Everyone wants to know what happens after the "happily ever after." We’ve all been there—closing The Return of the King, feeling that hollow ache of a journey ended, and wondering what King Aragorn did on a random Tuesday fifty years later. J.R.R. Tolkien actually tried to answer that. He started a sequel. It was called The New Shadow, and it is probably the most depressing thing he ever wrote.
If you were expecting more soaring eagles, heroic charges, or glowing swords, honestly, you’d have been disappointed. Tolkien wrote about thirteen pages of it before he just... stopped. He realized that the world he’d built for decades didn't actually need a sequel. It needed a rest.
What Really Happened in The New Shadow?
The story kicks off about 105 years after the fall of Barad-dûr. Sauron is gone. The Ring is a memory. Aragorn (King Elessar) has passed away, and his son, Eldarion, is sitting on the throne of Gondor. You’d think this would be a golden age. But Tolkien, being the astute observer of human nature that he was, realized that humans get bored.
Basically, the "peace" had become stale.
The narrative focuses on an old man named Borlas of Pen-arduin. He's the son of Beregond—the soldier who befriended Pippin in Minas Tirith. Borlas is sitting in his garden talking to a younger man named Saelon. They aren't talking about Orcs in the distance; they’re talking about the "Orc" inside of people.
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The Dark Tree and "Playing Orc"
There’s this chilling vibe in the text. Saelon mentions that young men in Gondor are "playing at being Orcs." They’re running around, doing random acts of vandalism, and essentially LARPing as the very monsters their grandfathers died to defeat. It’s a classic "troubled youth" trope, but with a Satanic twist.
Tolkien introduces a secretive cult called the Dark Tree. These people were apparently worshiping the memory of Sauron and even the original big bad, Melkor. There are whispers of a leader named Herumor. Ships are disappearing. There’s a revolutionary plot brewing in the shadows of a prosperous kingdom.
It sounds like the start of a great political thriller, right?
Why Tolkien Called It "Not Worth Doing"
Tolkien eventually wrote about this project in his letters, specifically Letter 256 and Letter 338. He didn't hold back. He called the story "sinister and depressing."
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You have to understand his mindset. He had spent his life creating a mythopoeic world where good and evil were externalized—where you could point at a Balrog and say, "That’s the enemy." But The New Shadow was different. It was about the "quick satiety of Men with good." Humans got bored of being happy.
"I found that even so early there was an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a centre of secret Satanistic religion... I could have written a 'thriller' about the plot and its discovery and overthrow — but it would have been just that. Not worth doing." — J.R.R. Tolkien
He felt that by continuing the story into the Fourth Age, he was just writing a "potboiler." It would have been a story about secret police, conspiracies, and human pettiness. To him, that wasn't Middle-earth. Middle-earth was about the grand struggle of the spirit. A sequel would have stripped away the magic and replaced it with a grimy political drama.
The Reality of the Fourth Age
The Fourth Age is the "Age of Men." This means the Elves have left for the West. The Dwarves are fading into their caves. The magic is leaking out of the world.
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Tolkien realized that if he kept writing, he would eventually just be writing our own history. He wanted Middle-earth to be a lost pre-history of our world, and by showing the rise of human cults and political unrest, he was getting too close to the "real world."
There's something uniquely sad about Borlas, a man who remembers the old tales of heroism, looking at a younger generation that thinks Orcs are "cool" or "edgy." It’s a generational gap that feels uncomfortably modern. Saelon even argues with Borlas about what "Orc-work" actually is, trying to justify his cynicism. It’s basically an ancient version of a Twitter argument about morality.
Where to Read the Fragment
If you want to read these thirteen pages yourself, they aren't in a standalone book. You have to dig through The Peoples of Middle-earth, which is Volume 12 of The History of Middle-earth series. Christopher Tolkien, the professor's son, did a massive amount of work to compile these notes and drafts.
It’s a dense read. Most of it is linguistic history and family trees, but "The New Shadow" is tucked away in the back as a "false start." It’s a fascinating "what if" that proves sometimes the best way to honor a story is to let it end where it belongs.
Actionable Insights for Tolkien Fans
If you're looking to dive deeper into this specific era or understand why the sequel failed, here are a few steps you can take:
- Read the Fragment: Don't just take my word for it. Get a copy of The Peoples of Middle-earth and read the dialogue between Borlas and Saelon. It’s incredibly atmospheric and feels more like a noir mystery than high fantasy.
- Explore Letter 256: Look up Tolkien’s collected letters. Letter 256 provides his direct reasoning for abandoning the book. It’s a masterclass in an author understanding the limits of their own creation.
- Study the Fourth Age Appendices: If you want more "canon" info on what happened after the Ring, reread Appendix A in The Return of the King. It gives the "official" history of Eldarion’s reign without the cult-related depression of the sequel.
- Watch for Themes: Notice how modern fantasy (like Game of Thrones) leans into the very "thriller" elements Tolkien rejected. Comparing The New Shadow to modern "grimdark" fantasy shows just how far ahead of his time (or perhaps how intentionally different) Tolkien really was.
The abandonment of The New Shadow wasn't a failure of imagination. It was an act of preservation. Tolkien knew that some shadows are better left unexplored so that the light of the original story can stay bright.