Just where is Goldberry in ‘The Rings of Power?’

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power gave us the first official live-action depiction of Tom Bombadil since his debut in 1953, but the character’s other half, the fair river-daughter of Withywindle, was conspicuously absent.

Bombadil’s appearance in The Fellowship of the Ring as the Hobbits go through the Old Forest is a bit of an incongruous and enigmatic addition to an otherwise perfectly explained and established fictional world. Tolkien was notorious for going into strenuous details about every possible character and phenomenon in Middle-earth, but when it came to old Tom Bombadil and his wife Goldberry, the questions began to pile up, and the professor refused to give a straight answer to any of them.

Many consider Tom to be an embodiment of the spirit of Middle-earth itself. Some would like to think of him as Father Nature. But the truth is, even Tolkien wasn’t sure who or what Tom Bombadil was. And all of that mystery and apparatus still didn’t stop Amazon from incorporating the character into The Rings of Power.

Tom Bombadil appears in the fourth episode, titled “Eldest” after his character, and makes the Stranger’s acquaintance. He also sings parts of his “Hey dol! merry dol!” song. At one point, we can hear a woman’s voice joining in, but when the Stranger asks Bombadil if he’s alone, he laughs and implies that there’s no one there besides the two of them.

But why didn’t The Rings of Power show Goldberry and where could she be?

Why is Goldberry absent from The Rings of Power?

There’s a simple answer to that question, and then there’s a complicated conjecture. The short of it is that the showrunners didn’t want to overly complicate the conundrum of bringing Tom Bombadil into the narrative by casting another actor besides Rory Kinnear. Hollywood often merges characters or cuts them out to manage the budget and reduce filming complications, and the lack of Goldberry could very well be due to this reason.

And yet, the Stranger clearly hears a woman’s voice singing alongside Bombadil. Is it possible that the Stranger can’t see Goldberry because she’s not a person, but a river spirit of the Withywindle? But if that’s the case, how could Frodo and the Hobbits see and interact with her in the book? Did Goldberry decide to show herself to the Hobbits but not to this Stranger, who fans think is none other than our wandering pilgrim, Gandalf the Grey?

I guess we aren’t getting any further based on what we know, unless The Rings of Power addresses it in one of the upcoming episodes. Something tells me, however, that this is the last we saw (or rather, heard) of Goldberry in this show, though I’m more than happy to be proven wrong.