Bilbo Baggins meets Gollum in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Their encounter takes place beneath the Misty Mountains, where Bilbo becomes separated from the dwarves and discovers the One Ring.
Gollum challenges Bilbo to a riddle contest. During the episode, Bilbo finds the Ring and uses its power to become invisible, allowing him to escape. Gollum’s name before his transformation was Sméagol, and Tolkien later made his history central to The Lord of the Rings.
Readers sometimes remember Gollum mainly from the later trilogy, where he follows Frodo and Sam toward Mount Doom. In publication order, however, he first appears in The Hobbit. The character’s role also changed during revision, because Tolkien revised the original chapter to fit the Ring’s darker importance.