Benedict Cumberbatch Reveals How THE HOBBIT Finale Could Link to LOTR

In a recent interview with Empire Magazine, Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock) talked about Peter Jackson's The Hobbit and the character he plays in it... Smaug. During the interview he reveals some information that could tell us what we might actually end up seeing in the finale of the second Hobbit film The Hobbit: There and Back Again. This could very well end up being true, which means it could be a crazy big Spoiler, so you've been warned.

Here's what he had to say about playing Smaug,

I’m playing Smaug through motion-capture and voicing the Necromancer, which is a character in the Five Legions War or something which I’m meant to understand. He’s not actually in the original Hobbit. It’s something [Peter Jackson]’s taken from Lord Of The Rings that he wants to put in there.

Not sure if you noticed what he said right there, but if not I'll point it out to you. He brought up the Five Legions War, which could very well mean the Battle of Five Armies. This could be the way that Jackson ends up linking the finale Hobbit film to The Lord of the Rings. Empire then offers up a great speculation of what this could all mean, and I think it's pretty spot on with what we could very well end up seeing...

Readers will know that the Necromancer is Sauron, and that Gandalf disappears halfway through (the book of) The Hobbit to lead a coalition force and drive the Necromancer out of his Mirkwood stronghold. But in the book they dispatch the Necromancer back to (as it turns out) Mordor well before the Battle of Five Armies. Here, however, it looks like he's going to turn up to the finale in person, presumably at the head of the goblin and Warg army, and face Gandalf's team there.

If that is the case, it's a narratively neat way to combine the two story threads, that of Bilbo and the dwarves and the other following Gandalf and his team. It also gives the goblins a stronger motivation to suddenly turn up: in the book, they're avenging the earlier death of one of their leaders and (like all the other armies present) hoping to get their grubby hands on the dragon's hoard. If they're incited or led by Sauron, however, their actions will hang more coherently with their behaviour later in Lord Of The Rings.

I can definitley see this happening. In fact, I hope it does. It's a great way to seamlessly link The Hobbit films to The Lord of the Rings films. What do you all think of this speculative finale for the final Hobbit movie?