As the August premiere of season two of Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power draws nearer, more information is emerging about the forthcoming season, of whose prospects I am quite skeptical. Yesterday brought some surprising news (per Vanity Fair): Tom Bombadil will be in it.

Upon hearing this, those who only know Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings film trilogy might share the initial confused reaction of Rory Kinnear, who will play Old Tom, when he was initially offered the part (“I said, ‘I’ll go away and read [the book] and get back to you.’”) But those of us who have read The Lord of the Rings know Tom well — or at least, as well as the merry fellow, with his bright-blue jacket and his boots yellow, can be known. Ancient of days with undefined powers (and fond of singing), he is a deliberately mysterious character. J. R. R. Tolkien described Tom as representing “something that I feel important, though I would not be prepared to analyze the feeling precisely,” and refused to elaborate much further: “Even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are. Tom Bombadil is one (intentionally).”

Tom appears early in The Fellowship of the Ring, when the four hobbits encounter him in the Old Forest. He displays a remarkable imperviousness to the allure of the One Ring, hosts the hobbits at his home (where Frodo has a dream that comes true much later) with his beloved wife Goldberry, and twice rescues them from some dangers indigenous to the Old Forest area (which is his domain). He is referenced subsequently but does not otherwise physically appear. Tom’s apparent extraneity to the main story (of which he seems to care little) has typically led to his excision from adaptations, such as Jackson’s (though the Soviets, hilariously, kept him in). Even so, some of us quite enjoy the willful enigma he represents.

But Tom’s inclusion in season two of The Rings of Power does not make me more excited about it. Quite the opposite. The Vanity Fair report includes one interesting detail, on why Kinnear decided to give Tom a Cornish accent (“When I was thinking of the oldest part of Britain, that was where I naturally found myself being led”). Yet it provides no hint of a justification for his being in the show. Showrunners J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay simply “took the liberty of giving Bombadil a second home” in a region of Middle-earth where some of the upcoming season will take place. This “liberty” means that they can make Tom serve as a “a real point of light amidst an otherwise sea of darkness” that will characterize this season.

Maybe. But it seems that the team behind Rings of Power is casting about desperately to restore understandably lost fan trust in its efforts, and alighted upon Tom as a possible solution. After all, (some) fans like him, and he has not yet appeared in major adaptations. Tolkien records no genuine place for him in the story the show depicts. But as he didn’t outright deny Tom was present, the show’s creators apparently think they can force him in. Elrond, an ageless elf shown in Jackson’s films as well as in The Rings of Power, speaks in Tolkien’s text of having forgotten about Tom. Aha: He must have known about him once, then . . . so he must have been there! Putting Tom in Rhûn, a far-eastern region of Middle-earth — practically the other side of the world from where, by The Lord of the Rings, at least, he lives and is not known to leave — only makes sense as a pure distillation of the show’s approach. Prior adaptations have also hardly featured Rhûn, thus allowing maximum creative “liberty” and, in theory, something new for fans.

And concerning that liberty, Payne admitted that Tom will differ from his portrayal in The Lord of the Rings by being more active in defense of the natural world. “Our Tom Bombadil is slightly more interventionist than you see in the books, but only by 5% or 10%.” But as the YouTube account Men of the West pointed out, this is not an accurate characterization of Tom’s nature. So much for the alleged promise of this upcoming season to be more faithful to Tolkien’s text.

The inclusion of Tom Bombadil in season two of The Rings of Power reeks of desperation. And it further affirms my sense that I went too easy on the first season. It’s up to the show now to prove me wrong, though I increasingly doubt it will. The mystery of Tom Bombadil, however, will endure a failed adaptation.