The Return Of The King

About

The Return of the King is a reaction image depicting the opening title shot of the Lord of the Rings movie by the same name with the text overlaid on a landscape of Fangorn Forest and the Misty Mountains in the background. The title is typically used as a reaction to show the return of a beloved person or thing, but it is also frequently used to signal the return of something positive with humorous undertones.

Origin

The shot used in the reaction image comes from the fantasy movie The Return of the King (extended edition), which was originally released on DVD December 14th, 2004. After the opening scene of the film concludes with Gollum’s backstory, a scene following Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli through the dark foliage of Fangorn Forest reveals the group traversing to Isengard. As they continue through the underbrush, the camera pans upwards revealing Fangorn Forest in the foreground with the Misty Mountains behind and the title “The Return of the King” appears on screen (show below).

The exact first use of the title shot being used as a meme is unknown, but the blank template appears online for the first time when it was uploaded to Imgur^[1] by an unknown user on November 22, 2018.

Spread

One of the earliest instances of the reaction image used in traditional meme format comes from a post on May 12th, 2019, by Redditor^[2] bodie_nies (seen below). This upload to r/dankmemes was upvoted over 16,000 times and commented on 170 times.

The meme continued to be used on Reddit as it spread to other subs in the following months. On August 15th, 2019, Redditor^[3] BuckeyeBrute posted another example to r/PrequelMemes where it received nearly 31,000 upvotes (shown below).

Twitter users also helped to spread the image as they began using it to react to a number of various tweets in replies. One Twitter^[4] user, ThatRookieTV, is shown using the image in a reply to Steven Bloy after they announced their return to the social media platform (seen below). The image was liked 46 times.

On February 22nd, 2020, a new variant of the meme switched the word “King” in the image to “Queen” following YouTube’s decision to unban the famous “Lo-fi Hip Hop Study Mix” channel from the site. This post from Redditor^[5] Wedge001 received over 100,000 upvotes and several Reddit awards (seen below).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References