Alan Sisto

Well, how many orcs were there?

And maybe their numbers swelled in the week or two between his arrival and the time the company got over there.

What made them dangerous, of course, to him was that, look, Gollum's not going to find food growing in the fields.

He's not going to be able to stop at the local grocery store.

The only way he's going to get food is to go to orc encampments and steal their food.

Right.

That's high risk every single time.

And, you know, as the text indicates, he loses out on that once he gets away from the eastern side.

So the entire second half of his journey is just starving.

I thought that was interesting because it's telling us, look, this wasn't just hiding from the elves and orcs, although it does that.

It was to keep going, right?

He wanted to get to the Shire.

Yeah.

Find where the Shire was because he still desperately wants his ring.

Big bulbous eyes.

Yeah, that's true.

That seems like a long time.

So I thought I would take a look at the timeline.

So the attack on Thranduil's halls and Gollum's resulting escape, that took place on June 20th, 3018.

That's something that we actually were able to confirm in the Tale of Years and also last week in the episode.