When a world is as beloved as J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, laid out in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, fans know all the ins and out, even details as seemingly innocuous as hair color. In the case of Legolas, the Elf, The Lord of the Rings fandom seems split on whether he should have had dark hair in the movie to stick true to Tolkien’s vision. This begs the question, did Director Peter Jackson make a mistake when he put a blond Legolas in his epic saga?

Tolkien used great detail in his descriptions, not just of places and happenings but of characters’ looks, at least when it’s pertinent to the story’s telling. He tells us that hobbits have curly hair, usually brown. Likewise, some notable elves are described to include their hair color. So it stands to reason that if Tolkien felt Legolas’ hair color was relevant, he would have said so.

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Unfortunately for Jackson, Tolkien never said definitively what color Legolas’ hair is. But the Elf is definitely described as having hair, so when putting the character on screen, a decision had to be made. Using the information laid out in Tolkien’s other works, there are only a couple of viable options for Legolas’ hair, hence the split amongst dedicated The Lord of the Rings fans.

One camp vehemently believes a blond Legolas can’t be canon. Tolkien himself set forth rules about the hair colors belonging to the various types of elves. In his writings, the Vanyar elves have golden hair, but they don’t reside in Middle-earth. Noldor elves have dark-colored hair. And the Teleri elves have silver or dark. Elves from both the Noldor and Teleri lines still reside in Middle-earth.

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From there, fans have to follow Tolkien’s intricate linages, but simply put, as a Sindarin Elf, Legolas is a descendant of the Telerian elves. So he should have dark hair or possibly silver, but silver seems to be unusual even amongst the Teleri. To put a definitive lock on his dark hair, fans following Tolkien’s accounts reference a passage from The Fellowship of the Ring describing Legolas as such: “his head was dark, crowned with sharp white stars that glittered in the black pools of the sky behind.”

The counterargument begins rather weakly, claiming that the above quote is a description of Legolas at night, so of course his head would be dark, and readers are meant to focus on the stars outlining his silhouette. But that is utter speculation. Instead, the stronger argument, held by believers in a blond Legolas, uses Tolkien’s accounts of elvish lineage to prove the point. In The Hobbit, Legolas’ father, the elvish king, Thranduil, is described as having golden hair. As his biological son, it stands to reason Legolas would be blond, as well.

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Despite many online forums and threads debating the legitimacy of Legolas’ locks, Jackson hasn’t weighed in directly about his artistic choice with the Elf’s hair color. This means it’s up to fans to speculate whether he made a deliberate choice, or perhaps he simply thought flowing blond locks would be cinematically stunning, setting the Elf apart from the others in the fellowship.

The Lord of the Rings movies delighted fans by sticking fairly close to the books. Though some material naturally had to be modified for cinematic impact, or cut for time, undoubtedly, such decisions were made after careful consideration and attention to the wider collection of Tolkien’s works on the world. How else would Jackson have created such a faithful representation of Middle-earth? Since his attention to detail doesn’t seem to be lacking, it’s probably safe to assume his choice was deliberate. In which case, with one color choice, Jackson has laid out exactly how he interprets Tolkien’s elven family tree.