0399: The State of Tolkien Fandom » Rings of Power, Hunt for Gollum & What Comes Next

What’s going on in Tolkien fandom right now—and should we be excited or worried about where things are headed? Jonathan Watson of TheOneRing.com and Exploring Tolkien joins John for a wide-ranging conversation about Tolkien fandom past and present, The Rings of Power Season 3, The Hunt for Gollum, Shadow of the Past, The War of the Rohirrim, Netflix’s Narnia, HBO’s Harry Potter, and what makes an adaptation succeed or fail. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CHAPTERS 00:00 — Introduction 01:21 — “Fellow Travelers” vs. “Fellowship” 02:25 — Jonathan Watson & TheOneRing.com 04:08 — Launching TheOneRing.com in 1999 04:44 — Tolkien Purism & Peter Jackson 05:55 — Early Online Tolkien Fandom 06:40 — Returning to Fandom 07:51 — Exploring Tolkien 08:50 — How Fandom Has Changed 12:19 — Jonathan’s Favorite Tolkien Passage 13:35 — Tolkien and Sub-creation 16:04 — “I Want to Go to There” 19:34 — Tolkien’s Love for Details 21:51 — Deep Tolkien Appreciation 22:58 — Rings of Power Season 3 24:48 — What Went Wrong? 25:14 — Compressing the Second Age 26:02 — Ham-Fisted Changes 27:03 — Middle-earth Geography 28:47 — The Writing Problem 31:40 — Why We’re Still Watching 33:30 — Why Peter Jackson Worked 35:46 — What Modern Franchises Are Missing 36:30 — “Member Berries” 41:56 — The Hunt for Gollum 43:44 — The War of the Rohirrim 48:43 — LOTR and Star Wars 49:29 — Could Gollum Be Middle-earth’s Rogue One? 49:58 — Shadow of the Past 50:11 — Why Not Aldarion and Erendis? 57:53 — Tolkien-Adjacent Territory 58:01 — Netflix’s The Magician’s Nephew 1:00:57 — “We Want Our Grandparents’ Narnia” 1:03:26 — HBO’s Harry Potter 1:04:39 — One Book Per Season 1:05:02 — LOTR as Prestige TV? 1:06:48 — HBO, Apple & Adaptation Quality 1:07:28 — Brandon Sanderson & the Cosmere 1:08:17 — Silo 1:10:10 — “When It Comes to Tolkien, Get It Right” 1:14:10 — Decades of Tolkien Fandom 1:14:34 — Where to Find Jonathan 1:16:25 — Final Thoughts ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE STATE OF TOLKIEN FANDOM Jonathan launched TheOneRing.com in 1999, before social media transformed online fandom. Fans gathered on message boards and chat rooms while following the production of Peter Jackson’s films. Jonathan remembers a fandom where people could criticize adaptations without every disagreement becoming personal. The internet has changed considerably since then. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHY TOLKIEN STILL WORKS Jonathan’s favorite Tolkien passage comes from Frodo listening to music in Rivendell. Tolkien does not simply tell us what Frodo feels. His language creates images that invite the reader to participate imaginatively. That is part of Tolkien’s sub-creative power. He creates Middle-earth. We participate by imagining it. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ RINGS OF POWER John and Jonathan discuss their disappointment with The Rings of Power: • Compressed chronology • Awkward geography • Weak dialogue • Questionable character choices • Plot problems • Too much reliance on familiar Tolkien imagery The frustration comes partly from how much potential the Second Age contains. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHY PETER JACKSON WORKED Peter Jackson changed Tolkien too. But the original trilogy possessed a strong creative vision. Modern franchise storytelling can instead become a corporate exercise built around committees, callbacks, and familiar imagery. Great adaptations need someone who understands the source and has a coherent vision for translating it. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ HUNT FOR GOLLUM The pedigree behind The Hunt for Gollum gives reason for hope. But the fundamental question remains: Why this story? We already know where Gollum ends up. Could it become Middle-earth’