THE CULTURE WARS ARE A ROUT:

[I]n place of a full-throated review I want to reflect instead, on what I take to be a pair of central themes developing through the first two episodes and to consider how they might be viewed through the lens of Christian realism.

The first theme grounds the second. Except for a brief introduction, The Rings of Power plays out in Middle Earth's seismic Second Age, which began following the successful termination of the War of Wrath and the defeat of Morgoth, the satanic antagonist of the First Age. Morgoth's chief lieutenant, Sauron, was himself greatly weakened. He fled and hid, slowly reconsolidating his power over more than a millennium. Our story begins here, with Galadriel, known to LOTR fans as the Lady of the Woods of Lothlórien, leading a company of elven fighters in search of Sauron, who she rightly believes remains a threat to Middle Earth . As she puts it in a voiceover, "For though Morgoth fell an age ago, some feared a new evil would rise from his shadow." Not everyone agrees with Galadriel's dire assessment that Sauron is still alive. She laments:

The trail grew thin. Year gave way to year. Century gave way to century. And for many elves, the pain of those days passed out of thought and mind. More and more of our kind began to believe the Sauron was but a memory, and that the threat at last was ended.

Galadriel knows such lulls might prove deadly. "Evil does not sleep. It waits," she warns. "And in the moment of our complacency, it blinds us." In this, she voices a principle that runs through much of Tolkien: the need to maintain constant vigilance against the advent or rekindling of evil. Considering his beloved hobbits, for instance, it is emphasized at several points in LOTR that the hobbits' insular lifestyle of quiet normality is made possible only because of the watchfulness of valorous men who stand guard outside their borders, entirely unbeknownst to the hobbits themselves. It's reasonable to think this sentiment was fortified by Tolkien's own combat experience. Shortly after being married in 1916, Tolkien was sent into action at the Battle of the Somme, during which he lost several close friends and was himself invalided to a hospital for trench fever. [...]

But this emphasis on vigilance seems merely the ground for The Rings of Power's more significant point of focus. While being watchful is essential, knowing what to watch out for can be harder than it seems.

In an early dialogue in the beginning of the premier episode, a youthful Galadriel is speaking with her older brother about good and evil. He says to her:

Do you know why a ship floats and a stone cannot? Because the stone sees only downward, the darkness of the water is vast, irresistible. The ship feels the darkness as well, striving moment by moment to master her and pull her under. But the ship has a secret. For unlike the stone, her gaze is not downward, but up. Fixed on the light that guides her. Whispering of grander things than darkness ever knew.

On the one hand, the image has much to say about resisting temptation--a perennial issue in Tolkien's universe. But Galadriel offers an important insight: "But sometimes the lights shine just as brightly reflected in the water as in the sky. It's hard to say which way is down. How am I to know which lights to follow?"

How indeed? Fans of the LOTR know that what might seem like light is actually darkness. The Ring of Power itself is like the darkness of Galadriel's brother's invocation. It beguiles its victims into believing that it is a desirable thing, drawing them down beneath its power--possessing them until they abandon all good things in life to devout themselves to this false divine.

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