my hot take is that there’s no world in which bagginshield could work, and that’s Why it works
like ur not getting mr erebor 3000 to move to the shire Ever and ur not getting mr shire 3000 to move to erebor Ever!!! neither of those things are happening!!!
bagginshield can only exist on the road, in that tenuous stretch of time between one home and another, when ‘home’ is synonymous with ‘partnership’ and as transient as the passing stream THERE IS NO BAGGINSHIELD AFTER THE FACT!
in an ideal world, where Thorin lives and Fili and Kili do too, even after the party has settled and the dragon is dead, you’re telling me BILBO BAGGINS is not going RIGHT back home? he was always going to go home. HE WAS ALWAYS GOING TO GO HOME.
because the thing that fuels him, the fundamental injustice he sees before him, the great wrong that must be righted is that Home; this beautiful, necessary, indelible fixture of the heart has been Stripped away from these people, and there is no injustice so terrible as that! the lack of Home!
so of course Bilbo went back. of course he did. because the thing that matters, the whole point of this whole story, was always Home.
