207: The FotR 12: Smeagol Explained

Lord of the Rings Lorecast - J.R.R. Tolkien's World & Writings Explained

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Fiction, Arts, Books, Tv & Film

4.9 • 695 Ratings

🗓️ 30 March 2026

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There's a mountain of hidden information snuck into the moment when Gandalf reveals his knowledge about who Gollum originally was and how he came to find the ring.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Lord of the Rings lore cast, the show that explores the background of
0:11.0	Tolkien's amazing world from the very beginning.
0:15.0	This is going to be one of those episodes where I basically quote the entire section that we're covering today.
0:31.6	Because this is the moment where Gandalf reveals to Frodo who Smigel is. Now, of course, Frodo knows the story about
0:39.4	Gollum and the Ring, but he didn't know anything about who Gollum might have been before that.
0:44.8	Gandalf has discovered some things that are now revealed both to Frodo and to the reader,
0:50.2	about Gollum's actual identity, his history, and some of the things that we otherwise wouldn't know.
0:56.9	And a lot of this section, a lot of the knowledge that is gained by Gollum about Smeagle is because of the events that happen between the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings.
1:07.7	And this becomes the centerpiece. This is the focus of the new movie that they're actually working on.
1:13.1	So we're going to be going over every little detail in this section, and it is not a very
1:18.4	long section, but there is a lot to parse out here about what Gandalf discovers, how Tolkien
1:24.4	writes it, and why these details are important, and why they're here at the beginning of the story as opposed to later on.
1:33.0	So let's get into it. Let's talk about Smeagle last one where Gandalf explained how the ring disappeared into the river and then out of knowledge. But time moves on, and this section begins
2:04.0	with this. Long after, but still very long ago, there lived by the banks of the Great River
2:09.9	on the edge of Wilderland, a clever-handed and quiet-footed little people. Now immediately,
2:16.8	the very first sentence, we already have lots of
2:19.3	things to cover here. First of all, this was long ago, but still a considerable amount of time
2:25.3	since the ring was lost. So what exactly does that mean? All right, so let's go back in time.
2:30.3	When was the Battle of the Last Alliance? Well, that was basically the end of the second age.
2:35.0	That ushered in the beginning of the third age.
2:37.8	And how long did Isildur actually have the ring before he was killed and he lost it?
2:42.8	Only about a year or two.
	...

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