The Undead of Middle-earth

In this video, we look at the Undead of Middle-earth; the Barrow-wights, the Oathbreakers, and the Nazgul. What are they exactly, how did they end up that way, and how can you destroy them?
Thanks to my patrons - Gavin, Javi Iñesta ,Brn, JIV, Fipse, W Sean Mason, boi sophies, Stonetruck, ThunderStryken, Hallimar Rathlorn, Habimana, Ben Jeffrey, Harry Evett, Mojtaba Ro, Moe L, Paul Leone, Barbossa, mncb1o, Carrot Ifson, Andrew Welch and Catherine Berry
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[@TheAlterspark]

Good video but as for the Nazgul- it is explicitly stated in the books that the blade Merry used was given runes specifically designed to fight the witch king and his servants. It also states that his attack undid the magic holding the "undead" flesh together. Eowyn may have landed the killing blow, but without Merry's strike it likely wouldn't have been possible

[@doomhippie6673]

I kinda "hate" these questions like "why didn't Aragorn use the oath breakers further". Or "Why didn't Elrond push Isildur into the fires of Mt Doom". These questions to me show an utter lack of understanding of the spirituality of Middle-Earth. The Oath breakers were punished for breaking their oath. They redeemed themselves by fulfilling that oath. keeping them any longer than absolutely necessary would be a tyrannical act as their oath was to defend Gondor, not to attack Mordor. Doing the "right thing" even though it leads to only more trials and tribulations is what the Lord of the Rings and Tolkien's mythology is all about. It's about sacrificing yourself for what is right. It is not about power projection and rulership.

[@SvengelskaBlondie]

That's true, I very much doubt Eru Iluvatar would have taken it kindly if Aragon tried pushing his luck with the Oathbreakers, even more so when one of Sauron's aliases was "The Necromancer" (that just sounds like two really bad ideas).

[@zimmerwald1915]

Minor quibble: "the oath [to Isildur] they broke was to fight against Sauron," without limits on time or place. Aragorn struck a more limited deal with the king of the dead whereby he would hold their oaths fulfilled if they cleansed "this land" (Lamedon and Lebennin) of Sauron's servants. The rest of your argument holds: having struck this deal, Aragorn was bound by its terms, and fulfilled them.

[@bluediamonddirector]

I really enjoy your channel. Makes work less boring

[@oguzhanenescetin5702]

I think the source of Nazgûl’s durability came not from whether they were intangible or not but from a spell that forcefully kept their bodies intact and it was this spell that Barrow blade targeted, leaving Witch King vulnerable which in turn resulted in his death. Why? We know that they survived things that a man with a physical body cannot survive. I think if their bodies were simply invisible it would have the same amounts of durability and barrow blade wouldn’t have any special threat to the Witch King compared to a regular sword yet it is said that NO OTHER BLADE could cause as much damage to the Witch King as the Barrow blade did. But we also know for a fact that they had bodies meaning something other than the bodily resilience is present here but it cant be intangibility. Its also unlikely that they were able to make their bodies more durable by their spirit( the same way Gandalf and Balrog did ) because although they ( at least the chief among them ) seems to be sorcerously enhanced beings their spirit is still the same and a weak one at that. It should be noted that Tolkien said if a man in Valinor existed the spirit would either try to exert itself out of the body or become impotent because of the process of the body always remaining healthy against the ravages of time ( which was exactly what the Rings did ) Nazgûl were in a constant state of bodily disharmony for thousands of years and it seems that their spirits should have either forcefully left their houses or became impotent ( which is certainly not the case with the Nazgûl who all seem to be pretty intelligent ) by now. Sauron no doubt knew this ( since he could read their minds and learn about their discomfort even if we assumed that he wasn’t aware of such metaphysics ) and tried to keep their bodies intact by a spell not just to keep their spirit intact but also to make them more durable. Sauron wouldn’t risk his primary servants to just die by being stabbed in a random battle. I think this spell is also supported by the text saying “spell that kept his unseen sinews to his will” was what the blade targeted.

[@ShawnHCorey]

The spirits that became the barrow wights could be the spirits of orcs. After all, orcs are suppose to be corrupted elves. If so, they would have the same doom as the elves, to linger in Middle Earth after their death. Sauron could have collect these spirits to use in various plots and schemes.

[@TheMarcHicks]

Sauron does like a good phantom to trick people to their own deaths.....just ask Gorlim from the 1st Age.

[@c.ladimore1237]

"can no longer house the spirit" that is an interesting take I have not heard of yet. i like it

[@istari0]

My take on the Army of the Dead is that Aragorn would have himself become an oathbreaker if he had insisted the Army continue fighting for him. Even if that wasn't the case, taking the Army anywhere near Sauron or even The Witch King would have been a monumentally bad idea. As far the Nazgûl go, I have always thought the barrow-blade Merry wielded broke the enchantments that protected The Witch King from all the things that otherwise would have injured or killed him, thus making him vulnerable to Éowyn's killing blow. But I'm a little dubious of the idea that the Witch King's spirit could remain in Middle-Earth after he was slain; that's granting Sauron a level of power I don't think he or even Morgoth would have had.

[@DarthGandalfYT]

That's actually a good point about the Oathbreakers. Aragorn promised to release them, and if he kept "bending" the terms, I wonder if it would've been possible for the King of the Dead to pull a uno-reverse on him.

[@frggdeckkkydexhhgg]

I think you should make a video about how different Middle-Earth peoples bury their dead.

[@zimmerwald1915]

I second the motion.

[@talesoftheeldar8688]

Can you do a video on the Girdle of Melian?

[@SNWWRNNG]

It's confusing that Tolkien used undead for beings that never died. It might be best to abandon the alive-dead distinction and just focus on the facts.

[@jonathancrosby1583]

Think lich or death knight in d&d don't necessarily need to fully die yet

[@agustingomez1575]

If the Witch King was reduced to impotence, and not killed, by Merry and Eöwyn, then there's a chance Glorfindel's prophecy was about Gollum, the real hero of the story and an all-around noble individual.

[@General12th]

Hi Darth! I wonder how Professor Tolkien would have viewed the ways undead creatures have proliferated in fiction since Lord of the Rings. How would he feel about zombies or liches or vampires? He's always struck me as slightly curmudgeonly about how people adapt his work in "wrong" ways.

[@robinsteeden7466]

Slightly? 😂

[@tiltskillet7085]

I'm sure he'd think most of it absurd and worthless. But I'll just note that zombies and vampires existed in legend and literature before Tolkien. Liches postdate him, and might have been influenced somewhat by the Nazgul or Barrow-wights, but aren't direct adaptations.

[@istari0]

Stories about the undead existed long before Tolkien began The Legendarium. The newer fiction I have read that includes undead don't really seemed to be based on the Tolkien "model." I have wondered what he would make of something like The Wheel of Time or The Riftwar Saga.

[@DarthGandalfYT]

@@istari0 Tolkien's view on the Riftwar would be interesting considering it borrowed an enormous amount from his work.

[@ChrisVillagomez]

​@DarthGandalfYT Tolkien's reaction to A Song of Ice and Fire would be interesting too. Obviously George pokes fun at Tolkien every once in a while like with his Aragorn Tax Policy question, but George genuinely loves LoTR like we do and there is a huge amount of references to it spread all over the world of Game of Thrones

[@RobbyBurney]

With the witch king at the moment of "death" when his spirit rises up Tolkien says he wasn't seen again *in that age of the world*. Which implied to me that he lingered and came back later perhaps. Or was just a poetic way of saying he was gone haha

[@thomasalvarez6456]

He couldn’t come back, he likely wondered as an invisible spirit until the end of the world.

[@DarthGandalfYT]

Probably poetic language.

[@lordfulmine]

That could also be an allusion to the Dagor Dagorath, everyone else is supposed to show up, why not him?

[@untitled568]

About the oathbreakers and why didnt Aragorn take them further and it deserving its own video, you already have a video on that subject lol..

[@DarthGandalfYT]

Lmao. Thanks for reminding me. Luckily I hadn't started writing anything.

[@jonystyles9473]

So could the Witchking see dead elves spirits lingering in ME? Nice lore once again bro u the best, cheers

[@KILLIONAIRE23YT]

Great video!

[@cavetroll666]

Thanks for the content

[@reecepip4857]

You should do a what if video on what would happen if a barrow wight took the one ring from Frodo. Would he just sleep with in in his tomb or start a rampage and would it embody him in his original spirit form because of the new power or is he still just a skeleton?

[@hrperformance]

Super interesting vid!

[@sdev2749]

The corpses of the Dead Marshes are Tolkien's attempt to adapt old European folklore and mythology into Middle Earth - Corpse Candles are a VERY real part of superstitious European history dating back long ago. Tolkien used the idea of corpse candles with their little lights as Gollum explained in his works. Tolkien infused MANY legends, myths and folklores of Europe into Middle-Earth and most people do not understand this fact.

[@Nitkalay]

I DMing a One Ring ttrpg game and I have a "practical" lore question regarding undead in middle earth: Can dwarfs be undead? I'm looking at Skorgrím Dourhand from Lotro and wonder if he can be resurrected as an undead creature according to you opinion?

[@skatemetrix]

And now they find work today in music videos and horror films. Thanks Morgoth and Sauron!

[@Qbliviens]

An interesting question would be where did the Nazgul go after their death/the destruction of the Ring? Did they finally follow where all men go after death, did Iluvatar block their souls from doing that like the oathbreakers? Or did they simply fade like elves?

[@alanpennie]

Why does no one heed the Ringverse? They suffered the ordinary doom of men, probably.

[@johnkamadeva4747]

So in short pretty much most of these guys are equivalent to a Lich, Nazgul is a perfect example of these since these guys are nasty powerful especially the Witch-King who is pretty much a master of necromancy

[@oguzhanenescetin5702]

I think they are more similar to a death knight than to a lich

[@bristleconepine4120]

Question: for what was the Necromancer of Dol Goldur (before he was recognized to be Sauron) known by that title? What did he do that earned him that moniker?

[@DarthGandalfYT]

Necromancy for Tolkien was "dark magic", so including messing around with the dead, but not necessarily limited to that. I guess people noticed how Mirkwood was being corrupted due to dark magic, and knew that a power in Dol Guldur (originally thought to be a Nazgul) was responsible, hence the name Necromancer.

[@ellanenish5999]

It's alive!

[@rogercroft3218]

If you break an oath about having lunch with someone perhaps you are punished with just a few minutes of undeath. Larger offences just get longer periods.

[@DarthGandalfYT]

A few minutes of undeath never hurt anyone.

[@ricardomora9913]

So where the dwarves go when they die?

[@Will_Lesher]

Do you ever have problems with using fan art? A large Harry Potter KZbinr called MovieFlame just put out a video talking about why he uses AI art, and how fan art creators have tried to copyright strike him. Have you ever experienced something similar? If you have, maybe you could reach out to him to give him resources for how to combat these bad actors.

[@valiantredneck]

Something I’ve wondered about the death of the WitchKing is what happened to the ring that He wore. Probably not something that should just be left lying about.

[@rogercroft3218]

It’s my impression that they no longer had to wear the rings, having been entirely overcome, and that Sauron physically kept the rings with him. Possibly they might have served as a sort of leash or remote control to stop any Nazgul getting ideas about setting up on his own.

[@EeanWooo-to9kd]

Pretty sure elvish souls have to go to mandos, they cant hang around in middle earth without a body.

[@oguzhanenescetin5702]

they can