Hi there, I'm Stephanie.

And I'm Lydia. Come along with us as we explore and learn about the world of Tolkien through deep dives on lore, characters, beatalons and lafflons. We are excited to have you as a new friend on this journey with us. Welcome to Speak Friend and Enter, A Lord of the Rings podcast. Hello, hello. Welcome back. Hello. So we're going to talk about Golem today.

And the reason we're talking about Golem is because I specifically requested it. I was watching Lord of the Rings and I was just sitting back looking at that scene where Gandal runs off for in the books. I think it's like 20 years. He runs off for 20 years to do research and, you know, other things. And I realized I don't really know what he's doing there. Also, what was Golem up to during that whole period?

No idea. And I was burdened with incredible curiosity. So I immediately touched Stephanie.

I'm like, yo, yo, new research project for you. I find him extremely memeable. Like every line, every time I hear him, I'm like, OK, his voice is terrible. But like, listen to what he's saying.

I say that phrase every day. I feel like Andy Serkis just really, I hope I'm saying his name correctly, the voice actor and body actor for Golem. I just, it really brought him to life in like the Golem, that famous cough. So good. And then his back and forth acting, I think my favorite line is like, you have no friends.

Nobody likes you. Like that so beat up. That's so hilarious. It's so funny because I feel like we all deal with negative thoughts sometimes.

Nobody likes you. We're managing. We're managing.

We're managing. And it's just, it's just so funny. It's just hilarious to see that and also touching, right? So, so touching to see someone struggling with their own self. But he is like so relatable, which is like you said, it's interesting because he is on the surface, the least relatable. You know, this weird, deformed creature theme, you know, going crazy. Yeah, just kind of gross, but he is so relatable.

For exactly the reasons you just pointed out. Yeah, yeah, I just feel like they really brought him to life in these Peter Jackson movies. And now I, yeah, I love him. He's such a great character. But do you love him more than Gandalf? No, never. We'll be doing our, we'll have to do an episode on ranking our characters.

Yes, that would be awesome. Honestly, though, I feel like I say love hesitantly. It's just me.

I have admiration and respect for. Is that so? That's not how you were phrasing it before. Oh my gosh. I don't know. He is a little he is a little terrifying.

I'm actually looking at some. Are we talking about Gandalf or Wargold? No, no, no, no, no. Because the way you were talking about Gandalf, I was like, yeah, she loves him.

I love Gandalf. Yeah, no, it's like I say love, but I think I mean, like the admiration. But at a safe distance, a little skirt. Yeah, yeah, at a safe distance. It's like a safe disease, incommunable distance. Exactly. Yeah.

It's like a giant white shark or something. I respect you. I think you're lovely from not.

I feel about work does life. No, yes. Oh, my goodness.

Yes. Actually, I've realized that workers are kind of scary. They're beautiful, but man, this is a complete pageant. But I have to tell you, you know about work of fashion. Fashion.

It's so amazing. OK, so they've got these workers, scientists or whatever people whose whole lives it is to study these things. And this is what these are the gems that they have come and produced recently. One, or to fashion. You know, it's back in salmon hats.

So the or just like to wear dead salmon on their heads. I saw a picture of this. Amazing. So random.

Yeah, completely amazing. Apparently this used to be a trend like 40 years ago and now it's coming back. And I'm like, this is too much. This is the proof that we need that they're super intelligent, right?

Because like they have done little fashion trends the way we do. And they're working on the same cycle. So that's one element of work that everyone needs to know about.

And then the other element is this. So my brother who sails, he was telling me this. Oh, watch out, because we wanted to maybe do a sailing trip down in. I don't know where it was. It was like the Laffordose or something. I saw it's on it, but interesting. Lots of people sail there. Turns out that the local orco population has taken to ramming and sinking boats.

Like these small sailboats. Yes. And not only have they started this as like I guess this is like the equivalent of a tit talk challenge. But they're spreading it to other orcas. And so we're like, OK, we can't do any sailing trips. This is the place where we're going to do I think those Gapados was the place where all these boats were getting sunk.

Oh, my gosh. I was like, we need to not do that trip until they're not doing that anymore. That's just like the ultimate nightmare for me. I cannot handle it. It's wild. It's kind of sad. OK, this is the last little bit of this tangent.

And then we can go back to someone who also loves eating fish, but a little different vibe. OK, so we were in Kenya, actually, on a safari, and they were telling us about the lions that they had in the National Park. And they were saying, though, that some of the lions down, I think it was for their south and the continent had there had been a lion that had killed someone.

Right. And they were saying that once a lion learns how to kill someone, then it will somehow spread that knowledge of their lions in their area. And so it's like, you know, humans are yummy and they just talk about it. And so then it starts spreading like from a locale. And so they said they hunt down if a lion has killed a human, they'll hunt the lion down and kill it. Otherwise, it will start like and do they have to take out the whole pride or just depends.

It depends on if the other lions have already started hunting people. But I was like, oh, my gosh, that's crazy. So any who. Yeah. What would you call this? The lives of animals? Like their little their little reeds of gossip and discussion?

Like, obviously, they have all sorts of things they talk about. Well, yeah, just generally wild. I wouldn't work as terrifying, but beautiful. Lions, beautiful, also a little nerve wracking. All of us has a little bit in common, terrifying, not beautiful.

Actually, not the beautiful. Yeah. If we were doing a Venn diagram, we would have to work on this. There's a little overlap. He's not quite integrated into this animal. He does exactly. Exactly.

Oh, my goodness. So tell me all about him. Yes, I would love to. OK. So first of all, we're going to start with early life of Gollum.

So we have also I want to know the sources. Is this so merrily in? Is this just like notes?

Where is his friend? A lot of I can imagine little notes being like in the hobbit. I just haven't read it in a while and I've forgotten. Is that it? I think a lot of it is in the hobbit, actually.

All right. So that's where I'm taking like some of this from. Some of it's like the timelines and things. I just had to like Google to see what was going on at different points. Some of it's from the Lord of the Rings books.

I did find like, man, like a couple of quotes from Tolkan. So it's really going to be. But it's not the right time line for it to be in the somerillion.

So merrily in early life. Really, unfortunately, I would kind of love it if there was, you know, a whole appendices devoted to him, a whole appendices devoted to him because he is. Yeah, just straight up intriguing. So but I think we can start off with.

Just some of the basics that we know mainly from the hobbit. Like I said, so if we're thinking about him in terms of timing, he was born actually in the second age, I believe. Let me just double check that in my notes.

Actually, never mind, never mind. He was in the third age and he was born in 2400 and 30. So third.

How does this compare to Frodo? Exactly. Here's this gap here. Third age is still the same age as Frodo and Bilbo. So Gollum birth compared to Frodo birth.

Let me just see here what that is. So it sounds like Gollum was born over 500 years before Frodo was. So it's about a 500 year.

Yeah. So in the books, we're looking at somewhere around he sits 100, 750 years. Somewhere around 3000, probably. And I was a year old. Sorry, no, like the year. So he was born 2400 and I was like, wow, my math is over all this.

I need a calculator. And in Lord of the Rings, it's probably around like the year 3000. So it's about 500 years.

Yeah, that makes sense. OK, but that's old. That's old, right?

So he has 500 years. But what's fascinating to me is that's technically the third age. The reason why I was getting a little bit confused is I didn't realize this because in the movies, they make it seem like is Sealdor has been around. And then he loses the ring and then all of a sudden Gollum or Smigol finds the ring. And in reality, it was quite a bit of time between before the end of exactly before a Sealdor lost the ring and Gollum found it. So a Sealdor died, let's see, in the second age. So it says that a Sealdor died in the second age, 3,441. So there is like a roughly like 2000 something year gap between a Sealdor and Gollum.

And when Gollum finds it. So, you know, you started this episode before before we started. You were talking about doing research on this was like, oh, there's only more questions and now I have many more questions. I know I'm on a Sealdor deep dive on whatever the ring was doing in that 2000 year gap. Honestly, and it's so funny because now I want to look at because, yeah, in the movies, I just thought, OK, he lost it in a river.

River flows down. It's hard to get a sense of exactly how long it's been. You get a sense that time has passed, but I've never had like a solid grab as to like how much time. Exactly. And so I do think it's just so interesting.

Yeah, that it was so long. It makes me wonder if the ring and like when Gollum found it, I should probably try to look this up. I'll see if I can Google it here. But is that coincide with when Soran started doing things with like the I think it's called like the Necromancer in Markwood.

You know what I mean? I wonder Soran being more active is him trying to reunite with the ring. Yes, the ring to move and do something. Yes. So does the ring come out of the riverbed to find Gollum or Smeagol about the same time? Or alternative theory. Does it take Sarene 2000 years to wiggle its way up to the top of that riverbed?

Oh, man, I don't know. But I think it's so funny to think about the ring as like moving on its own. Because you never really see it in the movies. You see it behaves strangely once set in motion, but we never see it move of its own volition.

There's always some kind of like plausible deniability. Like Frodo has touched it or Boromir has touched it. Like people have moved it. And I'm like, it would be really funny to just see it on its own. Literally just wiggling its way up.

Yeah, like, OK, we're going to we're going to move. Yeah, it makes me wonder. Does the ring have any control over natural elements? See, that's what makes me feel like it does. But like I like I mean, I like this aspect. I think it's an interesting contrast to how fantasy has turned now, where there's so much like Sanderson style of hard magic. Like I'm going to tell you in this very expletive paragraph exactly how the magic system works here, all the rules, etc. Et cetera, whereas here it's like, we'll never know what the ring can do or how it does it ever. Yeah. Who knows if Tolkien knew it.

You probably did. But like, we won't know. And it's kind of fun.

Like, who knows what it to do. It's almost serious. And so, yeah, so my question is, like, did the rings say, OK, River, take me where I need to go? Maybe so.

Yeah. Or was it really there? But it's like it started to pull people's attention. Like maybe its power is really only people.

People not on elements. Yeah. So it was saying like, find me. Right. Like, look for it.

Look, look at me. I am a little bit persuaded by the stuff we've been reading in the Silmarillion that it could be both because in the Silmarillion, they're always talking about how, like, you know, this section of the land was corrupted and evil and the water was poisonous and the air was like, like poison and all this other stuff. And it makes me think if the ring was dropped into a pond or a puddle or something given enough time with that whole thing just be like poisoned and toxic and bad to drink. It just makes me wonder, you know, I think it's possible.

It's an object of great evil. And I just feel like the vibe in Tolton is that it just makes it feel like it's possible for that to occur. So yeah, who can tell?

But it draws Gollum in. And I wonder if that's because he was already susceptible or if it was just like, you know what I mean? Like, was he an innocent or was he not? I know because he goes very quickly and murders that guy if we are to believe the movie. Is this how it happened? Yes.

And so this is good to to to sneak in back on his storyline. Also, I did do a quick Google search and supposedly Soran or like the necromancer things started creeping back into the world vibe is like third is third age. Like Dolgoldor in Southern Merkwood was around 1000. The year 1000. So of the third age. So that's technically still a thousand years before Gollum found the ring. But it just makes me wonder, right?

Like if the ring was sensing, let's get some movement. I don't know. Yep. Yeah, I could see that.

Maybe that's the case. OK, let's let's sneak back in into his story. So so so we have him around this timeline in the third age.

They say that he was originally kind of like a hobbit slash person vibe from one of the river folk. Yeah, from the store. County, which I didn't really know where store County was. But it seems like it's somewhere kind of like in the areas that would become the shire, I'm getting the sense that it was kind of in the eastern area that they went from Areador, which is near the Lonely Mountain in the hobbit. Yeah, all the way over to kind of like where the shire was.

So that's a pretty big area. Even though it doesn't exactly feel like he was a hobbit, it's almost like he was a predecessor. Yeah, I feel like the implication is there. And I've actually I've had this out before, but I think it's interesting that Tolkien sets up the hobbits to be there, essentially the protagonist of the story. Right.

They're like, this this is you or this is what you could be if you were in this world. Right. You the common man, you my, you know, my fellow Britain or whatever.

This is us. And they're pretty clearly analogous to the English, right? Yeah. I think it's very interesting that they're set up to be this way and they do achieve. They're these small creatures who achieve very heroic things.

So that makes them powerful in a way. But the two major fail failings that occur are both hobbits. Frodo can't resist the ring.

Gallop can't resist the ring. But they do such a good job. They resist it for so long. Yeah, like you get it.

You understand it in the end. And like they almost, I don't know. I guess I just feel like part of the story is how like these hobbits, like people always underestimating them and they're so much stronger than maybe people might perceive on the outside due to their like just how small they are and physical appearance, how seemingly inconsequential they are. Exactly. And there's like a good strong message there.

And then at the very end, he's like, psych turns out they can't resist the ring after all. You know, man, I feel like it's just interesting. I feel like I view it as but this one will be interesting because this is a little bit opposite of Smekul's story. I feel like in my head, it's like Frodo and God was like they fought the good fight. You know what I mean?

Like they were really in there, really trying, really investing. But not everybody is invincible. Right. Like it's just because you are.

It's just a no-no real job. Yeah, you have all these amazing small like he made the hobbits larger than life. Right. Yeah. Because how can such a small creature who is so insidious and all these other ways do all these amazing things?

Yeah. And then he does. Well, I'm not just going to have one of them and have this hobbit and that hobbit and this hobbit and that hobbit and like as almost as a token of like realism.

He goes, but this one will fail and this one will fail. Yeah. And it's just interesting. I know.

I know. So this is perfect because basically what we have is so Smekul or actually there was another name for him, which I hadn't heard of before. Traholt. So Smekul was living in this area, kind of a predecessor to hobbits. He was living with his grandmother, which I think is mentioned down the road. And then he was it was his birthday. I'm not exactly sure what age he was turning. But he went fishing with his cousin, D.G.

Gull. Like, I don't think we realize that it's his cousin. Yeah, we don't know that they're related. Yeah. And so similar to like in the movie, D.G. Gull, his cousin finds a golden ring in the water and then it says almost immediately, right?

Like Smekul is like, I want that. Right. And I think he specifically uses the word like because it's my birthday, you should give that to me. Right. Like that's his kind of thin reasoning. Yeah. Yeah. His thin reasoning over it. But then very quickly, D.G.

Gull is like, no. And you get the sense that it turns pretty violent pretty quickly, which I think is the thing that we would not be anticipating. Yeah, that's not what you would expect. You would expect, you know, maybe they go home.

All right. Now he sees him a couple months later and he's still jealous of the ring. But yeah, the fact that it goes and obviously in the movie, it's very effective that it should move so quickly because it's a short, like punchy scene. But the fact that that is how told and meant it to be, that is just like almost immediate and I almost looked at that as like the ring overcompensating. The ring is like sitting at the bottom of this dumb lake. It's like, it's been so long. Yes.

Yes. And it's putting out massive like radio waves of rescue me, rescue me. And as soon as it does, it like gets pulled out of the water.

The water is like a dampener. And it's like, boom, you're here with the full power of the ring with no interference whatsoever. And all you can do is murder everyone around you. Just like, that's what it feels like.

I think that's a really great. The ring is just like so excited to get out of the water and get these moving. It's like, can't control itself. I think that's a really great analogy, honestly. Maybe that's what it was. It's like all that built up energy over time.

That was just because it made some snap so fast. We never come to his aid. We always think, what a terrible person, right? At least me, like I never am like, oh, well, maybe the ring was really amped up or like maybe something's going on.

We're always like, what? How do you smear people would do that? Why would you do that? But basically so it ends up turns violent and then to get control of the ring. He ends up choking his cousin.

OK, all the way to the to the point that his cousin dies. The part that I have questions after that is that, you know, in the movies, then you have the scene, it cuts away, different things are happening. And you can see there's a little snippet where basically Gollum says, like, they tasked me out, they cast us out.

Yeah, so does. Yeah, do we know anything about like, does he go back to his village? What goes on there? So it sounds like he does go back to the village and but then it just says, like, I don't know if it has a whole sequence of events of what happens.

But no real word. Eventually they're corrupted. But his grandma kicks him out, right? Which maybe she realized, like, something happened to the cousin, right? Because that's also her grandchild.

Yeah. And so she she kicks him out. I could see Gollum like slipping up, you know, maybe he was already talking to himself at that point and like she's listening in here or something like I could see that happening.

This is a really interesting point. Like, where does his brain? I kind of pictured it when he was alone, like in the Misty Mountains and he had no one else to talk to really. That maybe that's when he started talking to himself.

The logical split personality. But I wonder if the stress of it, right? The stress of realizing what he had done.

Yeah. It's so interesting because the ring obviously was like the the thing that he wanted pushed him to this point. And then he had it and he was happy. But also there's a part of him that knows there's a part of him that knows what he did was terrible. And so it's like you can you can be happy and also recognize something horrific about yourself.

I don't know. It's fascinating. He doesn't just go all in of like, yeah, of course I did because this is worth it. Yeah. And you see that in the way they portrayed in the movies where you one of the scenes where Gollum is talking to Smeagol, right?

We're getting that cut away from one to the other. Yeah. Gollum's saying all these mean things, liar, whatever.

Yeah. And then he says murderer and you see Smeagol like really is hit hard by this is something that it's a powerful. He just shrivels up. Yeah, he shrivels up. Yeah. Yeah.

And it is funny. I think we can talk a little more about this and then can move on to his next phase of life, even though I think this early phase of life is really interesting. But something I thought was fascinating is I personally felt like part of the strength that Hobbits had. And maybe this was me just like layering something on almost came from like their close relationships and their love of community almost like their their sense of place of like this is a shire and it's a safe place and it's a good place and it's a place where we can be together.

And we can obviously Boromir had that and he still felt he still fell to the influence of the rings. So maybe it's not a very great layover, but I just think it's interesting because like when Sam and Frodo talk they're like, we want to go back to the shire. Like the shire is something pure. It's something beautiful. It represents this community, this place.

But then like Gollum becomes what he is because he was in my head, not completely but partially because he was cast out. No community. No beautiful place. Like he's someone who has been unanchored and untethered from anything that I feel like could ground an individual. Yeah. I mean, even the orcs have a place to be. Yeah, they have camaraderie. Orcs have camaraderie, right? They have other orcs. Yeah. So for him to be out there alone, I mean, we never really hear about Hobbits insisting anywhere, but the shire. Yeah.

So there would have been no one for him. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I just feel like that's a really weakening state.

That would really suck. Oh, yeah. And we saw what it did to him. It does not look good. He should be, you know how they make those PSA's for smokers now?

It's like very graphic images. He should be like the PSA for, I don't know, loneliness, loneliness kills. That would be devastating. But yeah, I think it really does. Like I personally feel like it really does affect it. Like anything that I think could have grounded him or maybe other people saying, well, I mean, he killed his cousin.

So hard to say, but anyone who could have grounded him. I think you have. Yeah.

And I think you're on the right track too, because we see when Frodo reveals, you know, casually almost like, I know your name, your name is Smeetle. I know where you come from, etc. etc.

When he's offering him essentially like an olive branch that he seizes on it. Right. And so we did this like slavish puppy dog, Smeetle period that lasts not very long.

It was never going to last forever, but it lasted a decent amount of time. And you know, I'm always sad in the movies when Faramir is beating him up. And I was like, ah, you're ruining the one thing. And then of course it's ruined.

I know. So I think there is some element of that, of like, can he be redeemed? Maybe maybe he could have.

But like not while the ring insisted, you know, and obviously he failed at the last minute there, like if the ring had been destroyed and he had lived and he hadn't done some very nasty things at the end, maybe he could have been redeemed. So it's just an interesting question. I have to circle back to that.

I love that question. OK, so next phase of life, I mean, kicked out from grandma's house is pretty harsh. And so that was fascinating. I wonder, sorry, just a little bit curious that it's his grandma raising him and not somebody else or that he's living with or his parents dead. Do we know anything? Let me see. OK, this might just not be known.

Parents, let's see what we got. Oh, well, that's ironic. Yeah, so basically. It sounds like his parents drowned.

Oh, in a boating accident. Is that what? Wait. No, no, no, no.

That's not gone. Those parents, that's that's Frodo's parents. Oh, oh, Frodo. I didn't even know that about him.

Now, everyone. Oh, wait, did we talk about that? We might have talked about Frodo.

Frodo got adopted in basically by by Bilbo because his parents passed away. Right. And so I knew they had died.

I think I don't remember if we'd talked about it. So his parents had passed away. It sounds like Frodo's mom was a baggans and they passed away in a boating accident. The reason why I was trying to look for Gollum's family, but the reason why Gollum came up is because people online are suspicious that it was a boating accident somewhere on the brandy line.

And they're like, what if Gollum caused the boating accident and killed Frodo's parents? I don't know. I don't know if there's any information.

Exactly. I don't know if there's any information to support that against our man. But that's funny that you came up for that.

OK, so I don't know. I'm going to say, yeah, if you're raised by grandma, or at least grandma was the decision maker. She was the one who owned the house. She was the lady. So kicked out from grandma's. I don't know about other family.

And then, OK, this is what I think is weird. Rather than just like going and building a hut somewhere outside the shire, he lived in the Misty Mountain for over 400 years. 400 years. So did you say that this like Frodo shire like extended all the way out to the Lonely Mountain? The Lonely Mountain, it said. Because that might not be as weird as you think if that's the case, like if that territory was near the Lonely Mountain, but it was it was like pretty far.

Oh, are the Misty Mountains? They're separate. Yeah, they're separate. You're right. Right. But I guess I'm just wondering. This is my lack of geography striking. The geography can be a lot here. So. Yeah, why does he go there? So my question, just like Misty Mountains versus Shire, like. Why would he not just set up shop on a river and live his own little quiet life?

Oh, yeah, that's a good point. Like what is his background? Yeah, like the only thing that I can think of is in kind of like in the movies, they were like they banished me. All of this other stuff. Like could it be because if I'm looking at a map, so you have the Shire, you have Brie, you have a little bit of of space. You have like Rivendell. It's a long way from the Misty Mountains.

And then on the opposite side is is Markwood and on the opposite side is Erebor. So I don't know. I just wonder like, could it be that people pushed him out and we're like, get out of here? Yeah, you think maybe he was driven that far?

Or part of me wonders was he shamed and so part of it was like hiding? I'm not sure. But it just seems like a very unfriendly spot to be for 400 years. Oh, for sure. You know, he's not getting any. He's not getting out of Rivendell.

Exactly. So this is when he kind of undergoes the dramatic physical transformation that we see over a 400 year period. All that we can kind of garner is that he was in the Misty Mountains. He was avoiding slash maybe sometimes eating little orcs or goblins. Fish seemed to be a favorite meal.

And then it got less and less cooked. Honestly, I can defend him on that. Yeah, I can defend him on fish. I was talking with probably my roommate the other day. But we were looking at fish, we eating salmon and we were thinking about fish and just chatting and honestly, you look at fish and they were just made to be food. They're they're just like very little brain, very little other stuff.

And then like enormous bodies. Oh, you know what it was? I realized how big tuna was. I didn't know how big tuna was. You just looked at that. I always thought tuna was small because it comes in the little small tans or whatever.

Oh, my gosh. You looked at tuna and you think, what else is that for? Why do you have that huge slab of meat on you?

Rumi should be my dinner. Yeah, pretty much. So he is defensible in that. Like, and I understand it. Like, but the not cooking a thing is weird.

I'm not that big on sushi. Do you think the like do you legitimate think he like forgets how to make fire? Like there's a lot he's forgetting. What is this like the evolution period he's going through? Maybe he never had survival skills, you know, maybe like no, but straight up. Maybe he lived a comfy life and straight up never had survival skills. And that's why the reenus keeping him alive almost against his own will. And maybe he's being driven across this whole this long stretch of land that you just pointed out because he's stealing like he can't like he can't forge for himself. Maybe so I don't know.

He might have lived the soft life before. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. I was just thinking like I don't know. So I thought it was interesting. I tried I tried looking up what some of Tolkien's inspirations for Gollum might be because I was like such a weird character. Like the fact that he's, I don't know, kind of evolved into this almost amphibian fish like person from someone who is fairly normal. And the way he stales scenes and runs around on all fours. And he talks to himself and I was just like, what's going on? And so if he had any inspirations, I couldn't find anything that was like one hardcore. Of course, he was he was inspired by a lot of Norse mythology and other folklore, which has characters in I'm trying to remember.

Oh, my gosh. Like in Beowulf and others with these very like greedy, almost creature like creatures, not like dragons, but just like people who are obsessed or have like some kind of fixation on something. So there is out of curiosity. Have you ever read Beowulf? I haven't actually. Have you?

No, I mean, we might have to do it sometimes just to like go hit up an inspiration. I know it sounds like a classic. No, it sounds rough. I know that it's all poetry in there. And I had a really hard time reading my last section of poetry. But Tolkien loved poetry.

So I feel like there was a lot of the characters in different mythologies of like a character that's greedy or fixated. So could you? Yeah, could you come out? Could you create a character like Gollum from just something like that? I did see like there was a quote that it was talking about Tolkien said when he had not having anyone else to speak to, kind of the two personalities really coming out. And I feel like that resonates with me because I feel like when I spend a long time alone, that's when I start thinking about all my past errors and mistakes. And yeah, and I start like fixating on them and being like, man, I wonder if that person still thinks about that ridiculous thing I said. Do you really? So I feel like that could be the case. That was Stephanie.

That's really funny. As someone who does not typically ruminate on that sort of thing, I can also say that I am also afflicted with talking to myself. I spend most of the day like sitting at my computer, do my little work. And I do a lot of like I listened to a lot of music and I seen a lot and I talk to myself a lot, I've been told I'm very noisy.

Oh, my gosh. Well, so what we're saying is it's defensible that, you know, especially if you were alone, it is completely normal. Normal, upstanding citizens do this as well. It's only weird when Golem does it. Rule number one, be attractive.

Rule number two, don't be unattractive. Yes. Exactly. Something else, which I think was going to try to I was going to try to feed into like you were saying, like, why did he get to this state? Someone brought up and I thought it was intriguing. He was saying like kind of the rise of drug usage at the time. In Britain. In Britain around like that World War one, World War two time period. What is the drug of choice?

I actually don't know anything about that period. Is it like lotinum and morphine? Well, it's funny.

It's because this is just a random thing. Like in Sherlock Holmes, I know he uses opium a lot and like opium dens were becoming really popular. Oh, sure, sure, sure. So the poll that the reigned Ed results on people is maybe I mean, people always compare it to an addiction, but maybe it is actually, you know, explicitly like an analog to that. They were saying maybe he had experiences with people who were really struggling, like had a very similar addiction relationship. And for me, at least in the movie, the way they depict him, he's so skinny. All of his needs for like taking care of himself seemed to be on the back burner. And so that's where you were saying like, why doesn't he cook himself a nice fish dinner? Like why doesn't he take care of himself?

Sure, so it could be that it's not a lack of knowledge, it's just a lack of, essentially a lack of will. A lack of will, like his obsession has become so strong that other things no longer have importance, which is also tying into like, he's separated from family, separated from community. Like what else is he gonna fixate on? I don't know.

Yeah, what is love for him? Interesting. I actually like, despite there being clear and obvious like parallels between the ream and what it does to people and any other religious substance, I actually rarely think about it like that. So it was kind of fun to think, oh maybe that was deliberate, you know, it's a theory. Yeah, I don't know. That was just some random person's thought. Well, respect random person, we're random people too.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I also, it made me wonder, seeing war, we talk about this a lot, where Tolkien had the world wars and not seeing a lot of people come back, the people that did come back. I wonder if they had a little bit, almost like a Dr. Drackel Mr. Hyde. Situation with their personalities too. Where maybe you'd have someone who was like, oh, before the war they were so friendly, they were so this, they were so nonchalant. And then after they have like a darker side that's hard for them, I don't know.

I also wonder, it could even be Jekyll Hyde on a like more granular scale too of like, oh, this is somebody I knew during the war. I saw how they behaved there in that circumstance. And now I see them here at home and I see how they behave here. So yeah, and I don't know if it's a different side necessarily because there is like circumstantial behavior.

That's a real thing. Many people change drastically depending on their environment and like even social circles or whatever. That's not unusual, but yeah, I wonder if there's a scenario like that where it's like, oh, you were like this here, but not there.

And it's such a polar opposite that it's hard to see that one person, right? Or potentially he actually just knew something about psychology. I was like, oh, this is interesting. Would it be cool if my Gremlin character had a split personality?

Let's go. I also think so the ring is often, like especially when we were talking about like sources of inspiration for Tolkien, I feel like tied with the concept of power and what power does to people, right? Like how would you be, who would you become? Mm-hmm, that's true. And I actually think this is something that we don't give call of credit for is he had this thing for 400 years and he thought, you know, I'm gonna go sit in a cave and I'm gonna eat myself some really raw sushi and no rice. And that's all he did, right? Whereas every other character, and maybe they had some outlet for their power, right? Like we think of Galadriel, we think of Boromir, who is in a position of power.

We think of, I don't know, anyone who wanted it. Even Frodo, I feel like in that last scene where he's like, I'm gonna take the ring, he comes almost like, he seems like a different, I don't know, presence. Like he seems more authoritative and like I'm taking the ring, like I'm gonna, I don't know, be more powerful with it. So I wonder how much Galan knew. I think he knew it was a pretty shiny thing and I suspect he did not, yeah, I suspect he did not know what it was. And the reason I think that is because like you said, all the people who knew that it was powerful, and I don't know how you actually use Zorin. I end, like when Galadriel says, don't tempt me with the scene and Dandall says, don't tempt me with the scene. Like I understand that they look at that and think I know how to use that thing.

I know how to unlock its potential. I don't know if Boromir could, maybe he could. Obviously the implications that he thinks he can. And I suspect that Galan had no clue that the ring was what it was until he gets captured and is tortured about it. And then I think he knows what it is. Until then I suspect it's just precious.

Just like you said, he just goes off into a tape. Like it's, it's every, like your beliefs, I guess, are what limit you in this sense. Like Galan believes that it is a powerless ring. All it does is turn him invisible. So that's all it does for him. He believes he's cast out and can never go home.

So he can't. You know, I was going to try to be like, maybe he, but he could have gone bolder. He could have done more malicious things with it, knowing that it could turn him invisible.

But then also part of me is thinking, you know, it might not be his character that kept him hidden for many years. It might have been the ring. The ring might have said, don't be conspicuous. The ring might have said, don't be power hungry. Stay here in this cave at the right moment.

I'll have an orc send me to Sauron. Or it could just be that he was so greedy and so overly protective that he couldn't. There was nothing, there was no place for other outside ambitions. Cause like you said, he had already, there were all those ties were already cut off even before he got the ring, as he got the ring. So what was there? What interest was there for him to be powerful?

There was no shire for him to protect. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know.

It's so fascinating how he ended up like he did. I actually am not sure. And this might be something good to check. I was telling Lydia, Lydia mentioned this at the beginning of this, I was like, I just have more questions. As I was looking up Gollum. So my question is, so I know the Hobbit was something that was more of a children's story that Tolkien kind of came up with to tell his kids, but it had some roots in his Middle Earth that he loved and that he had been working on for years. And so then my question is, Gollum as a character was something when they originally wrote the Hobbit, did Gollum's importance and who he was in the whole arc of things get created when Tolkien was like, oh, I'm going to write this, this epic, the saga. My guess is yes, I don't get the impression Gollum was like a character that was super like a Sauron where he's just like, oh, yes, there's always a Sauron in this world or a Galadriel. Well, yeah, like, is he an essential character? Yeah.

Or is he just a cutaway side character that when Tolkien wrote the Hobbit, he's like, this is a great character, let's throw it in. Exactly. And now there will be a little fun bobble ring. And then later when he's writing the Lord of the Rings, he says, you know who I should bring back.

Yeah, I don't know. And maybe some of that time in between books and some of that time spent, I just introspecting and planning the next one and figuring things out is why Tolkien ended up with this like surprise ending, right? Where it's Gollum who ends up destroying the ring. And that's, that feels like a twist ending. Like if he had planned the Lord of the Rings with that as the twist, it's interesting.

And it feels like maybe it's just hard to think of him having written the Hobbit and thought, yes, I have a plan for Gollum. I know how he'll end up. And let's just seed him in right here. I guess I just don't see him as having done that, but I don't actually know. We'd have to do some. I have to do some more digging. Yeah.

Because I don't know if anyone would know that. I will say I was chatting with someone and shout out to my friend Alex, who was chatting with me about this, that he was saying that I don't know if Tolkien got to this point or published it this way, but he was going to like make tweets or edits, he said, so that the Hobbit was like the book written from Bilbo's perspective of how he got the ring and how the story went down. And then there was going to be a Gandalf version of how the Hobbit.

This is what we're missing. How the Hobbit story went down. Gandalf would have known so much more. The Bilbo POV for chapter B, I don't know what's happening.

Let's go. And in Gandalf B, I can tell you exactly what's happening and how he was wrong. Yeah. And so it was supposed to, I think, kind of like bridge the two because the Hobbit is from like a perspective of Bilbo. It's a very limited perspective. He doesn't know what's going on. He's on his first adventure. Not to say it's bad, it's just like, he is a character with limited information.

Yeah. But then in Lord of the Rings, Gollum says, he stole it from me, right? Like the ring was stolen versus Bilbo's.

Like I found it. And so the concept was there's inconsistent narrators, right? Like there's the Lord of the Rings versus the Hobbit versus and then there's a potentially would have been a Gandalf version. And then Gandalf to be the Arpiter, he would know who really stole it.

Like an add some context and I don't know. I would have to figure that out if that's true. That would have been really cool. Oh, I would have loved a but from Gandalf's perspective. That's awesome. I support this fanfiction.

I support it too. But okay, so we get to like the prime part of Gollum really, is that he's in this mountain, unsuspecting that anything is going to come for him and his, as he calls it, you know, his precious or his birthday gift. It sounds like is another way that he talks about it.

Almost like kind of a sad, more childish way of saying like, no, the terrible things didn't happen. This was my birthday gift. Yeah, yeah. Anyways, so it sounds like there's slightly different narrations of what happens. One in, I think the Hobbit is like Bilbo is sitting and he sees something shiny and he picks it up.

And another one is he sees Gollum and it falls out of like Gollum's pocket and he takes it. And so that's the kind of like the stealing version versus like I found it, not knowing. Where do these different versions come from? Are they both from the Hobbit? I think one's the Hobbit. I think the Lord of the Rings one might be the one where he falls, it falls out of his pocket.

I actually feel like these scenes are kind of shown in the movies where like you see Bilbo on the ground scrambling through and he finds it and then you see a different scene where it's falling away from Gollum. Yeah, that's cool. There might be vice versa, but yeah.

I mean he's thought super point, I was just a little bit curious. Yeah, I had those two versions of it. Interesting. And then Bilbo ends up in a situation where he encounters the creature Gollum. Is this the Beatles? Yes, and you get the sense. In the Hobbit too, it comes across much more like he's a monster and he will eat you. Oh yeah, it's very scary. Like in the book it's written so well. It's written so well and then you see him in Lord of the Rings and you think, yeah you're intimidating, but like maybe I could take you. I don't know, like, but in the Hobbit it definitely is kind of like you have entered my layer.

I'm only gonna let you go. Like you look so yummy to eat or his gleaming eyes in the darkness. And so he has some really cool riddles and I actually think it's so interesting.

400 years, 400 years in that cave, he forgets how to cook, but he remembers riddles. I mean, you have to have something to entertain yourself with. Though I will say I am shockingly bad at riddles. Yeah, I'm not the wittiest.

They're just very hard to be at, I don't know why. Oh my goodness. Okay, so I have a couple of the riddles that they do. They're very good. They're very, they're very, very impressive.

Okay, let me see. So we have, what has roots as nobody sees is taller than trees, up, up, up it goes, and yet never grows. I am going to know this, but only because I remember the answers I think. It's mountains?

Yes, I think it's mountains. Okay. You can check the answers here. Here we go. Up, up, up.

And I really like this. Does Bilbo counter him with some riddles? Yeah, I think Bilbo does similar riddles because it's whoever loses basically. Like if he, if golem stumps him.

He can't answer each other's riddles. Yeah, yeah. I just think that's such an interesting and fun game. There are other games that I play that are like wordish games that are, you know, just how to build on a joke and make the other person laugh as you make it more and more absurd, right? It's not totally dissimilar, but like the formal way of like crafting the joke into a riddle or crafting it into that format.

I saw an episode of show the other day where they were doing basically a high two, counter high two, you have to high two and then you return like a bit of pros and then they high two back at you, et cetera. And I was just like, dang, that's hard. It's so hard.

Mom, like I'm not cut out. I don't have the practice in that kind of poetry to just like spit these out like that's fun though. It's very impressive. And I actually think so towards the end, they go back and forth, they have a few of these and then Bilbo asks the final riddle, which. Is this the one that stumps the goal? It's a little bit of a cheat, right?

Which is it says, what have I got in my pocket? Right? So.

Gallop is right. That is not a riddle. It's not a riddle.

It's not a riddle. So he says, what have I got in my pocket? And I think then with that, I believe he's able to slip on the ring and he's able to escape.

Yeah. His gallop wouldn't have let him out, otherwise I don't think. But that is kind of the whole main crux of how Gollum gets sucked in to the crazy thing, which is Lord of the Rings. He has throughout Lord of the Rings, a bunch of adventures.

So basically from the time that Bilbo took the ring from him through to when the fellowship goes through Moria and you see a glimpse of him, he was going on his own crazy adventures, which is also going to be potentially a movie we are hearing. Let's see what it's gonna be called. Peter Jackson, Gollum movie. I believe Andy Serkis is going to come back for this. Well, you'd have to have him. If they were gonna try to voice Gollum with anyone else, it just really wouldn't work.

He's incredible. So it's supposed to be coming out in 2026, which is not that far from now. And it's called The Hunt for Gollum. Okay. And I believe this is going to be... Is it live action?

I think so. I mean, it shows Gollum in his usual way. So you don't like an animation theme. Okay. Well, I am always very tentative about these sorts of things. We'll see how it goes. It could be interesting though, because there is that big question of what was he up to? And it's possible that all we did is him warping up a sushi shack.

Oh my gosh. Well, I've anticipated they'll try to put a little more in. I think the thing I'm hesitant for is... So we can talk through what he was getting up to, but I just don't know if it's gonna be enough content.

And I feel like they stretched out the Hobbit trilogy so much with content that I didn't love, that I'm hesitant about them creating their own content. What is there to talk about here? Yeah. There is a lot going on.

So what is there potentially? So basically what happened is after Bilbo stole the ring, Gollum eventually left the mountains, hypothetically, to try to pursue Bilbo and find the ring. So it sounds like he didn't leave the same day, right?

I don't know if he was just like, I don't know if I can go out. There must have been a point in time where it was just so unbearable not having it that he had to leave the ring. So it drove him out of the mountains, but it said there wasn't much of a trail. There wasn't much for him to follow.

It had been enough time. And so basically he made his way south. He just kept traveling south. Also, I love the implication that like, many months have passed and Gollum was like, ah, there's not enough of trail. And for me, if I was in that position, two minutes have passed and there was zero trail for me to find.

I know, I know, right? What trail is he looking for? Amazing. I don't know. He's sneaky. Because he can't just go up to people and say, have you seen a Hobbit? He's sneaky.

And I am just so impressed. Reading like everything that he's done, I'm like, this guy can move. He moves it. Like he travels. Cause I think it's on his own two legs or holding on to the underside of a log. Like he's not, he's not have sophisticated means of transport.

Yeah. He's not hitchhiking any rides, that's for sure. So he's heading his way south. But what's interesting is you also get the sense that he's being drawn a little bit because Mordor has been calling. And so orcs and certain things have actually been gathering.

And so I don't know if he's following like all of these orcs and all of these things. So I wonder if the ring going back to my ring as a radio receiver, transceiver, transmitter thing. What if the ring kind of like pumps out signals, right? And so the ring is basically calling. It's saying, notice me, notice me, notice me. And who is the most attuned to noticing the ring?

Gollum. Yeah. Like I wonder if he's just literally working on a wavelength we cannot comprehend and it's just like constantly calling to him.

Maybe, maybe. But I feel like if it was calling, I feel like the ring turned it off. Ring didn't walk all. Ring didn't walk all of them anymore.

Sure didn't. But like maybe it's like he's he's got the secret codes. He's on the wavelength anyway. He's on the radio.

Yeah. And so that's it is interesting because he doesn't go to Arab or he doesn't follow the real trail. He goes south.

Right. Kind of along this like things are being called to Mordor vibe to your point. Like maybe he's on this radio length now and he feels this pull.

So he goes south down to Mordor or through Dondor. Yeah. Yeah. So but what's fascinating, I only know that doesn't look handsome.

Yeah. And what's fascinating is so he gets there and he discovers those secret stairs of Sareth Ungle, the ones that they climb, climb, climb to get into Mordor. Because he's looking for a sneaky way. Right. He thinks that he needs to get in there. So it's really interesting to me that he goes into the tunnel, not knowing what to expect, not realizing that there is a monster there and he encounters Shilab.

Do they like to get along? This is the thing. Shilab. First of all, I think she realizes he does not look tasty. Right. Like he is like the skinniest, nastiest little bit of me. Number one attribute unsnackable.

But also this is what's fascinating about Golem, which I'm like, you're an intriguing character. He negotiates with her. Okay. He says, you spare me and I will lead other things to your tunnel. And so he starts, he starts working for her. So he's got a job now. He's like full on tours to Sareth Ungle.

Exactly. He starts leading orcs and other creatures that have been coming up into her tunnel. And so he starts working for kind of her like as a farrier, which is something that's so interesting because it actually, it makes me feel respectful, but it also. He does it and immediately takes Sam and Frodo up the stairs. He takes them to the gate because they asked to go to the gate. But what's fascinating is like he, he knew those stairs very well.

He took people there frequently. That's an interesting thing to think about. Like this plan that he has of having Shilab kill them is not just something he's like, oh, I think she'll do it. He knows she'll do it. That's literally their bargain. He knows.

That's been their bargain. And so if he shows up again, like that's why he's not scared to go in the tunnel. He's like, come with me. Right. Like he, he's had something cut out with her before he knows that tunnel.

Yeah, that's interesting because I've always kind of thought of it as a spur of the moment where he thinks she's going to eat them, but that's OK. Because this is a, you know, running faster than the bear sort of situation. And I know this tunnel better than them. Therefore, I'll be able to escape. But honestly, it sounds like actually he was in zero danger whatsoever. Yeah. So he was in danger initially, right? But then he was able to this deal to come up with something.

But then this is the thing. So he's working for Shilab. He's getting people to come into the tunnel, but then he gets captured.

OK. He gets captured by some of the orcs and some of, you know, the Mordor crew. And he gets taken to Baradur and he gets tortured. And so that's where we see the really sad scene where he's like talking about everything that he knows about the ring. And it's the scene that gives the Nazgul enough information to go to the Shire to pursue the Shire.

Yeah. So but what I'm fascinated by is why didn't he go to the Shire first? I don't know if he knew that they were in the Shire.

Anyways. So after a while and they think, OK. We know everything that this this thing has. We've run him dry. They released him.

But what's so fascinating is I love the phrase in the movies when Gandalf says, did he escape or was he released? Right. Because you get the impression. Soran says, this thing's pretty good at sniffing out my ring. Right. That's how I would look at it.

But it's like, this is my new bloodhound. Go. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

And he's good at it. I don't know why he didn't just follow Gollum rather than the Nazgul. Yeah, I don't know. That's an interesting question. Yeah.

I do think it's interesting. So this whole journey is there towards the end when he's like in Mordor and he gets captured. This is overlapping with that scene where Gandalf says, keep it secret.

Keep it safe. And then in the movie, he comes back like, I don't know, a few months. A few days, a few weeks, like something very short later. In reality, he went away for years and he was looking his first stop. He thought, if I'm going to understand this ring, is I should find Gollum.

Right. And it says that he failed to find him before the enemy, right? He failed to find him. And so, but this is what's interesting is he actually, he knew Aragorn and he had looped him into this and he had basically hired Aragorn, who was a ranger and he said, I'm looking for this creature.

Can you help me? And so what's fascinating is after Gollum is released, Aragorn finds him. And then does he get information from him? So Aragorn captures him. It sounds like there and Gandalf is able to interrogate him and actually get some information to know that he was being, he was being, he was caught by the enemy. He was doing all this stuff.

Just how we know that story. It gives him information about the ring, right? It sounds like Gandalf was. Is that the final confirmation that Gandalf needed? Is that when he then cuts loose and goes back to Frodo?

I don't know. I don't know if he did the research about, because he did do the research, right? Where he reads about the ring and it says that the brand of fire. Yeah, we did like the words. Yeah.

Yeah. So I don't know if the interrogation happened before, after he had that research, but it was a piece. It's possible that the interrogation, all it tells him really is. Sauron is interested. Sauron suspects there's something going on with this ring, but he still needed to know more to be able to confirm whether it was or not. Yeah, because how would he know if that was the right?

Yeah, exactly. I mean, maybe Sauron is interested in every gold ring. He's a pawn shop. Bring your old jewelry to me.

Well, yeah, or like a shoot. Who was that guy? The slaughtering of the innocence.

Who was the teen? Oh, Judah at that time. Oh, Herod. Herod, thank you. Herod, the crazy Herod. There are multiple Herods. So crazy Herod, when he does a slaughtering incident, he's like, hey, yeah, I am interested in this baby and I would like to slaughter all of them, please. Like he is just totally indiscriminate. So maybe like Sauron's like, I want all jewelry, all jewelry right now.

Let's go. I think our magic rings, right? Yeah, magic rings, of course. And so maybe at that point, Randolph hears this story about Gollum. I was like, oh, there is a magic ring. Yeah, I mean, I see why Sauron would be interested.

It's made to me really suspicious. But he needs like a little bit more. He needs that last piece of detail just to prove it.

Maybe. I do think it's fascinating so that he he talked to him. And then so this is what's funny. So he he places Gollum in the care of the the Sylvan elves. So this is like Legolas's people.

OK. And it's in Thrandall's kingdom in Merquid. So he's the like really pretty. He's a Merquid. He's the really pretty elf dad in the Hobbit. So they have care of Gollum. But then sneaky sneaky Gollum. He escapes. He escapes from the elves. He's so sneaky. How crazy is that? And so what's fascinating, though, is he goes into.

The minds of Moria. He goes back into the mountains. But from the side that in the movies, you see like them coming out after the bow rocks. It's more of an open door. But it sounds like he was not able to get out on the other side. So he entered the cavern. But he was not. Maybe at that point he was trying to get through the mountains and go to the Shire.

Yeah. He was trying to get through the mountains. But he could not exit the other side. And it just so happens that as he was living there, the fellowship comes through Moria. Oh, so in the books or whatever, he's already there.

He's there. And that's when they passed through. And that's when they passed through. And that's when he hitches on.

And basically, like I was looking, he he holds, he sticks onto them like. Yeah. A long ways. Yeah. I'm looking out the map too.

A long, long ways. He's such of them like blue for. Yeah. He basically.

They went so far. He follows Frodo and Sam when they separate from the fellowship. He like he goes all the way. So that just kind of finishes his complete arc. And we know exactly where it ends. We know exactly where it ends with his death at the volcano of Mount Doom. But yeah, it is so interesting because in the book, I think the ending is slightly different from the movies. So in the book, we have it where Gollum effectively gets the ring back from Frodo. And then Gollum is so overjoyed. He's prancing out of giddiness. And then falls off the precipice. And so we don't have Frodo fighting with him over it.

Yes. But then in the movie, they added a little bit of redemption for Frodo. I will say, I do think Gollum does bite off his fingers. So does. Pretty substantial.

But Frodo is not pushing him into the lava. Yeah. Sorry.

Which part did you mean was redemption for Frodo, the fact that he pushed him? Exactly. Yeah.

So in the movie, they have it where Frodo gets up and he starts fighting with him and you kind of get that. That's actually interesting. I actually read that completely the opposite. Oh, really? At that moment.

Yeah. I looked at that moment as the moment of, oh, Frodo has lost it completely. He has become a Gollum. Oh, maybe. He's doing exactly what Gollum did.

He's about to murder somebody for the ring, which we have not seen. That's so funny. Any other time. That's exactly the moment that I find most interesting at the end of the movie, we're like, oh, it's over for Frodo. He's gone down.

And I thought he was trying to push him. Oh, no, absolutely not. I mean, obviously in the movie, we need to re-watch it, but I definitely looked at that as Frodo is 100 percent taking the ring from Gollum. He doesn't care about anything else and they both fall in on accident. And I can see why, like, Jaxson twisted it up a little bit just to make it a little bit more dramatic because you did that scene where they both fall in and you don't know that Frodo is hanging onto the precipice. So you think for a second, oh, is this it? But yeah, I read that moment as the final fall for Frodo. Like that is when his failure becomes complete to me.

Wow, that's so fascinating. I'm going to have to see what other people think because I honestly, I thought it was supposed to be like him saying. Him saying I'm going to push Gollum in and destroy the ring.

I'm going to push Gollum in. I've never even read it that way. That's interesting.

Like I've never seen it that way. That's cool. I like that.

Maybe maybe there is redemption art there for Frodo. I've never seen it that way. I guess I'm fascinated.

I know I'm genuinely curious, but I do think it's so interesting. Like this ending is epic, right? And I don't know how long Tolkien had this thought process in his mind. We're going to have to research that more, but just we've talked about the ending.

It's so iconic, so different than many other fantasy books. You have a character who is kind of hated throughout. You feel bad for him. You think he's pretty terrible.

It's really raw fish. Like he's not the hero. He's not even like Soromon or Soron. He's not it's not like, oh, the villain destroyed. It's like he's really coming out of like left wing, like from the side, whatever that face is. And especially in the book where he's just prancing, he's prancing out of joy, right?

And ultimately he falls into the fire. And so I guess a couple of thoughts there. One is they do kind of foreshadow it in the language when Frodo says, like, you're going to be held to your word because of the ring when when Gollum says, I'm going to serve you and I swear on the ring.

Right. So they do kind of foreshadow something happening there where the ring will hold. They also foreshadow it with Dandalf's dialogue. And I don't know if this is in the book, but like when Dandalf says, you know, we don't know what his purposes are.

I see that there could be more in the future for him. It may be that, you know, sparing. And what is it? The pity that spares Gollum may may do something important. I forgot the full quote. Yeah, I love I love that quote by Gandalf because he's he I think there's a longer other stuff he says to. But it's like along the lines of, you know, many, many people who don't deserve to die die.

Yes. And then many people who deserve to die live. Like, can you give them justice? Right? Like, do you know the do you know the end all be all? Right. Yeah. And this is the follow up line. I just looked it up. Even the very wise cannot see all ends.

Yeah. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play in it for good or evil before this is before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many. Yeah, it's just he's not wrong. And that line shows that Tolkien intended the ending. Whether he came up with that line at the beginning of the Lord of the Rings or the beginning of the Hobbit is unclear to me. But like it makes it it's a all you need is that scene to know the intentionality of it and for to make it feel meaningful at the end instead of just something that came out from nowhere off the side.

Yeah. I think it's so fascinating because we talked about how Tolkien loves to kind of highlight the little people or like the people that you don't think are going to be powerful, important in a in a fray or in a battle. And they play a critical role.

And they play a critical role. And this whole time, honestly, you you think, oh, Hobbits don't seem that intimidating. But you think Gollum is you think Gollum is a victim, right?

Like, he's like suffering from this, you could say, addiction to this ring. He's he's not a powerful person in terms of like how he's able to control his own life. And yet his actions were so crucial, almost like the littlest person, the littlest character in a way. Yeah, a little person, a hobbit and then a diminished one. A diminished one at that ended up being the end all. I don't know.

Yeah, it's interesting. And giving him glory. He saved the world. Technically. Does it count if you do it on accident? I don't know. That's the real question. That's the real question, right?

Like, he didn't do it with intent, but. And actually, now that I say that, I feel like that could be a really fun, like standalone fantasy book. Like you just it's book one.

I don't know, maybe you have multiple books, but book one is it the tarot pants to the guy who just saved the world on accident and then it follows everything he does afterwards. That would be hilarious to me. That'd be a great comedy. Honestly, I feel like there's so much we could talk about. We've talked already so much, but like so much we could talk about with Gollum, like his redemption. Yeah, like the ending of the book, the purpose of him being the person who takes the ring out a little bit, I think, is it coming full circle? Because in the hobbit, he's the one who introduces the ring in the beginning.

Back into the world and then he takes it out in the end. But basically, I just I love this character. I think it's one of the most people often say sometimes that Tolkien doesn't have a lot of gray.

And I think this is one. Oh, yeah, I just agree with that. Most favorite depictions of someone who's very multifaceted, who has a lot of past and yeah, just overall thoroughly a joy and also find a lot of meaning in this character.

Yeah, he's very unique. There are not a lot of Dolom characters. Yeah, you could find a lot of you can find a million airgorns. Yeah, we love a good airgorn and we love a good Gandalf.

There's nothing wrong with it. And I don't I say this. You can find a lot of airgorn copycats.

I just think the original is probably one of the best. But you cannot find a lot of Dolom. And maybe this is just a lack of reading on my part. But I honestly cannot think of a single one. Oh, man.

I would have to think a little harder about this. But I just can't think of anyone that has copycatted Dolom the way that other characters, I feel like, have been more directly influenced, which is interesting because I find him very formative. So is it just he's too distinctive? He's too integral to the story of Lord of the Rings. Like you would almost have to plot your entire book around this character in order to make it work in your other story.

And it looks like that's how it is in Lord of the Rings. Like the plot is crafted around him in a way. So yeah, he's it's cool. He's a cool character. Yeah, he's a really cool character. I love chatting about him with you.

Just so epic. We might have to do a follow up part two if we do a little more. As we learn more, we'll discover more about him and we'll have to be like, oh, no, it's part two. Go on.

It's part two. Go on. But yeah, anyways. Until next time then until next time. Thanks so much, guys.

It was amazing. Sounds good. Bye. Bye.