Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship, Ranked By Their Usefulness

Few movies portray friendship, loyalty, and nobility quite like The Lord of the Rings. Amidst all the fantastic visual effects, impeccable filmmaking, and wonderous fantasy worldbuilding is a heartfelt story about humanity. And at the heart of said story is the Fellowship, composed of the likes of hobbits, wizards, men, dwarves, and elves.

Like all teams, the Fellowship has both good and bad traits, not to mention great leaders and somewhat disappointing followers. Of course, they are all heroic, and all do their part in taking down the might of Sauron. But there’s no denying that some are more useful than others.

9 Boromir

It’s probably not controversial to say that Boromir was the least useful member of the Fellowship. Throughout much of the first movie, Boromir does everything he can to dissuade the Fellowship from their goal and steal The One Ring for himself. He wishes to take it to Gondor, he desperately tries manipulating the Fellowship into abandoning their plan, and he eventually fails the test by attacking Frodo.

Boromir redeems himself by defending Merry and Pippin and dies a heroic death. But the damage had mostly been done, and Boromir is perhaps the biggest reason for the Fellowship’s disintegration.

8 Pippin

Pippin doesn’t land much further up from Boromir. His character is largely used for comedic relief, but he does showcase a semblance of heroism. He saves Faramir from his deranged father, starts the beacons of Gondor, and manipulates Treebeard into attacking Isengard and dethroning Saruman.

Otherwise, he’s actively harming the efforts of the Fellowship by drawing the orcs’ attention in Moria and looking into the Palantir. Gandalf calls Pippin a “fool of a Took” for a reason. He certainly has his good ideas, but he’s definitely in the lower tier of useful Fellowship members.

7 Merry

Merry goes through some stellar character development throughout the trilogy. He begins as comic relief alongside Pippin, but he eventually turns into a heroic soldier. In the first two movies, Merry is mostly useless. He may have goaded Treebeard into attacking Isengard, but it was Pippin’s idea to trick the tree.

Merry was seemingly willing to just give up. However, he goes through a massive change in Return of the King. He disobeys the King’s orders and fights in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, helps kill the Witch King with Eowyn, and both he and Pippin directly follow Aragorn in attacking the Black Gate of Mordor.

6 Frodo

Frodo gets a lot of undue hate from the Lord of the Rings fanbase. Of course, he certainly has his character flaws. He’s generally useless at fighting, he constantly needs rescuing, he is easily manipulated by Gollum, and he even fails in his quest, attempting to take the ring for himself. If it wasn’t for Gollum’s intervention, the quest would have ended in catastrophic failure.

But he also mas many noble and heroic traits. He’s the only person who could carry the ring that far, he tames Gollum (for the most part), he successfully battles The One Ring’s pull and the resulting mental anguish throughout much of the trilogy, and he makes it all the way to the cracks of Mount Doom. He’s a hero.

5 Sam

The flip side of that coin is Sam, who is perhaps a little too glorified by the movie fans. Samwise Gamgee performed many heroic traits throughout the trilogy, some of them in the more traditional variety. Much of his heroism can be seen throughout Return of the King, as he defeats Shelob, saves Frodo from Cirith Ungol, and literally carries Frodo up the mountain after he falls of exhaustion.

If it wasn’t for Sam, Frodo would never have made it to Mordor, let alone the Crack of Doom. But he also has his fair share of flaws, specifically his outright antagonism of their chief guide – an antagonism that reverts Sméagol back to Gollum and nearly gets them killed. He can’t even catch rabbits for the group.

4 Gimli

Unfortunately, the movies did Gimli and Legolas somewhat dirty, eschewing most of their character and background in favor of comedic relief. As such, the “character” of Gimli is somewhat muted throughout the movie trilogy. Audiences don’t know much about him, aside from the fact that he’s very handy with an axe. And he is very handy, indeed.

Still, serving as one third of the incredibly useful Aragorn-Gimli-Legolas trio, Gimli handedly defeats orcs with his axe and proves a very capable fighter throughout the major battles. It’s hard to find fault with everyone’s favorite fictional dwarf.

3 Legolas

Similarly, audiences don’t know much about Legolas, aside from the fact that he’s adept with a bow and arrow. It’s a toss up in usefulness regarding Legolas and Gimli, as both are inseparable throughout the trilogy. They both partake in the same battles, and they prove equally effective fighters.

They even defeat the same amount of orcs, as evident by their kill count during the Battle of Helm’s Deep. But the edge may go to Legolas. He is more athletic than Gimli, and he takes down an oliphaunt all by himself – something that greatly irritates his greatest competitor.

2 Gandalf

Gandalf is arguably the most powerful member of the Fellowship, but that doesn’t necessarily make him the most useful. He is absent throughout large chunks of Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, leaving the Fellowship to fend for themselves.

Of course, those absences are for great reasons. Gandalf is paramount to the Fellowship’s survival. He takes down the Balrog singlehandedly, he rouses the Riders of Rohan and saves the Battle of Helm’s Deep, and he leads the defense of Minas Tirith. It really is a toss up between Gandalf and the number one pick.

1 Aragorn

In many ways, Aragorn is the main protagonist of Lord of the Rings, and most of the story belongs to his ascension to King. Aragorn is the true leader of the Fellowship – he was with them from the very beginning in Bree, and he led both the Fellowship and the citizens of Rohan during Gandalf’s many absences. He leads the Battle of Helm’s Deep, and while Gandalf saved him from Helm’s Deep, Aragorn returns the favor during the Battle of the Pelennor Fields by recruiting the Army of the Dead.

He also goaded Theoden into fighting at Minas Tirith, confronted Sauron through the Palantir, and came up with the plan to storm the Black Gate of Mordor to buy Frodo more time. Aragorn is the chief hero of the story, and the Fellowship would never have succeeded without him.

About The Author

Nathan Sharp
(852 Articles Published)

Nathan Sharp is a writer from outside Toronto, Ontario. He has a love of movies and television, having enjoyed them for more than twenty years. His preferences include drama, action, and horror, with the former being a particular point of interest and fascination.

He also has a love of video games, particularly those of Rockstar.

Whether it be about film, television, or video games, Nathan loves a good discussion and has written hundreds of articles for Screen Rant.

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