Jackson cut the 📔book’s real ending...

...and Tolkien readers have debated it for 23 years​

In J.R.R. Tolkien's The Return of the King, Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin come home to find the Shire industrialized under Saruman's ruffians and must liberate it themselves at the Battle of Bywater, with no aid from the rest of the Fellowship. Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens cut that entire chapter, with Boyens explaining an audience "just wouldn't go for" a new conflict after the ring's destruction. The films kept one line intact from the book's true ending: Sam's "Well, I'm back."

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