Lord Of The Rings fans ‘depressed’ after learning why Gollum never wore the Ring

The Lord of the Rings fans are just finding out why Gollum never chose to wear The One Ring throughout the events of the series, and it’s about as tragic as you’d expect.

If you’ve watched The Lord of the Rings trilogy enough times, you’ve probably noticed that Gollum is never seen putting the ring on at any point throughout the trilogy. For that matter, he’s never seen wearing it throughout The Hobbit films either.

Now, if we wanna get pedantic, Sméagol is seen wearing it during a flashback. However, once he morphs into Gollum, there’s not a single scene of him slipping it on one of his fingers.

So, how come? Gollum arguably loves the One Ring more than any other character in the franchise, and his obsession with it is painted as an addiction. Surely if he’s that addicted to it, he’d want to have it on all the time, right?

LOTR fans can look forward to Tales Of The Shire.

Well, it seems that one The Lord of the Rings fan over on the subreddit r/tolkeinfans has figured out why.

As noted by user AHans, the answer to this question is actually in the original novel of The Hobbit, but seemingly never mentioned in the film adaptations.

The answer lies in this excerpt from pages 91 to 92 of the book: “Gollum used to wear it at first, till it tired him; and then he kept it in a pouch next to his skin, till it galled him; and now he hid it in a hole in the rock on his island, and was always going back to look at it. And still sometimes he put it on.”

“Galled” in this context could have two meanings, but I’d wager that it means it quite literally hurt him.

So there you have it, even though Gollum “sometimes” wore it, by the events of The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring, he’d probably grown too weary of it.