Here is Dr. Scott Masson’s in-depth analysis of Amazon Prime’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power‘s seventh episode, “The Eye.”
In this episode: Survivors of a cataclysm try to find safety; the Harfoots confront evil; Durin is torn between friendship and duty; Adar considers a new name.
If you missed his analysis of the first episode, A Shadow of the Past, you can find that here, the second episode analysis is here, the third episode here, the fourth episode here, and the fifth and sixth episodes as well.
Dr. Scott Masson is an Associate Professor of English Literature at Tyndale University, Toronto. He did his PhD at the University of Durham, where C.S. Lewis delivered the lectures eventually written under the title The Abolition of Man. He has taught courses on C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien for over a decade, some of which have been uploaded to his YouTube channel. He also hosted a series of literature podcasts called Paideia Today.
He’ll be back with more analysis each week as the series goes on.
Thanks, Paul. This professor has good reflections. We will see where the trajectory of these characters in RoP is leading. Tolkien’s good characters are corruptible, however. I wonder if Dr. Masson is setting the standard too high for some of these characters. Dwarves are known to bicker (see The Hobbit book), and Galadriel was said by Tolkien to have been inflicted by the similar passion to that which drove Feanor (see the the history of Galadriel and Celeborn in Unfinished Tales). To say that Durin IV’s character is ruined seems a bit too extreme. That his actions are rash may seem to be the case. If mithril features in the creation of the Rings of Power, perhaps we will nonetheless see Durin’s father (the III) vindicated and Durin IV humbled.