🏀 2025 Middle-earth March Madness Begins

Who will reign supreme as the one champion to rule them all?

This month sees the return of the annual March Madness tournament in college basketball here in the USA. 68 teams from across the country play for the chance to become the champion. It’s a wild ride of emotion, excitement, and entertainment as legends are forged and history is made.

Last year was my inaugural Middle-earth March Madness tournament and it was so much fun that I’m doing it again this year! In a tournament that focused on the Heroes and Villains from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, our ultimate winner was Samwise Gamgee!

While I’m doing another tournament this year, I’m changing things up a bit:

• This year the regions will incorporate characters from The Lord of the Rings but also from The Silmarillion, The Rings of Power, and War of the Rohirrim

• As last year’s winner and to allow for some fresh talent, Sam will get a rest this year

• Correspondingly, priority in selection for inclusion this year was given to characters who did not appear last year

• No multiple versions of characters in the bracket! If a character appears in one region of the bracket, that is the only version of them to appear in this tournament (sorry to all those hoping for a Peter Jackson’s LOTR Galadriel vs. Rings of Power Galadriel!).

• Finally, priority was given to characters requested by some of you! I asked for character requests in the Jokien with Tolkien Discord server and Substack Chat, and while I couldn’t accommodate every single one, this field represents many of the most-requested characters.

With all that as prelude, let’s get to the

2nd Annual Jokien with Tolkien “Middle-earth Madness” Tournament

Like I mentioned, I’ve selected eight characters in each of four categories¹ — The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, The Rings of Power, and The War of the Rohirrim² — and seeded them from 1 to 8 using a highly scientific methodology³ to rank them. I then placed them in the above bracket, which sets up the first round of matchups.

Here’s how the tournament will work: the winners of each round will be determined by your votes. The winners of each matchup will advance to the next round, where they will take on the next opponent in the bracket standing between them and the championship.

How should you vote? Strongest character? Favorite? “Most likely to succeed”? I’ll give a little guidance here: don’t just take relative power into consideration here. After all, “such is of the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”

Here’s the schedule:

• The Round of 32 begins today, 3/13

• The Round of 16 will be next Tuesday, 3/18

• The Round of 8 will happen on Friday, 3/21

• On Tolkien Reading Day, Tuesday 3/25, I will announce another giveaway!

• The Final Four will take place on Thursday, 3/27

• The Championship matchup will occur on Tuesday, 4/1

• The WINNER will be officially announced Friday, 4/4

Voting will last three days each round and at the end of it all, we’ll have our second Champion of Middle-earth Madness!

Two notes before we begin:
1) I’m sure you’ll either disagree with where I’ve “ranked” a character above or be upset a certain character wasn’t included. I’m sorry! But there simply isn’t room for every character and I’ve tried to rank characters both in a way that reflects their importance and—at times—uses some creative license to set up some interesting matchups

2) Substack is telling me this post is too long for email. You can read the whole thing and vote for every matchup in the app or online. Or simply hit “view entire message” if you’re reading and it does get cut off

So it begins.

The Lord of the Rings

This year this section features a combination of some fan-favorites and characters who didn’t get to participate last year. Our top seed Arwen takes on Bill the Pony, who has a tough task ahead of him if he is going to prevail. Faramir squares off against Tom Bombadil, who is certainly the more powerful of the two…but does he even care enough to participate?? Perhaps a chance for Faramir, Captain of Gondor, to show his quality. Éowyn and Farmer Maggot go head to head and Treebeard takes on Pippin.

The Silmarillion

Top-ranked Beren faces the grim and ill-fated Túrin Turambar, while Luthien takes on Glorfindel. Fëanor attempts to take out his rage at not being the top seed in this bracket out on Huan, the most faithful companion and goodest hound there ever was. Fingolfin and Finrod Felagund leave hardly any other Fs for the others as they square off (and test your Silmarillion knowledge: do you really know who is who without looking it up?).

The Rings of Power

In this region, top-seed Galadriel goes up against Harfoot hobbit Elanor Brandyfoot. Celebrimbor takes on fellow elf Arondir in the 2 vs 7 seed matchup and Elendil goes up against Disa in a potential upset. Lastly, we have the fast friends Elrond and Durin having another contest of strength. Who will prevail?

The War of the Rohirrim

The most recent Tolkien adaptation to hit screens, in The War of the Rohirrim region we have Helm Hammerhand’s daughter Héra taking on the young squire Lief. Helm himself goes up against Olwyn, his daughter’s lady-in-waiting and a former shieldmaiden. Fréaláf, sister-son of Helm, takes on Helm’s younger son Hama in the 3 vs. 6 spot, while antagonist Wulf goes up against Helm’s oldest son Haleth in the final matchup.

Thanks for voting! See you for the next round next week, where I’ll reveal the winners of this round and we’ll vote on the next round!

Appendices

• I’m already thinking ahead to next year’s regions and want your input! What would you like to see? An all Silmarillion bracket? A bracket with book versions of characters taking on film/tv versions? A bracket of favorite moments from the books and movies? Let me know in the comments!

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1. Because I am aiming to accomplish this all in the span of four weeks, there unfortunately just isn’t enough time to do 64 total characters. Decisions had to be made, and the cut characters were painful but necessary. So if your favorite character doesn’t show up, I’m sorry! Perhaps next year they’ll make an appearance.

2. To get to eight characters for War of the Rohirrim I needed to include a villain, but all the other categories are solely the more heroic characters.

3. My highly scientific methodology = the ranking “felt right.” This of course takes into many factors: power/skill, fan favorite status, significance to narrative, and also probably a bunch of other subconscious stuff.