See reunited The Lord of the Rings hobbit actors

The road goes ever on and on...but it has a way of bringing old friends back together.

Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, and Dominic Monaghan first assembled more than 20 years ago to play the four primary hobbit characters (Frodo Baggins, Samwise "Sam" Gamgee, Peregrin "Pippin" Took, and Meriadoc "Merry" Brandybuck) in director Peter Jackson's big-screen adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's legendary fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings. That cast experienced a lot together filming those three movies back-to-back in New Zealand at the turn of the century, and they grew quite close: Wood, Astin, Boyd, and Monaghan all have matching tattoos along with the other actors who portrayed the characters of the Fellowship of the Ring.

But the roads of life lead people in different directions, and going into 2022 it had been 10 years since Wood, Astin, Boyd, and Monaghan had all been in the same room together. As you can see in EW's exclusive photo below, they are now reunited on the convention circuit, having appeared at this past weekend's Fan Expo Chicago after previous appearances earlier this summer at Fan Expo Dallas and Fan Expo Denver. They also posted a photo eating dinner together on Instagram back in May — perhaps as they were preparing for their run of conventions.

Wood alone reprised his role as Frodo for a cameo appearance in Jackson's 2012 prequel film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, but neither he nor the other three hobbit actors will be appearing in the next live-action Lord of the Rings adaptation. That makes sense, since Amazon Prime Video's upcoming series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will be set during the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before Frodo or his friends were even born.

In fact, hobbits themselves don't quite exist in the way we know them in The Rings of Power. But fans of Tolkien's short-statured, big-hearted, large-footed characters shouldn't fret too much: The new series will feature Harfoots, the ancestors of hobbits. So look forward to that this September, and enjoy this reunion of classic hobbits in the meantime.

With reporting by Chris Cosgrove.

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