J.R.R. Tolkien Didn't Want a Lord of the Rings Sequel – Should We?

J.R.R. Tolkien Didn't Want a Lord of the Rings Sequel – Should We? Southeast Asia Home Amazon Deals Pro-tips by Codashop PC PS4 Xbox One Nintendo Mobile Entertainment EsportsMoreSearch Home More About IGN SEAContactAdvertisePressUser AgreementPrivacy PolicyCookie PolicyRSSIGN Southeast Asia is operated under license by Media Prima Digital Sdn Bhd (199901014126) Change Region United States United Kingdom Australia Africa Adria Serbian/Croatian Adria Slovenian Benelux / Dutch Brazil China / 中国 Czechia / Slovakia France Germany Greece / Ελλάδα Hungary India Israel Italy / Italia Japan / 日本 Korea / 한국 Latin America Middle East – English Middle East – الأوسطالشرق Nordic Poland Portugal Southeast Asia Spain / España Turkey / Türkiye world.ign.com Register / Login Register / Login Login Register Untitled Lord of the Rings Peter Jackson Project J.R.R. Tolkien Didn't Want a Lord of the Rings Sequel – Should We? There's a good reason Tolkien never wrote a sequel to The Lord of the Rings. This post might contain affiliation links. If you buy something through this post, the publisher may get a share of the sale. By Jesse Schedeen  Updated: March 26, 2026, 3:36 a.m. Related reads:MapleStorySEA Celebrates 20th Anniversary With Massive Summer Updates 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. More like thisOpen Back Headphones: A Sound Experience Like No OtherBut 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