The Shadow of the Past [Fellowship of the Ring, Ch.2]

Discussion of The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter Two Join Maggie and Cam for this humdinger of a chapter. We finally learn the rules of the Ring and the history of its movements – from its fiery creation through its whole blood-splattered journey into Bilbo’s waistcoat in the Shire. Gandalf takes the reins again as our nearly omniscient narrator to lead us through decades (!!!) of time jumps and a string of character introductions. Aragorn! Mordor! Sméagol! We break it all down for you in this episode, and then the wizard’s insights finally settle some of our most heated debates about the One Ring. The Ring is sentient, the Ring has stated desires – we got some game-changing revelations in this chapter. Of course, we pepper the whole conversation with horror movie references – Happy Halloween! We revisit our discussion of Michael Myers and Halloween to discuss Tolkien’s concept of “The Enemy” and the River of Evil™ that we first discovered in The Hobbit, but we also bring The Exorcist and The Evil Dead into the conversation. Is Gollum inherently evil? Does Gandalf torture him to get information about the ring? Is the big-hatted grey wizard against the death penalty? Oh, and what is Tolkien saying about fate? Like I said, this chapter was jam-packed and provocative. Enjoy, and send us some more horror movie recommendations to discuss on the show. Have an observation, comment, or theory on this episode? Email us at [email protected] Follow us on Instagram @secondbreakfastpod