6 Lord of the Rings theories that totally change the story

The Lord of the Rings books and movies have been endlessly picked apart by fans, but that hasn't stopped the constant flow of new theories.

Here are our favorite explanations for dangling plot threads and surprising bits of backstory.

At the end of Fellowship of the Ring, Boromir turns on his traveling companions and tries to take the ring for himself.

One Redditor thinks Boromir was poisoned by Sauron's blood after cutting himself on the shards of Narsil.

If blood from the sword that defeated Sauron did poison Boromir, it would make him even more tragic and less villainous of a character.

When Gollum went searching for Bilbo after The Hobbit, all he had to go on were the words "Baggins" and "Shire."

If Gollum made it to the Shire, he could have mistaken Frodo's parents for Bilbo and his wife, and killed them in his search for the ring.

It would mean that Gandalf was wrong or lying when he said Gollum didn't make it to the Shire, and would throw out the accepted timeline of when Frodo's parents died.

One fan on Reddit says that The Hobbit films' oft-criticized length and overstuffed feeling were meant to reflect Bilbo's exaggerated storytelling.

When Bilbo takes hold of the One Ring, he takes on a manner very similar to who we know as Gollum, even calling the ring "precious."

A fan on Reddit takes that to mean that there's a being trapped within the ring that's possessing its owners, rather than merely Sauron's influence.

One of the biggest criticisms of The Lord of the Rings' plot boils down to, "why didn't they just fly to Mordor on the Eagles in the first place?"

That could by why Saruman was so desperate to waylay them in the mountains, and why Gandalf literally told his friends to "fly" with his dying words.

In The Fellowship of the Ring, Gimli asks Galadriel for a strand of hair as a parting gift.

Galadriel obliges and gives him three, an act which Gimli seems strangely touched by.

As fans have pointed out, Galadriel refused to gift an Elf named Fëanor a strand of her hair three times during the First Age, saying he was unworthy.