Neil Gaiman Retweets Perfect Response From Joe Hill After Fans Hilariously Assumed Sandman Creator Made Amazon's LOTR Show

Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power
(Image credit: Amazon Prime Video)

There are a lot of opinions about the Amazon Video series Rings of Power. That’s fine, that’s to be expected. However, there are also some facts about the show that should not be in dispute, and chief among them should be the fact that Neil Gaiman did not write the show or have anything to do with it. Some people have made that mistake, and it’s led to some fantastic responses on Twitter, but Jo Hill may have beat them all.

To be clear, Neil Gaiman does have a new fantasy series available on a streaming platform, but it is not Rings of Power on Prime Video, it’s actually The Sandman on Netflix. The two shows did come out close together, so perhaps confusion was inevitable. Writer Joe Hill decided that if he was going to get it wrong, he was going to get it as wrong as is possible, with a hilarious tweet that brings one area Gaiman has written on, Norse mythology, and also get that confused with something else.  Gaiman clearly appreciated the joke as retweeted it out to his own followers. 

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Actual Norse mythology and Marvel’s version of Thor, of course, have next to nothing to do with each other, Marvel's Norse pantheon is only loosely inspired by the real thing, but since Gaiman has written on the subject, clearly that means he’s to blame if you feel like Marvel’s Thor doesn’t stay properly true to the original myths. 

How Neil Gaiman Got Involved In The Rings Of Power Blowback 

The whole issue actually stems from Elon Musk. The Tesla founder and possible future owner of Twitter recently posted to the platform that he was thoroughly unimpressed with Rings of Power, saying that he thought author J.R.R. Tolkein would be “turning in his grave” over the series.

A fan asked Neil Gaiman, who had previously praised Rings of Power’s early episodes, what he thought of that, and Gaiman was critical of Musk saying he was not somebody that Gaiman would likely go to for literature criticism. This then resulted in somebody else, who defended Musk on Twitter, because that’s a thing people feel a need to do for some reason, to attack Gaiman over the show as if it were his show, which of course, it was not.

Fans Had a Blast Over The Rings Of Power Mistake 

This has now led to fans all over Twitter attributing basically the entirety of all media, good and bad, to Neil Gaiman. Every book, movie and TV show ever created is now Neil Gaiman’s fault, at least every vaguely fantasy story. Joe Hill’s response may be the best of all, because it has elements of the truth in it, which the initial criticism did not.

It will be interesting to see just how long this joke lasts. It’s been a few weeks since this whole thing got started, but it doesn’t look to be dying out quite yet. 

Dirk Libbey
Content Producer/Theme Park Beat

CinemaBlend’s resident theme park junkie and amateur Disney historian, Dirk began writing for CinemaBlend as a freelancer in 2015 before joining the site full-time in 2018. He has previously held positions as a Staff Writer and Games Editor, but has more recently transformed his true passion into his job as the head of the site's Theme Park section. He has previously done freelance work for various gaming and technology sites. Prior to starting his second career as a writer he worked for 12 years in sales for various companies within the consumer electronics industry. He has a degree in political science from the University of California, Davis.  Is an armchair Imagineer, Epcot Stan, Future Club 33 Member.