This Mom Is Probably the Hero Who Watched ‘Return of the King’ 361 Times This Year

A woman who thinks she’s the Canadian who watched The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King 361 times this year on Netflix has revealed herself to VICE.

Her name is Suria-Ann Johns, she’s 24 years old, and she lives in Prince George, British Columbia. She says she was the using the long-as-hell movie as a way to fall asleep.

“I was pregnant, and the only place I was comfortable sleeping was on my couch… I can’t fall asleep unless I have some sort of white noise going on,” Johns told VICE.

Johns said she streamed the extended version of the film—which runs even longer than the original at just over four hours and 23 minutes—one to three times per night once her “belly started getting big” during her pregnancy. She now has a three-month-old baby and is a stay-at-home mom.

“I just think it is really well-written, and the characters are hilarious,” Johns said. She mentioned how since the film is so long, it meant she didn’t have to click the “continue watching” button as often on Netflix. She also said she watched it sometimes during the day.

Netflix unfortunately only shows the latest instance of when you watched something on your viewing history, so we were unable to confirm the number of times Johns has watched the film via her account. We have also reached out to Netflix and will update this article if we hear back.

Here are some things Johns said she noticed after watching the film an extensive number of times: “When King of Rohan’s son died, his niece ended up singing at his funeral—and I never noticed that before,” and, she said, “Saruman’s death, he fell to his death—I didn’t ever notice that.” [Editor’s note: Saruman, aka Saruman the White, had his death scene cut from the original theatrical version of Return of the King.]

Johns said she tried reading The Lord of the Rings books when she was 12 years old but found them “too complicated” at the time and is way more into the movies.

She said she’s watched the other LOTR films an excessive number of times as well, but not as much as Return of the King.

As for the overwrought oliphaunt killing scene in ROTK—which we wondered about in our original article—Johns has some words about that.

“I love the battle one. I think it’s hilarious when Gimli and Legolas are fighting to see how many orcs and bad guys they can kill, and Legolas takes down four or five men on top of the oliphaunt! Then he takes down the oliphaunt, and Gimli just kind of glares at him,” she said. “Éowyn, she stabs the [Witch King of Angmar] in the face and says, ‘I am no man!’… I think that was a great scene.”

“As for the oliphaunt on top of the hill, I don’t really think that was necessary,” Johns explained. “I think that was just a waste of time and money.”

So are there any other Netflix offerings Johns finds herself repetitively binging on?

“Family Guy,” she said, “I’ve seen every episode on Netflix many times.”