Inside Tolkien's Lost Sequel: What Comes After Return of the King

Okay, so this is not the kind of headline I expected to write in 2024: Stephen Colbert—the late-night TV guy, notorious Lord of the Rings superfan, and definitely not a typical screenwriter—is co-writing a new Middle-earth movie. And he’s not doing it alone. He’s joined by his son Peter McGee, and even better, they’ve pulled in Philippa Boyens, who helped adapt the original Peter Jackson film trilogy (translation: someone who actually knows what she’s doing with Tolkien material).

What Is 'The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of the Past'?

First off, this isn’t some entirely new spin-off, or a reboot of the movies. What Colbert and company are working on is a deep dive into a very specific part of Tolkien’s story—six chapters from the start of The Fellowship of the Ring that almost nobody ever adapts. We’re talking chapters III through VIII (‘Three Is Company’ through ‘Fog On The Barrow-Downs’). Jackson’s movies just skipped them, and honestly, most adaptations do the same.

This is the stretch where Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin head out of the Shire, dodge Black Riders, get lost in the Old Forest, and meet the infamous Tom Bombadil (yes, the dude with the yellow boots who sings a lot and has somehow become that obscure character every Tolkien fan wants to lecture you about at parties). Before they ever reach Bree or meet Aragorn, they’re off having these weird, dreamy, creepy adventures—ghostly barrow-wights and all.

The Framing Story—A Second Journey

But Colbert's movie isn’t just a straight retelling. Here’s the twist: It’s got a whole extra layer set 14 years after Frodo sails away at the end of The Return of the King. Sam, Merry, and Pippin, now with some years behind them, decide to retrace their old steps from the war. The next generation gets involved, too—specifically Sam's oldest daughter, Elanor, who somehow stumbles onto 'a long-buried secret' and wants to figure out how close the world came to total disaster before the War of the Ring even started.

Yeah, that’s not straight from Tolkien, but it’s not made up out of thin air either. Some fans will absolutely call foul on this (Tolkien purists hate it when writers go off-map), but the idea isn’t totally without roots. Tolkien himself noodled on post-Frodo stories, even drafting a whole sequel before bailing on it.

So What Actually Happens to Sam, Merry, and Pippin?

If you want to get technical, Tolkien spells out a lot of what happens to the other hobbits in the appendices at the end of the trilogy—after the big battles and the end of the Third Age. Here’s how the post-ring life shakes out for our favorite Shire crowd:

• Sam Gamgee goes back home, becomes Mayor (because duh), has a whole bunch of kids, and generally deserves all the good things he gets. He also visits Gondor with his family to catch up with King Aragorn (who, let’s remember, owes Sam just about everything, ring-wise). This happens 21 years after Frodo’s departure—not 14 years, as the movie’s framing story puts it.
• Merry and Pippin: They both become big deals in Shire society, lead their respective clans, and eventually (much later in life) travel together to Gondor to spend their twilight years with Aragorn and Arwen.
• Final fates: Sam’s wife dies, he heads west—the last of the Ring-bearers. Merry and Pippin hang out in Gondor until they die. And Aragorn, well, he lives a good long time before his son Eldarion takes over.

All this is to say: Colbert’s 14-year time jump isn’t quite canon, but it’s plausible enough in Tolkien geek terms… if you squint.

Tolkien's Abandoned Sequel: 'The New Shadow'

Here’s where things get real nerdy. Tolkien actually started a follow-up to The Lord of the Rings, set about a century after Aragorn’s death, during the reign of his son. The working title was The New Shadow, and spoiler: it was so bleak he gave up with barely a chapter written.

The plot (as far as he got with it) was basically a moody back-and-forth between two Gondorian guys—one older, one younger—about how evil never completely dies out in Men, and how some troublemakers are starting to form a not-so-subtle cult around this mysterious figure named Herumor. The younger one, Saelon, invites the older, Borlas, to a shadowy meeting. That’s literally it; Tolkien noped out before anything actually happened.

As context, Tolkien was pretty clear that he wasn’t interested in writing a second war, or a grand fantasy struggle; he saw this new darkness in the Fourth Age as men being men—messy, corrupt, dissatisfied with peace. All very modern, honestly.

The idea has some echoes of other stuff in Middle-earth’s distant history: the fall of Númenor, with evil cults and corruption, which we’re starting to see adapted in The Rings of Power show. Clearly, Tolkien thought about history repeating itself, but not in a way that would have made a crowd-pleasing adventure movie.

In the end, Tolkien concluded a straight-up thriller about conspiracies and bad actors wasn’t worth his time—not how he envisioned Middle-earth. (Though, in a fun bit of future irony, you could argue George R.R. Martin picked up this baton with his own 'Song of Ice and Fire' epic.)

So, where does that leave Colbert's new project? Kind of in between: picking up hints from Tolkien's appendices and abandoned sequel, but focusing on a forgotten sliver of the original story (and that trip with Tom Bombadil) that never really got its due on screen.

If you thought Tolkien's stories had been mined for all they're worth, apparently the Old Forest is still hiding a few secrets.