JRR Tolkien Will Be In An Episode Of DC's Legends Of Tomorrow

Here's something unexpected: The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien will be in an upcoming episode of DC Entertainment's TV show Legends of Tomorrow. Tolkien of course will not appear in the show himself, as he died in 1973; Stichers actor Jack Turner will portray the British author.

Producer Marc Guggenheim confirmed this in a tweet that contained a list of all the major actors for the Season 2 finale, "Aruba," which entered production this week.

Guggenheim told Entertainment Weekly that the Legends of Tomorrow writers have had a "Tolkien idea" in mind for a while now. "The writing staff had this idea that we could do a Lord of the Rings homage in the trenches of World War I," he explained.

Tolkien served in World War I. The foreword to The Lord of the Rings contains references to the horrors of war.

"One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years," he wrote. "By 1918, all but one of my close friends were dead."

As for why Tolkien is in the new Legends of Tomorrow episode, it has something to do with the Spear of Destiny, but the rest is a mystery.

"Aruba" airs April 4 on the CW.

A younger version of Star Wars creator George Lucas appeared in an earlier Season 2 episode of Legends of Tomorrow. In the episode, Lucas drops out of film school after a run-in with the Legion of Doom and never goes on to create Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

In other news, multiple J.R.R. biopics are in the works. One of these, Tolkien & Lewis, will explore the author's relationship with Narnia writer C.S. Lewis and how he helped convert Lewis to Christianity. The other, called Tolkien, is more of a straightforward story about how he came to write the beloved fantasy series.