Michael Sheen Had The Perfect Response To Trolls Who Think That Neil Gaiman Wrote Amazon’s ‘Lord Of The Rings’

Something very strange happened with the troll pushback to the Amazon’s “woke” Lord of the Rings: The Rings Of Power. That effort appeared to be (conscious or not) led by Elon Musk, who was thrilled about Galadriel being the “only” character who’s “brave, smart, and nice” on the show. The Sandman author Neil Gaiman shared his opinion (after a follower’s inquiry on the subject) that Elon should stay in his own “fail” lane. Gaiman is well-accustomed to receiving his own criticism from the own anti-woke crowd, and he previously addressed the tiny “backlash” over his Netflix show’s diverse casting.

Well, some trolls got confused and thought that Neil was defending Lord of the Rings because he was somehow involved in production. This isn’t the case, and he’s merely watched a few episodes, but Neil decided to mock-apologize to furious J.R.R. Tolkien fans who raged over the “‘woke diversity’ sh*t” in the Amazon series. “I’m so sorry,” Neil feigned on Twitter. “I have taken your hurt to heart and promise that I will no longer make any Lord of the Rings based television for any network ever.”

This was only the beginning of that joke, and Gaiman fans grew very amused to watch this confusion go down. And then Michael Sheen (who stars in Gaiman’s Good Omens on Amazon and portrays Lucifer in The Sandman Audible production) got in on the game. “If you’re going to criticize the way Neil wrote LOTR you’ll have to go through me first,” Sheen wrote in defense of his pal with a choice Lord of the Rings reference. “YOU SHALL NOT PASS! #IHaveNotYetBegunToFight.”

Gaiman acknowledged his friend’s effort to rescue him from the trolls of non-Middle-earth: “My love for @michaelsheen passeth all understanding.”

That arguably wasn’t the best response to this mess, however. Twitter user Helena Bell came in hard. “Will he also defend your writing of Transformers? The Star Wars sequels?” she asked. “What of your butchery of Grimm’s source material of your 1937 animated version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves? Stop writing all the things, Neil. Give us blessed silence and nothing to pass the time.”

I’ll never understand how trolls have so much energy in the first place, but they sure are dedicated.