Was Tom Bombadill Crucial to the Lord of the Rings?

i still don't know if being on camera is the same thing as being in the narrative. tom bombadill from lord of the rings? That's probably good example. Ya, who was so not integral or important to anything that they completely wrote im all out of all the movies, and nobody noticed. But i'm worried now. I mean, on the one hand, you just listed like, ten awesome things about her, and you still don't like her. And frankly, like they, they didn't have to write him out. They just had to like, not include him, right? Like, it hll be one thing if they like, ohye, we had