🏀 Middle-earth March Madness Begins

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

Who is your favorite character from Middle-earth? The wizard Gandalf? The ranger turned king Aragorn? Maybe one of the Hobbits, like Bilbo or Frodo? Or is it perhaps an elf, a dwarf, or another of the many people and creatures found throughout Middle-earth?

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 week,

Aaron Earls

kicked off a tournament of his own at his Substack

The Wardrobe Door

with characters from C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia in place of the basketball teams. It’s entered its second round this week and I had a lot of fun voting for the characters in each round so far. With Tolkien and Lewis being fellow Inklings and close friends for large parts of their lives, I also thought it would be fun to offer a similar experience here at Jokien with Tolkien with a Middle-earth themed version of the tournament!

As an added bonus, Tolkien Reading Day comes at the end of the month on March 25th, so it only felt right to build towards that as the culmination of this tournament.

So today I’m kicking off the first ever

Jokien with Tolkien “Middle-earth March Madness” Tournament

I’ve selected eight characters in each of four categories¹ — Heroes of The Hobbit, Villains of The Hobbit, Heroes of The Lord of the Rings, and Villains of The Lord of the Rings — and seeded them from 1 to 8 using a highly scientific methodology² 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.

Round 1 begins today, 3/7. Round 2 will be next Tuesday, 3/12. I’ll have a normal newsletter on Thursday, 3/14, then Round 3 will happen on Monday, 3/18. Round 4 (the Final Four), will take place on Thursday, 3/21, and the championship matchup will occur on Tolkien Reading Day, March 25. The final result will be officially announced Thursday, 3/28.

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

So it begins.

Heroes of The Hobbit

In this section of the bracket, heroes from Tolkien’s tale of Bilbo’s journey There and Back Again face off for the right to advance. Gandalf the Grey is the top seed and faces another of his order, the Radagast the Brown, who barely squeaks into this section because — though he is absent from the book itself — he plays a part in Peter Jackson’s adaptation. Elrond Half-elven faces Beorn Half-bear (well, the skin-changer who can become a bear), Bard of Laketown takes aim at Bilbo as he vanishes into thin air, and Thorin and Thranduil attempt to settle that ancient quarrel between Elves and Dwarves.

Heroes of The Lord of the Rings

Top-ranked Galadriel squares off against Éowyn and now this newsletter passes the Bechdel test. Aragorn couldn’t conquer Éowyn’s stew, but can he take down her Stew-ard beau, Faramir? Frodo takes on Gimli and hopes to toss this dwarf from the bracket, while Sam gets potentially a lot more than he bargained for when he gets his wish to see one of the Elves, Legolas.

Villains of The Hobbit

The age of the heroes is over. The time of the villains has come! Number one seed Smaug emerges from his lair to take on the Stone Giants, mentioned here or there in the book but taking up a large action-y sequence in An Unexpected Journey. The Goblin King faces the Wargs and their riders. Azog rides his largely expanded role in The Hobbit trilogy to a matchup with the three trolls Tom, Bert, and William. And Bolg, Azog’s son, fights the giant spiders of Mirkwood the 4 vs 5 matchup.

Villains of The Lord of the Rings

Our final region of the bracket is comprised of some of the many iconic villains from The Lord of the Rings. Sauron looks to take his top-seeded position here and rule them all. First in his way: Gríma Wormtongue. Saruman the White confronts Gollum and Durin’s Bane, the Balrog of Moria, takes on Lurtz, leader of the Uruk-hai and fellow stan along with Ariana Grande of the high ponytail.³ The final matchup sees the Witch-king of Angmar vs Shelob. She is certainly no man…will that be enough?

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!

There and Back Again

Wherein I share highlights from previous years of Jokien with Tolkien

Last year I kicked off march with a discussion of the news of newly-announced LOTR movies coming from Warner Bros. and shared some of the ideas I had for what I’d like to see in any new LOTR-related movies.

Appendices

• Special shout-out and thank you to Melissa B, Robin H, and Jacob H, who upgraded to a paid subscription to the Jokien with Tolkien: Extended Edition this week!
  
  And thanks also to Jason C and Jessica G, who are checking out free trials of Extended Edition membership this week!
  
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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. My 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.

3.