Frodo into the Undying Lands, followed by Legolas and Gimli after the death of Aragorn. Time continues to pass, and here we are now, in what Tolkien estimated is probably the Sixth or Seventh Age.
In short, there’s not much to pick apart there in terms of loose ends or major conflicts worth fleshing out. Tolkien did begin work on a full-fledged Rings sequel titled The New Shadow. That story was set about 100 years after the death of Aragorn, during the reign of Aragorn’s son, King Eldarion. But the author only wound up writing about a dozen pages before shelving the project (we’ll get more into why in a bit). What he produced contains only vague ideas about a conflict involving a remnant of Morgoth called The Dark Tree and new heroes Saelon and Borlas.
Even if Warner Bros. wanted to somehow adapt and flesh out The New Shadow as a movie, we doubt they hold the rights to that particular piece of Middle-earth lore. They’re limited to the Rings books and their appendices. As such, the studio is sticking much closer to the umbrella of the original stories with Shadow of the Past. This movie is set a mere 14 years after the end of Return of the King and focuses on Sam and his friends retracing their long, arduous journey, even as Sam’s daughter Elanor grapples with a new revelation about the fight to destroy the One Ring.
Here’s the official logline for the new movie:
Fourteen years after the passing of Frodo — Sam, Merry, and Pippin set out to retrace the first steps of their adventure. Meanwhile, Sam’s daughter, Elanor, has discovered a long-buried secret and is determined to uncover why the War of the Ring was very nearly lost before it even began.
This suggests that the movie will focus mostly on familiar faces from the Rings trilogy. We have little doubt that Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, and Dominic Monaghan will all reprise their roles, and there’s room for Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom, and John Rhys-Davies (health permitting) to return as well. But as for the conflict of the film, we can really only guess, as Tolkien didn’t provide a lot to build on here.
We do wonder how much of the film will actually be set 14 years after Return of the King. The plot summary suggests that this future setting could actually be a framing device that the film uses as a pretext to flash back to the War of the Ring conflict and explore this long-buried secret. It’s worth remembering that “Shadow of the Past” is the name of one of the early chapters in The Fellowship of the Ring, specifically the one where Gandalf recounts to Frodo the history and nature of the One Ring.
The movie is also said to be drawn from Chapters 3-8 of Fellowship, which covers the period where Frodo and Sam first set out from Hobbiton, are joined by Merry and Pippin at Crickhollow, venture into the Old Forest, and encounter the eccentric Tom Bombadil. Colbert specifically name-dropped Chapter 8, “Fog on the Barrow-downs,” where Frodo and friends are captured by a Barrow-wight and saved by Bombadil. This may be what the logline is referring to when it references the war being “very nearly lost before it even began,” as Frodo’s death in the Barrow-down would have been a catastrophic development for Middle-earth.
Will the new movie focus more attention on this era of the timeline? Is it more of a companion piece to The Hunt for Gollum in that sense? It sure looks as though we’ll see it adapt some of the early Fellowship material that never made it into the original film, particularly when it comes to Tom Bombadil and the Old Forest. Warners may be looking to dance between the raindrops of the movies more than trying to actually build a full-fledged sequel.
And in some ways, that approach could be for the best. Tolkien clearly lost interest in producing a Lord of the Rings sequel, and it’s important to understand why.
Why Tolkien Didn’t Want a Lord of the Rings Sequel
As we’ve already covered, there’s not a lot of existing material to draw upon when it comes to fleshing out the post-Return of the King timeline of Middle-earth. What does exist is mostly dry, brief accounts of characters dying or passing into the West. Tolkien only very briefly toyed with the idea of crafting a real story out of this era, and he didn’t get very far before shelving the whole thing.
Tolkien made his thoughts on the matter pretty clear in various letters he wrote over the years, letters which have been collected in the book The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.
In one letter, Tolkien wrote, “I have written nothing beyond the first few years of the Fourth Age. (Except the beginning of a tale supposed to refer to the end of the reign of Eldarion about 100 years after the death of Aragorn. Then I of course discovered that the King’s Peace would contain no tales worth recounting; and his wars would have little interest after the overthrow of Sauron; but that almost certainly a restlessness would appear about then, owing to the (it seems) inevitable boredom of Men with the good: there would be secret societies practising dark cults, and ‘orc-cults’ among adolescents.)”
In another letter, Tolkien admits he quickly came to view the story as “sinister and depressing.”
In another letter, Tolkien admits he quickly came to view the story as “sinister and depressing.” After reading about the ultimate triumph of mankind over evil, who really wants to follow it up with a story about men becoming bored, stupid, and torn apart by infighting? Tolkien noted, “I could have written a ‘thriller’ about the plot and its discovery and overthrow — but it would have been just that. Not worth doing.”
Tolkien quickly abandoned any thought of continuing the Middle-earth saga beyond that point, preferring instead to focus on the glorious, mythic days of the First and Second Ages. If he didn’t see the merit in writing a Lord of the Rings sequel, why should we?
Trying to continue this story and craft another struggle on the same scale as the War for the Ring is an exercise in futility. What’s more, it goes against the spirit of the source material. Tolkien’s work is permeated by the theme that nothing good lasts forever. Magic and wonder are always gradually fading from the world. There are no more elves or wizards. The natural world is constantly being encroached upon by the march of technological progress. The Fourth Age began the time of man, and that’s been both a blessing and a curse for our species.
It’s surely tempting on Warner Bros’ part to want to craft a sequel to one of its most successful film franchises. There’s always more money to be made in Middle-earth. But are there always more stories worth telling? Not necessarily. Certainly, not in that era.
So maybe it’s just as well that the studio seems to be hedging its bets with Shadow of the Past. This new movie may ostensibly be a sequel, but we suspect it’s going to spend a lot (maybe even most) of its runtime revisiting the classic Lord of the Rings setting. That raises its own set of problems, but at the end of the day, there’s probably more to be gained by returning to this iconic setting than trying to build something where even Tolkien himself feared to tread. Tolkien didn’t want there to be a Lord of the Rings sequel. Why should we second-guess his decision?
What do you want out of The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past? Should it be a full-fledged sequel or more of a flashback to the classic LotR era? Vote in our poll and let us know your thoughts in the comments below:
In other The Lord of the Rings news, Kate Winslet recently joined the cast of The Hunt for Gollum, while Elijah Wood admits he still has yet to finish the books after all these years.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.
