Okay, so Merry’s quote about being found after the battle of “It’s not always a misfortune being overlooked” implies that it’s happened to him before.
Our poor overlooked hobbit, he’s so perceptive, brave as hell, and so sweet. He’s also honestly probably the smartest of the hobbits, and he is, unfortunately overlooked quite a bit.
Like everyone who has seen only the movies kind of think of him as mainly Pippin’s sidekick, funny, and a bit brave, but I think the movies did not do his intelligence justice. I just saw a post online that read “rank the four hobbits” and not one person had Merry first, and only a few had him second, and that is just disheartening. Sam was mainly everyone’s number one or only choice.
Sam is a wonderful hobbit, and he stands up so much, pushing himself and protecting Frodo. But we can also see Merry standing up, protecting Pippin when he can, being brave enough to sneak into a battle he was asked to stay out of simply because he wants to help in any way he can, and again, he’s quite literally the smartest of those four hobbits.
I love Sam so much, and he deserves all the love he gets, but I think Merry needs a bit more love out there, because, just like in the movies and books, he is overlooked in the world.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk
