Does this look like a friendly gesture to you? (Image: Archi Banal)
Does this look like a friendly gesture to you? (Image: Archi Banal)

MediaDecember 10, 2021

A definitive list of the times Frodo and Sam proved they were a couple

Contributing writer
Does this look like a friendly gesture to you? (Image: Archi Banal)
Does this look like a friendly gesture to you? (Image: Archi Banal)

Best friends going on a hike to destroy some jewellery? Yeah, right.

This post was written with the extended editions of the films as base texts, because more minutes mean more chances to prove your homosexual coupledom.

Look, this is not a new theory: the two hobbits at the centre of The Lord of the Rings are not best friends, but in fact, a gay couple. Since Peter Jackson’s trilogy came out, and honestly even after the books came out, the subtext of this relationship has been pored over by queer fandom, the fandom that will read years of longing into a single glance.

While I’m loath to do that – we’ve got a lot of queer texts these days, we don’t really need queer subtext too – I’m not so sure that Frodo and Sam’s relationship rests in the shadows. That’s especially true in Jackson’s trilogy, where more time is spent on this relationship than on any actual romantic relationships (Eowyn and Faramir don’t count).

So in the interest of dispelling any uncertainty whatsoever, I’ve watched all three Lord of the Rings films and built up a pretty unimpeachable case as to why Frodo and Sam are definitively, absolutely, a gay couple. And honestly? Not a super functional one!

The Fellowship of the Ring

  • Frodo and Sam never have any adventures or do anything unexpected until an older gay man forces them to go on a tchotchke-based quest.
  • In lieu of dancing with a local girl, Sam prefers “another ale”.
  • Rather than proceeding hastily with their quest, they often stop to smoke weed and eat meat together.
  • They spy on pretty white ladies wearing wigs.

  • “I thought I lost you” followed by this look:

  • They let their deadweight stoner twink friends, Merry and Pippin, tag along.
  • Both accept the stewardship and guidance of a roving wanderer who happens to look a lot like Viggo Mortensen circa 2001.

  • Both would risk death for second breakfast aka brunch.
  • Frodo puts on gaudy jewellery at the first chance.
  • This is not how you touch your friend’s face:

  • After being stabbed by a Nazgul, Frodo hallucinates Arwen into a gown rather than travelling clothes.
  • “Sam has hardly left your side”. Gandalf doesn’t play around, y’all.

  • “I’m not like you, Bilbo.” 
  • Frodo proudly wears a bedazzled toga as armour.

  • Sam and Frodo go on a hike of undeterminable length with three twinks, two twunks, a bear and an old bearded queen with said tchotchke.
  • Sam gives Frodo this look, the epitome of gay hurt:

  • Frodo and Sam sit in front of Aragorn on their boat, obviously the gayest of log flume formations.
  • Galadriel gives Sam bondage rope, and Frodo glow-in-the-dark vodka, when they leave Lothlorien.
  • “I’m here to help you, I promised that old dead queen that I would.” – Samwise Gamgee, slightly paraphrased.

  • Frodo consistently rejects Sam’s attempts to help him, sitting right in the middle of the venn diagram of “toxic masculinity” and “catty homosexuality”.
  • Frodo feels no sorrow over the death of Boromir, because Boromir tried to take his tchotchke away from him.
  • Frodo wanders into the forest alone, despite there being a lot of orcs after him, because he’s a messy queen who loves drama.
  • Sam would rather almost drown than have Frodo leave him, because he too is a messy queen who loves drama.
  • Frodo saves Sam not necessarily because they’re in love, but because he realises someone has to make the potatoes.

The Two Towers

  • Frodo always finds his light, even at the expense of Sam’s:

  • “Can you see the bottom?”
  • “I think I found the bottom.”
  • Frodo gets overly het up about his tchotchke and, as a result, carbo loads.
  • Sam gets jealous of their skinnier companion, Gollum, and walks him on a leash, which is real messed up.
  • Sam pulls Frodo out of the water because he loves him. Look, some of these are just fairly obvious.
  • Frodo and Sam use Gollum as a power pawn in their passive aggressive games of love and drama.
  • Frodo lashes out at Sam over, yes, you guessed his, his tchotchke.
  • “His bodyguard?” “His gardener.”

  • Frodo and Sam put up with all of Gollum’s crap, because while he’s awful, the queer community has to support each other.
  • Frodo betrays Gollum’s crap, because the queer community do not have to support each other, actually.
  • Frodo apologises to Sam for his behaviour and then proceeds not to change one bit of his behaviour.
  • Whatever this is:

  • “It’s me. It’s your Sam. Don’t you know your Sam?”
  • Honestly, just this whole damn scene:

  • Also, the fact they have the conversation on a battlefield, because if there’s one thing a gay couple knows, it’s when to have a conversation at the most inconvenient and inopportune time.
  • Sam fixates on whether there’ll be bangers written about him and Frodo.

Return of the King

  • This look:

  • And this one:

  • And this one. Yeah, Return of the King is really when they don’t hold back.

  • Frodo and Sam honestly just spend a lot of the third film getting their cardio in and being mean to Gollum, which sums up a lot of the priorities of the gay people I know.
  • Sam risks everybody’s life because he wants to make sure Frodo is eating.
  • Frodo fat-shames Sam.
  • Frodo breaks up with Sam because Gollum is saying more things that Frodo agrees with.
  • Sam follows Frodo even though he pretty definitively broke up with him and Sam is way too good for Frodo at this point.
  • Liv Tyler’s fate is tied to the fate of the tchotchke, which is not exactly Frodo’s fault, but neither is being gay.
  • Sam saves Frodo from the original gaslighter, gatekeeper, girlbosser: Shelob.
  • Sam also saves Frodo from some orcs who are trying to steal his shiny toga.
  • “Not if I stick you first.”
  • Sam says something loving and supportive to Frodo. Frodo groans and gurns in response.

  • Sam gives Frodo the last of his booze. Look, this isn’t reflective of what would happen between any gay couple I know personally, but it’s reflective of at least some affection and love, so here it goes.
  • “Do you remember the taste of strawberries and cream?”

  • “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you.”
  • Sam expects Frodo to let his beloved tchotchke go, despite having witnessed over the past 9-12 hours Frodo becoming increasingly attached to it.
  • Sam saves Frodo’s damn life, which I suggest is more a straight thing to do than a gay thing. I will not elaborate.
  • This:

  • They never really address that Frodo straight up betrayed Sam towards the end of the journey in favour of said tchotchke. 
  • Sam gets married to a woman he has no chemistry with, which is very gay.
  • Frodo writes a book about all of this. You know what the drill is now.
  • Neither of them really talk to or acknowledge Legolas for the entire damn trilogy, clearly so overwhelmed/jealous (choose applicable) by his ridiculous beauty.

  • Frodo, without any notice, leaves Sam to get on a boat with Cate Blanchett, like any good homosexual would. To make matters worse, he makes Sam finish his damn book.
  • Also, everyone in The Lord of the Rings is gay. All of them. All the hobbits, Legolas, Gandalf, all the Orcs, the trees, the Nazgul, even the green ghosts. Aragorn gets married, you say? To a woman, you say? What’s gayer than wanting to spend all your time with a girl? Case closed, grow up, stop lying to yourselves.

We’re talking about elves, dwarves, cave trolls and sneaky little hobbitses for an entire week. Read the rest of our dedicated Lord of the Rings 20th anniversary coverage here.

Keep going!
Remember when all these a-listers came to Wellington? (Image : Getty/Tina Tiller)
Remember when all these a-listers came to Wellington? (Image : Getty/Tina Tiller)

MediaDecember 10, 2021

When The Hobbit – and Hollywood’s A-list – came to Wellington

The Bulletin editor
Remember when all these a-listers came to Wellington? (Image : Getty/Tina Tiller)
Remember when all these a-listers came to Wellington? (Image : Getty/Tina Tiller)

Stewart Sowman-Lund spent his teen years spotting cast members from The Hobbit around the streets of Pōneke.

Growing up in Wellington in the early 2000s felt like not being invited to the greatest party ever. In this case, the “party” was “being in Wellington while the Lord of the Rings was being filmed” and the lack of invitation was down to the fact I was a toddler. But the analogy stands: everyone older than me has a story to tell from their time in Wellywood. Like my parents, who casually stumbled upon the filming of the Isengard scene from Fellowship of the Ring, with Christopher Lee wandering around in our neighbourhood Upper Hutt park. Or simply the fact that seemingly everyone was in the damn films in some role. 

As someone who has suffered from fomo my entire life – a state of mind possibly stemming from this exact time – it made child-me deeply envious of the generation of Wellingtonians who lived through the moment when the city became forever intertwined with Tolkien. 

Jump forward to the late noughties, and things started to change. Suddenly, there was talk of The Hobbit being made. Sure, it would just be one movie – not a trilogy – but maybe it would be made in New Zealand. Some celebrities might visit Wellington. Perhaps I could be an extra!? After a few years of boring legal drama, the film inevitably became a trilogy (because everything Peter Jackson touches trebles in size) and, yes, celebs once again flooded Wellington.

The Embassy Theatre in Wellington on November 24, 2012, four days before the world premiere of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Photo: Marty Melville/AFP via Getty Images)

It wasn’t long before every visit to the city resulted in a close brush with fame. During the 2012 comedy festival, I’d often see Billy Connolly or Ian McKellen sneak into the back of a club or theatre moments before a show started. Stephen Fry would crop up in the audience of a Shakespeare production at the arts festival. A friend of mine was accused of being a stalker by Martin Freeman because of how often he’d end up seated next to him at a gig. To be honest, that was probably fair. 

One time, Ian McKellen came to my school to help teach a drama class and answer questions. Why or how, I’ve no idea. Orlando Bloom frequented the same cafe that I would sometimes skip class to go get a coffee from. And in the hills near my school, a life-size village was being constructed that you could spy on if you knew how to get to it. 

I and a few of my equally celebrity-devoted classmates would obsess over meeting the cast a little like one might collect trading cards. The goal was to get the whole set. 

In mid-2012, a few months before the first Hobbit film premiered (and before we experienced the crushing reality of how average the film actually was), we hit the jackpot. Ian McKellen was touring the country with a one-man show raising funds for the quake-damaged Isaac Theatre Royal in Christchurch. It was part Q&A, part theatrical experience, with McKellen performing renditions from Tolkien and Shakespeare while also happily answering questions about his experience working with Ricky Gervais on Extras. 

I was sitting down in my slightly above-average seats when a ripple of excitement pulsed through the crowd. Peter Jackson was walking down the row in front of me, flanked by Martin Freeman. Lee Pace and Luke Evans were there too. Billy Connolly came in next, followed by the rest of the core Hobbit cast, including Richard Armitage, Aiden Turner and James Nesbitt. I couldn’t believe it; I was going to score almost the whole cast in one go. 

It got better. The final act of McKellen’s show involved audience participation. We were given the chance to come on stage to act out a brief scene from Henry V with McKellen himself. It was already a pretty exciting opportunity, but McKellen added to it by inviting the whole Hobbit cast on stage too. McKellen said it was “a good opportunity” if anyone wanted to do “a little bit of Shakespeare acting with me and the cast”. An almighty understatement, by my reckoning. I didn’t even bother putting my hand up; my friend and I were out of our seats as quickly as we could manage.

So there I was, on the stage of the Wellington Opera House, squished between Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins. I was an actor… kind of. All I had to do was pretend to be a dead French soldier. But I was a dead French soldier next to Bilbo Baggins.

I didn’t quite secure the whole cast set that night. Cate Blanchett proved elusive, though I did see her sneaking out of a theatre into a waiting taxi. I never laid eyes on Andy Serkis – although based on his shower routine that’s possibly for the best. Nevertheless, Wellington continued to offer up bizarre celebrity encounters for the next few years. In 2013, I walked the red carpet with Benedict Cumberbatch at the local premiere of Edgar Wright’s film The World’s End. Why did it premiere in Wellington? Because Peter Jackson wanted it to, I assume. I later bumped into Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd – better known as Merry and Pippin – on Courtenay Place (they weren’t even in The Hobbit; I’ve no idea why they were in Wellington). I met Evangeline Lily, then most famous for her role in Lost, at Lyall Bay beach. 

There’s never really been a time like it in Wellington since. For me, the defining legacy of The Hobbit was the chance for a new generation of New Zealanders, like myself, to experience the excitement of having Hollywood on your backdoor step. And unless Avatar 2 starts shooting its underwater scenes in Shelly Bay, it probably won’t happen again.

We’re talking about elves, dwarves, cave trolls and sneaky little hobbitses for an entire week. Read the rest of our dedicated Lord of the Rings 20th anniversary coverage here.