The special aired on ABC on Sunday, May 11, 1980 after a legal challenge filed by the Tolkien Estate and Fantasy Films was settled.

Then, at Bilbo Baggins's 129th birthday party in Rivendell, his nephew Frodo explains why he is missing a finger from his hand while the Minstrel of Gondor sings a ballad that tells the story of the quest to destroy the One Ring and defeat the Dark Lord Sauron.

Frodo and Samwise continue toward Mount Doom (eluding Ringwraiths and infiltrating a battalion of Orcs in the process) only to be attacked by Gollum, the creature from whom Bilbo took the Ring decades before.

Theoden's niece Eowyn, who had disguised herself as a man to take part in the battle, kills the Witch-king with help from Merry, momentarily defeating Sauron's armies.

He gives the Red Book of Westmarch (consisting of Bilbo's memoirs with some spare pages) to Sam, assuring him that a good life is still in store for him.

Gandalf assures them that Hobbits will someday have descendants among humans, to preserve their own existence; and the film ends with Frodo's departure from the Grey Havens.

Rankin/Bass stalwart Paul Frees replaced the late Cyril Ritchard as the voice of Elrond; Casey Kasem was Merry, with Sonny Melendrez as Pippin; Nellie Bellflower as Éowyn; and Glenn Yarbrough returned as principal vocalist, billed here as simply "the Minstrel of Gondor".

Once the character voices were recorded, along with background music by Maury Laws, with Jules Bass writing songs and lyrics for the film, the animation production was done by Topcraft in Japan under supervision of Toru Hara, Tsuguyuki Kubo, Kazuyuki Kobayashi and others.

[citation needed] The release was threatened by a lawsuit filed by the Tolkien Estate and Fantasy Films on the basis that Rankin/Bass had not secured the U.S. and Canadian television rights to the book.

This false promotion led to rumours that Rankin/Bass had originally decided to produce The Return of the King upon hearing that Bakshi's sequel to The Lord of the Rings had been cancelled.

[8] Steven D. Greydanus of Decent Films Guide gave it a C, and said, "Works even less well than The Hobbit, which really is a children's story… overbearing folk-ballad soundtrack doesn't even gesture lyrically to Tolkien's poetry".