Lord of the Rings: 10 Ways Merry Got Worse & Worse

Meriadoc “Merry” Brandybuck was both a gentle hobbit and a trouble maker, and one of the most memorable characters in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Like his cousin Pippin, he enjoyed a full pint of beer, a full belly of food, and a full pipe of Old Tolby to smoke with his friends. When he unexpectedly joined the Fellowship of the Ring, he would undergo great changes on the way to Mordor.

While Merry was consistently brave and protective of Frodo and the Ring, he was also prone to thievery, insensitivity, and recklessness. He just as soon made fun of Pippin as looked after him, and many times put his friends in considerable danger. Here are 10 ways Merry got worse and worse over the course of the three films.

10 HE KEPT STEALING

Merry was often the mastermind behind the mischief he got into with his cousin Pippin, ranging from stealing vegetables out of Farmer Maggot’s crop to firecrackers for Bilbo’s Birthday in The Fellowship of the Ring.

In The Two Towers, he and Pippin think nothing of taking food from the Isengard Storeroom after the Ents destroy Saruman’s stronghold and they spy a few apples bobbing in the water.

9 HE KEPT EATING

It was Merry who cajoled his hobbit friends into stealing from Farmer Maggot’s crop in The Fellowship of the Ring, despite the fact that Pippin had to remind him that they’d already pilfered enough before to get caught. He also joined in the cooking of dinner on Weathertop which drew the Nazgul to Frodo.

When the Galadhrim gave him lembas bread in Lothlorien, which was intended to last the Fellowship the length of their journey, he (along with Pippin) ate two loaves when they should have been satiated by two bites. He also joined Pippin in eating from Saruman’s storeroom at Isengard.

8 HE WAS RECKLESS

In the pursuit of that most noble of hobbit hobbies, having a grand time and a full belly, Merry often made a habit of being foolhardy. On Weathertop with the rest of the hobbits in The Fellowship of the Ring, he helped make a roaring fire and cook all manner of food when the Nazgul were hunting Frodo.

In The Two Towers, he decided to pledge himself to King Theoden despite having no abilities the King of Rohan might need. He decided to ride into battle with Eowyn in Return of the King, despite not being a skilled fighter, making him was more of a liability for her and the Rohirrim than anything else.

7 HE ALMOST GOT HIS FRIENDS KILLED

Of all the hobbits in the Fellowship, Merry was one of the biggest liabilities given his young age and his inexperience with anything beyond the Shire. When he charged blindly into the fray at Amon Hen in The Fellowship of the Ring, he was kidnapped and Boromir was killed.

In The Two Towers, while rescuing Merry from the band of orcs crossing Rohan, Aragorn nearly perished falling over a rock face after battling warg riders, an addition to the film that wasn’t in the books but nevertheless wouldn’t have happened had it not been for the hobbits.

6 HE DIDN’T LISTEN TO HIS ELDERS

Despite words to the wise from Frodo, who was technically his elder, Merry insisted on joining him on his quest to leave the Shire. Once in Rivendell, he insisted (along with Pippin) that he be allowed to joint he Fellowship.

Despite King Theoden’s express orders in The Return of the King, in which Merry was supposed to stay in Rohan, he got himself a suit of armor and rode into battle with Eowyn, getting grievously wounded for his troubles.

5 HE NEVER REASSURED PIPPIN

As the youngest and least experienced of the hobbits, Peregrine Took often needed to rely on others for help. His cousin and best friend Merry was the obvious choice for him to seek council, but the hobbit often ignored him.

In The Fellowship of the Ring when Pippin asked about the dangers of going through the Mines of Moira, Merry ignored him. In The Two Towers, when Pippin was being taken by Gandalf to Minas Tirith for his own protection, he asked Merry if they’d ever see each other again, and Merry remained silent, leaving Pippin to cry out in anguish.

4 HE KEPT MAKING FUN OF PIPPIN

As though to appear the wiser and more knowledgeable hobbit, Merry often dismissed Pippin’s statements. When Pippin tried to warn him about stealing more vegetables than he should from Farmer Maggot’s crop in The Fellowship of the Ring, he insisted Pippin was overreacting (he wasn’t).

In an argument about who was taller in The Two Towers, Merry insisted it had always been him because Pippin was “the short one”. Later, he chastised Pippin for “smoking too much”, one of the last exchanges of words they had before Gandalf took Pippin to Minas Tirith.

3 HIS STATUS WAS NEVER DISCUSSED

For whatever reason, Peter Jackson’s creative team deemed it unnecessary to flout Merry’s aristocratic status as the heir to being Master of Buckland, making him seem a reckless youth rather than a member of the Shire’s gentry and oldest families.

By tossing out the Scouring of the Shire sequence from the books, in which Merry was a general in the hobbit army, who precipitated the Battle of Bywater, it appeared that Merry had less influence than he truly had in the films, since this act was done without the assistance of elves, wizards, or men.

2 HE WASN’T GIVEN HIS DUE

In Tolkien’s books, Merry comes across as much more intelligent than in the films. In The Fellowship of the Ring, it’s Merry’s idea to take a shortcut to Bree by going through Buckland on the Old Road through the forest that helps the hobbits keep out of sight of the Nazgul tracking them.

The trek also takes them to the Barrow-downs (home of the omitted character Tom Bombadill), where they obtain daggers forged by the men of Arnor. One of these daggers is the blade used by Merry to stab the Witch-King in the heel in Return of the King, giving Eowyn time to strike the killing blow.

1 HE GOT MORE CYNICAL

Of the pair of them, Merry was more thoughtful than Pippin, as evidenced by the fact that he planned schemes, whereas Pippin caused accidents. As the films progressed, Merry became the more cynical of the two, going from a hobbit who delighted in mischief to one that realized there was more to life.

He was the one to grasp the full meaning of the Ents marching on Isengard in The Two Towers, and the full brunt of Pippin’s folly with stealing the Palantir from Gandalf in Return of the King. 

About The Author

Kayleena Pierce-Bohen
(1343 Articles Published)

Kayleena has been raised on Star Wars and Indiana Jones from the crib. A film buff, she has a Western collection of 250+ titles and counting that she’s particularly proud of. When she isn’t writing for ScreenRant, CBR, or The Gamer, she’s working on her fiction novel, lifting weights, going to synthwave concerts, or cosplaying. With degrees in anthropology and archaeology, she plans to continue pretending to be Lara Croft as long as she can.

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