There are lots of links between The Hobbit films and the Lord of the Rings films, because The Hobbit took place exactly 60 years before the fellowship's quest, and therefore feeds into the events that came after it. The audience can of course see Bilbo as an older hobbit, about to celebrate his 111th birthday when the ring passes down to his heir Frodo, and then there’s Legolas, the woodland elf of Mirkwood who becomes one of the fellowship that set out from Rivendell to take the ring to mount doom and destroy it.