You know ANOTHER thing that's been sticking out to me about Merry as I'm rereading the LOTR books is how uncannily open minded and egalitarian he is as a Hobbit even amongst his friends in the books.
Race, class, gender never seem to really matter as a "oh they're an X so they can't Y or Z" assumption. He's the least scared of and most informed about Big Folk from the get go, very much an embodiment of knowledge being the enemy of fear of our main four Hobbits. Where Sam, Frodo and Pippin all embody other virtues that fight fear/despair like compassion and loyalty and such.
Merry is the first member of the Fellowship to regularly stick up for Sam's hidden virtues multiple times over. I mean it's not as though Pippin and Frodo don't like Sam because (they obviously do very much) but it's Merry who goes "no but fr he's really smart!" and doesn't outwardly underestimate him which Frodo openly admits to having done in the beginning.
Everyone talks about how amazing his relationship with Eowyn is and that's true and correct. It's not just about her though, he was genuinely already like that! Which enabled Eowyn to probably have her first REAL friend that wasn't blood family.
