The Road to Bilbo's Oak Tree

One of the more talked about scenes in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is the scene where Bilbo shows Thorin the acorn from Beorn's garden. It's not a long scene, and like many in that film, it wasn't in the book, but there's always been a bit of buzz surrounding it. Some people like it for being one of the happier and more tender moments in Battle, and others like it for the metaphor comparing Bilbo's character to an acorn, which had been very subtly hinted at up until that point. This is especially clever when contrasted with Thorin, who is often associated with an oak tree because of his oakenshield.

I think one of the biggest reasons why people talk about the scene is because we don't really get a payoff for it. Thorin tells Bilbo to go home and plant his tree, but we never see the hobbit do that. We want to know what became of the acorn since it tugged at our heartstrings so much.

Popular belief for a little while was that the oak tree on top of Bag End was the tree that Bilbo planted from it. However, the few exterior shots that we see of his house in the beginning of An Unexpected Journey and the end of The Battle of the Five Armies seem to show that the tree was already there prior to his adventure.

I tried comparing those shots with shots of Bag End from The Fellowship of the Ring to see if any other trees had appeared there since the Hobbit movies. There's one lighter colored tree on the side of the hill in Fellowship that looks small enough to have been planted fairly recently, but it's hard to tell from the angle in Battle if it's already there or not. In any case, it doesn't look like an oak tree.

This left me in a bit of a quandary. Was I overlooking something? Was the acorn scene such a last-minute idea for the Hobbit movies that the filmmakers didn't have time to go back and remove one of the trees from Bag End's exterior shots? Was there a deleted scene showing where Bilbo planted the acorn? These questions were nagging me so much one day that I decided to research the matter using one of the greatest sources of information known to modern man.

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And sure enough, I found an answer. Apparently, there is going to be a bonus scene in the Battle of the Five Armies Extended Edition that shows Bilbo planting his acorn—in Dale.

This of course raises all sorts of new questions. Why would Bilbo do that when Thorin told him to plant the tree at his home? Did Bilbo not want to remember his journey after all? Did he do it to leave a reminder of himself in the closest place to Erebor where a tree could grow?

My personal theory is that Bilbo knew by then that Bag End was never really going to be his home anymore, so he didn't want to plant his tree there. Maybe a part of him always knew that he was going to leave the Shire again one day and try to return to Erebor, so he saw the East as his home instead. It would certainly lend a more poignant subtext to his decision to leave in Lord of the Rings; one of his motivations could have been that he wanted to see his oak tree once before he died.

As most of my essays these days end though, no conclusions can really be drawn until the Extended Edition comes out. If there is a scene of Bilbo planting his acorn in Dale, it could contain dialogue or something else that conveys his reasoning. It's also entirely possible that it won't, and that the reasoning will be left up to the viewer's imagination. Either way, I suspect that Bilbo's acorn and the tree that grew from it will remain a popular topic of discussion among Hobbit fans after this November.

Was Bofur Left in Laketown On Purpose?

I've said before on this blog that the fun of watching a story play out over multiple installments is that it gets the creative wheels in your head turning. You would think that a film series like The Hobbit, which is based on one of the most thoroughly mapped out legendariums in literary history, wouldn't allow much room for fan theories, but through the power of book-to-screen adaptation, a lot of things have changed in the tale and a lot of questions have been raised about them. One such change is the screenwriters' decision to have four of the dwarves from Thorin Oakenshield's company stay behind in Laketown in the trilogy's second film, The Desolation of Smaug.

For the sake of this essay, here's a quick run-down of how that scene unfolds. Thorin is in a hurry to leave Laketown so his party can reach the secret door into Erebor by sundown, a deadline that their entire quest hinges on them meeting. Having learned that his nephew Kili is injured, Thorin orders him to stay behind for the time being since he will likely slow their progress. Outraged by this, Kili's brother Fili decides to stay behind with him, and the group's medic Oin decides to stay as well so he can tend to Kili's wound. In the midst of all of this, a fourth dwarf named Bofur wakes up late to discover that the group is leaving without him and he just misses the boat out of Laketown.

The controversy of this change aside, the only leaving-behind of the four that ever felt contrived to me was Bofur's. The reasons for the other three dwarves are fairly well set up and tie in naturally with each other, but in Bofur's case, it just sort of happens. No one has much to say about it, and it seems almost random that it even happens to him at all. We know from a storytelling standpoint why it does; he's one of the more likeable dwarves, and if he's in Laketown when the dragon Smaug attacks it, we'll be more invested. In the context of the movie though, it's a little hard to buy that twelve other dwarves (including his own brother and cousin) would fail to notice his absence from the group.

This leads me to my own personal fan theory about The Desolation of Smaug: that Bofur being left behind in Laketown is supposed to feel contrived because in the context of the movie, it was contrived. My theory is that the other dwarves left him there on purpose.

Why would they do that? The answer, I believe, lies with the person who most likely would have orchestrated the whole plan—Thorin.

Looking at his interactions with Bofur before that, it's easy to come up with a motive for the King Under the Mountain. For starters, Bofur doesn't seem to take Thorin all that seriously as a leader. He follows orders most of the time, even if he's not always thrilled with them, but when there's danger afoot, he makes his own judgement calls without waiting to hear what Thorin thinks.

Take for instance the warg chase from An Unexpected Journey. After the company takes cover from their pursuers in a cave, they discover a tunnel, which Bofur immediately declares they should venture into. The rest of the company obeys this direction without so much as consulting Thorin.

The end result of this is their arrival in Rivendell, where the elves and the White Council try to put a stop to their quest. This is a situation that Thorin's been trying to avoid from the very beginning of the journey, and Bofur more or less led their group into it.

There's another instance of Bofur overstepping his bounds at the beginning of The Desolation of Smaug. Upon learning that their company is in the vicinity of a giant, man-eating bear, he suggests to everyone that they turn around and go back the way they came. This time, however, Thorin dismisses the idea before it's considered.


This seems to show development on Thorin's part. He's aware by now that Bofur has a habit of going over his head and leading the group into troublesome situations, so he's ready to keep it in check. As we see though, Thorin becomes more desperate and obsessed with reaching Erebor the closer their deadline grows, and he becomes quicker to cast aside problematic group members than he is to deal with them. If he's willing to exclude his injured nephew from the home stretch of their journey, he's probably more than willing to exclude an apparent loose canon like Bofur.

Thorin's motive could also pertain to his plan for after he finds the entrance to Erebor. His intention is to send Bilbo into Smaug's lair alone to steal back one key piece of treasure while the dragon is sleeping. The other company members, being dwarves whose smell Smaug will recognize, are supposed to wait outside of the mountain the entire time. If something should go wrong with this plan, there's a very good chance that the hobbit and possibly the dwarves will be killed.

It's no secret to Thorin by the time they reach Laketown that Bofur is attached to Bilbo. He's there when Bofur tries to save their burglar from the cliff on the Misty Mountains, and we see him eavesdropping on the conversation in the cave where Bofur wishes Bilbo "all the luck in the world." Furthermore, he's the person that Bofur asks about Bilbo's whereabouts when the dwarves are captured by elves in Mirkwood.

Thorin has probably also noticed that the insolent dwarf tends to lose his head whenever Mr. Baggins is in danger. Bofur has to be pulled to safety himself at one point during the stone giants' battle while trying to keep Bilbo secured, and when the hobbit almost falls from the cliff, Bofur doesn't just throw himself over the edge to try and grab him. He also commands Ori, the youngest dwarf in the group, to do the same.

Given all of this, it's conceivable that Bofur might charge into Smaug's lair to rescue Bilbo at the first sign of trouble, which could have a disastrous outcome for everyone present. Thorin would never take a chance on something like that happening. It's doubtful that Bofur would obey an order to stay in Laketown, and since having him detained there might make him even less cooperative in the future, Thorin's best option would be to make his leaving-behind appear accidental.

If that is the case, then why would the other dwarves go along with that plan? They all seem to like Bofur, and while they may be anxious to reach the mountain and take back Erebor too, I don't think they're as keen as their leader is to accomplish their goal through deception. The most likely explanation is that Thorin told them it would be for Bofur's own good, for all of the previously mentioned reasons. It may have helped his argument that Bofur appeared to be hungover on the morning that they left Laketown. The other dwarves didn't want their reckless friend/brother/cousin to get hurt or killed, so they agreed not to wake him as they were preparing to leave.

Bilbo seems to have been left out of that conspiracy though, as he's the only person to ask where Bofur is on their way to the boats. It's possible that since he's so close to the dwarf and the others don't know him well enough to predict how he'd feel about such an idea, they decided it was best to just keep the hobbit out of the loop. Either that, or they figured Bilbo had enough to worry about that day as it was.

This leads me to wonder then what the screenwriters' other purpose was for keeping Bofur in Laketown, besides raising the stakes during Smaug's attack. Philippa Boyens has said on numerous occasions that they wanted his character to see that attack so he could come more into his own in The Battle of the Five Armies. That arc didn't make it into the film's final cut, but if it's restored in the Extended Edition, could the above theory play a part in it?

It would be easy enough to work into the plot. Perhaps in the excitement of their reunion, one of the other dwarves (the usually silent Bombur, perhaps?) could let it slip to Bofur that Thorin told them to leave him behind. This combined with their leader's refusal to help the Laketown survivors could cause Bofur to lose what little respect he did have for Thorin, prompting him to actively oppose the new dwarf king. Perhaps then Bofur would become the person that Thorin originally suspects of stealing the Arkenstone, and this mounting tension could lead to the alleged cut scene where Bofur sends Bilbo away from Erebor at night to ensure the hobbit's safety.

Once again though, this is just a fan theory. There's no way to determine whether or not any of this was the filmmakers' intent, but a lack of definitive proof rarely snuffs out speculations like these. Some Tolkien readers have believed ever since the 1970's that Gollum killed Frodo's parents, after all. Not knowing the truth is part of what makes fan theories so enjoyable; it inspires that same spark of imaginative storytelling that can sometimes lead to gems like The Hobbit.

All the same, I still hope very much that when the final Extended Edition comes out, Bofur's secret purpose does get included in the final leg of that journey.