On the Potential for Orc Redemption | Middle-earth Lore

Great video as always.

I always wondered: if Orcs are born then there must be baby orcs. So what would happen if you'd take such a baby orc and raised it in a "good" environment? This would be a take on the nature vs nurture debate with (at least) some part of the nature is known to be "bad."
We also know that there are different breeds of orcs. Why do we assume (real question btw) that there is either a fea or no fea? what if there are some orc that are made as puppets and some that have a life of their own. We also know that orc create things. They make armor and weapons but most likely other things you need in every day life. Also they do have at least some impulse control over being nasty otherwise they couldn't function as an army. So orcs have art and a culture (no matter how evil) which suggests to me they aren't (all) drones or puppets.

I wonder if an orc fea would be send to the Halls of Mandos, wouldn't that mean that at least the people in Valinor knew what kind they were corrupted from?

Wow! Russian soldiers are brainwashed about Ukrainians the same way as Melkor’s orcs are about elves.

So when Thranduil kills that Orc and then says “I did. “ in reply to Legolas saying,” why did you do that, there was more he could tell us and that you promise to set him free” did Thranduil know that the orc would be “set free” by killing him?!?!? 😮😮😮

So a 'Good' god allows all this pain and suffering. Sounds familiar.

I guess that until the hatred in their hearts is dealt with, Orcs are unredeemable.

There is one more consideration:

The Orcs are fauna created by Melkor, who had the powers of all the Valar. He places an evil spirit inmale and female Orcs in order to make first generation Orcs. From then on, the most powerful and cunning male Orcs would be permitted to breed with the female Orcs. Any female who gave birth to a handicapped baby would be executed with baby. If necessary, evil spirits would continue to be placed in the bodies of Orcs. Eventually, they would continue this process until they had an army so evil and hateful that those warriors would kill just for the fun of it.

A truly great idea for ultimate redemption for every fëa at the end. Brilliant thinking. Thanks.

I think it depends on which Age we're talking about. The ones that were corrupted elves I could see having the possibility of redemption as well as those in the Second Age but by the Third age they were completely corrupted as a species. That's my take on it.

But, Now bare with me, iluvatar didnt just destroy the orks. He had more then enough power to do so. But melkor was iluvatars pride aspect. And plus he wanted a show that was interesting

the problem for me is that if an orc had a fea or whatever, like if they were "corrupted elves and men" the first one that died would show up in the halls of mandos and immediately trigger a war of wrath ages too soon. that would be seen as an abomination to the valar. to me in my headcanon, they'd be like aule's dwarves only never given a fea

My final conclusion about all the rings of p haters: I find it really strange how they seize upon the smallest most trivial detail and make out that it's the worst calamity in the entire universe. The entire 2 series condemned over the tiniest and most insignificant details, like elrond giving Galadriel a kiss - rolls eyes at broken sword. Rings of P is a wonderful, highly enjoyable series. For those of you not liking it, how much are you being paid for your hateful comments lol? Just joking. But I do find it odd peter Jackson, who basically s**ts all over Tolkien, can get away with his crap movies and Amazon, who I don't like because they didn't deliver some books I ordered, can't get away with it. And I'm guessing none of your nasty comments about Rings of P matter here because out in the real world it's extremely popular and most viewers love it. I also notice that even though so many people claim to hate it, they're still sitting through every episode, including series 2 so that they can comment on just how bad it is. I have no wish to subject myself to any more of peter Jacksons boring fight scenes masquerading as movies or equally boring series 2 house of the dragon which was basically like some badly written period drama. The dragons hardly came into it. So where is all this hate against the masterpiece which is rings of power coming from and why? Who knows, but I'm moving on.

You make the world a better place, Rainbow Dave. Thank you.

Death is a form of redemption.

Nice work dude thanks

Which nation is at war at the moment? Orcs are former elves. We will take Gollum, he's got a mall selling adidas and nike hahaha.

Morgoth and Sauron could not create life, but they could corrupt it. 

I always thought that the evil of the orcs was "fixed" according to the will of the dark lords. Certainly the One Ring, an instrument and manifestation of Sauron's nature, had this power of escalating corruption. As I recall, after the final defeat of Sauron in ROTK, most of his army went senseless without the enforcement of his will. This makes sense if most of the Orcs were so tortured by their service to the dark lord(s) that without him they had little sanity.

This notion suggests that Orcs could not be "saved" while the dark lord was alive, (having only a perverted kind of free will), but were somewhat redeemable once he was overthrown (and the One Ring destroyed). Some Orcs might remain evil on their own, as Sauron did after Morgoth's fall, but others might (theoretically) repent and turn to the light. (Gandalf said, "As for me, I pity even his slaves," suggesting to me that this was possible.)

Would Orcs be likely to become good after being not only corrupted for so long, but actually bred evil ? Probably not, but after Sauron was gone the possibility would be there. And of course some Orcs would be better or worse than others, as is the case with men (and elves).

The fight against evil adopts a "cut off the had of the snake" approach in LOTR, by emphasizing the strategy of destroying the One Ring.

I personally would equate the 'orcish state' with psychopathy. If we go with that Morgoth 'twisted' some of the original children of Eru, then we could see it that he altered their genetics, which would also explain their very different appearance, and he changed their brains too. Our current understanding in regards to psychopathy is that it is genetic. That there are genes responsible for it, which need events in childhood to 'switch' these genes on. In the case of orcs, we could imagine that they were genetically modified to always carry and pass on those genes (clearly, or otherwise this procedure would have to be done over and over again with each new orc born). Once the psychopathic genes have been 'switched on', in our current understanding, they can not be switched off again, which makes psychopaths 'irredeemable' while in our now world, and the same would have been true for Middle Earth.

The question could be, if it is psychopathy, could an orc child be raised in a way that would prevent these genes from being 'turned on'? Next question would be, within Tolkien's world, would this physical change which Morgoth undertook (messing with the genes), also affect the fëa/soul of the orcs, which I believe, is doubtful. That then would mean, once orcs die, dependent if they were of elvish or manish origin, they either would go to the Halls of Mandos, to after a time be send to Valinor, their bodies cleansed of the corruption, and ergo they'd look like elves once reformed, and their brains would be free of psychopathy.. or they'd go to the Timeless Halls.

Maybe Morgoth twisted their genetics in a way that the psychopathic gene always switches on, which then would mean no orc could ever be redeemed within the physical realm of Arda. Only once they die, could their fëa be freed of the corruptive changes of the hröa, and I lean to this being the case. Orcs are redeemable as in their fëa is not corrupted, but their genetic code was twisted by Morgoth in a way that certainly within Arda, they can not be changed back. To me personally, this makes the most sense and solves the issue.

Beautiful content as always, your videos are always such treasures <3

So, does that mean that Orcs are part of 'the plan'?
Everyone who was killed by the orcs was always meant to be killed by the orcs? Isildur's sons, Thror, all the dwarves in the War of the Dwarves and Orcs, Thorin II, Arathorn II, everyone in every battle with orcs, that was all part of Iluvatar's plan?!!!!

Thank you for the video. Maybe what tolkien wanted to portray them with, was a lack of empathy and trust. With Sadistic layers.

I sound like a broken record but here's another amazing video and something that just enhances my love of Tolkien's work. My wife and I were recently on vacation and I actually met someone with the Lord of the ring shirt and we it struck up a conversation had dinner with he and his wife and I told him to watch this channel the next day we saw them and he said that was an amazing channel some of the best breakdowns out ever seen. This guy told me he's red Lord of the rings and the Cillian well over 20 times.😅

If Orcs were redeemable, it would be after the events of The Lord of the Rings.

Your underrating the fuck out of the warriors. They are legit the deepest team on your list. The only problem is there is no consistent second option. If Wiggins turns back to 2022 form he could be that. Or if kuminga or podz takes a jump. It’s not hard to see the warriors being a 5/6th seed. Also we are way less injury prone than the teams above us. How tf do you rank the clippers who are literally washed up James harden and some role players over Steph (a top 7player) with the same ammount off deptp. Kawhi won’t play we’ve seen that the past 5 years. I think any team would rather have kuminga who could become kawhi than a super injury prone kawhi

Hey Dave you're awesome and your videos help me get to sleep (anxiety caused sleep issues). I love how you analyze all the aspects and input your great thoughts. You're a legendary Tolkien scholar my friend! Keep up the amazing work.

Wouldn't the post-death orc still hate everything, especially elves and Iluvatar?

Danke!

Can the orcs be redeemed? No.
But mayb-- No.
What if... No!
But how abo- NO!!

The orcs are essentially little demons. Please don't overthink them, or you'll miss the point of them.

I like the idea of a wizard taking the time to try and rehabilitate an orc.
I firmly believe it is possible and that nurture shapes their nature.

I can see a wizard stood in the dawn mist, taking a deep breath as he grips his staff in one hand and holds a knife in the other.
The orc camp ahead is quiet, many of the warband having drunken themselves senseless the night before. White smoke lifts from a dead central fire.
The wizard moves silently through the rough tents and shacks. A warg lifts its head and is soothed to slumber by a whispered word. The wizard pulls his cloak around him and goes to work.
Black blood flows freely from the throats of orcs slain in their sleep. A shadow falls upon a snoozing guard and he is dispatched without a sound. The wizard's eyes are tinged with pink beneath furrowed brows as his blade finishes his grisly work.
As the sun rises, almost a hundred bodies remain where they slept.
The wizard goes from tent to tent, trying not to look at the fallen orcs. From one tent he draws a small bundle of rags. He places it in a straw filled hand cart. Eight more times he does this, each bundle being laid beside the next.
Another word is whispered, gentle and soothing before he takes up the handles and trundles back along the track.

The birds and beasts know to avoid the glade. Bears and Wolves are bidden to patrol the farthest boundaries. The trees keep watch and bar the way to any traveller. Elves, men and Dwarves do not come here.

The sound of laughter can be heard over the babbling of a nearby river. The sun shines from a blue sky upon the thatch of a welcoming house. The smell of baking bread drifts from an open window.

Two small figures sit alongside a larger one, watching him work the garden. All three wear hats. The two children wear them to protect them from the sun, the wizard wears his as a habit.
Seven others, wrapped in loose flowing and comfy robes and brimmed hats, chase each other between the trees.
They bear no scars of body or mind, their bellies are filled with goat milk, bread and damson jam. They know nothing of dark lords and war, nothing of slavery and starvation, nothing of fear or hatred. They play games, climb trees, make jokes and tell stories.
The wizard still feels the burden of what was done in his heart, may Eru forgive him. He cannot tell what the future will bring but in this part of the world, in the shade of these mountains, in this forest, in these fields; the orc children are safe, they are happy and they are free.

What they tried doing with Adar on the show was very screwy, if orcs could just go against Sauron before he forged the one ring throws everything into question about the first age. I like the idea of Adar but the execution was confusing

excellent video

Perfect Dave love it. Great timing for the Rings of power effort to make orcs have agency for no reason with opposite arguments. 👌 Can’t wait for the next video !

"Orcs can be redeemed & the heroes are assholes" = the people who have listened to George R.R. Martin too much or constantly played World of Warcraft where Orcs can be heroic characters. Also the closest to how Orcs are depicted by Tolkien outside the legenarium seems to be Warhammer & Warhammer 40k. What do you think?

The answer, according to Tolkien, is yes they can... But not my men or elves.

Likely it will take Eru himself to redeem them.

An interesting question is how this corruption works with regard to new souls. If fea come from the secret fire, does not every orc soul need to be re-corrupted? Is it not then their upbringing that corrupts them continually, and thus given an entirely different upbringing would lack such extensive corruption?

These videos have taught me so much. I've been playing LOTRO Lord Of The Rings Online for 18 years now, watched and re-watched all the movies by PJ and read the Trilogy more times than I can count, starting as a teen in the 60s. Oops, I guess that means I'm old. Just a quick comment on what IO loved most about the movies, in some way I think the books should be treated separately from the films because so much of the backstories were taken out of the movies. Peter Jackson did a masterful job. It's a life's work worth all the accolades. Jackson gathered the entire cast and crew together once everyone got to NZ and paraphrasing here, all of you: I want all of you to believe that this story is part of human history, that it happened long ago in another age we simply have no access to discover. Play your roles as though you are a king, or a hobbit or whatever and treat your acting skills to reproduce real people. He had a stroke of genius casting Bernard Hill, may he rest well in his barrow with simbelmyne growing above him, as Theoden. Equally masterful, though I think Sir Christopher Lee would have volunteered to work for free, his being a lifelong Tolkien fan, and he was dead straight on Aragorn as well. The first actor they hired just wasn't Middle-earth material. Viggo Mortenson jumped into a work in progress with a swordfight on Weathertop the evening he landed in NZ. Good on ya mate. He "got it" immediately, no doubt coached by his son. Equally brilliant was Sir Ian as Gandalf. I think a lot of Sir Ian is really Gandalf, not too far removed from who he is. I think of this masterpiece of storytelling as just that. It isn't a part of real history but in my mind, it already is and was when I saw Fellowship extended for the first time. I went back to reading the books again as it had been a few decades but the story was just as rich and full as it was when I was in my teens reading it for the first time. Now that we have little devices that can read to us, I'm in Tolkien heaven, or should I say, The Undying Lands.
😂🕹🤟💌

Reformations into a new kind of orc are more considerable if you look at some valar and how orc behaviors could be guided to suite those valars teachings, hunting, strength, nature, renewal, are each aspects of a valar, they could, especially without dark lords, look to the valar of stars, nature, strength, hunt, and renewal, they could find in time some orcs are more naturalized, not returned to old forms, but refined onto symbols of how natures strength and beauty can win out even in the face of the greatest corruptions.

Sauron did not have Melkors power of Will, only those under his realm where so subject to his influence, those in Mordor are bound to Sauron but those beyond, such as they far east, south, southeast, and north didn't come to his calls, nor did all dark beings and beasts, many were beyond Saurons reach especially without the One Ring.

I dont know about you but this channel so legit

funny to me ... that so many ... talk crap and say feanor was never going to forgiven .... but Orcs ... then sure ... they can lol

Hey, Rainbow Dave. Just checking in on you to see if all is well with you. I know you get busy and come and go, but thought I’d check in on my favourite Tolkienologist.

Could you do doda on sauron vs vader, but each has their own powers..... force vs the ring of power. Nuts but f**kin brilliant. Why not

I just remembered in the fellowship movie the first Uruki we see being born/made/idk immediately kills somebody

I think that Melkor devised a way to keep the Hroa alive when the Fea had left it. So no, Orcs don't have souls. I think Orcs are sort of Zombies, living but not really alive the way truly sentient beings are. I gotta think that, otherwise I couldn't cheer their mass slaughter.

the orc beim made be corrupted elves could be easely comparable to demons bein fallen angels and in many medias demons are not rediamable unless you working asians demons then you have more precedent. and i know that elves are not angels in tolkien would , sauron is more like angel than the orcs but the point is the same ... and ok that the elves were corrupted be torture and not because they fallen be will to join morgoth but still they succump to the power of evil.

Any insight regarding if or when we can expect The Fall of Gondolin to receive the full Rainbow Dave treatment? Thank you so much for the work you put into these.

I would say that their free will very much depends on if a Dark Lord is in the picture, how powerful he is and if it's the og Dark Lord or Sauron.
Morgoth lost much of his own power in corrupting Arda and ensuring that all his servants stay loyal to him. Even if by the end he was weak, pathetic, begging for mercy and lost so much of his power that theoretically Sauron could take him in a fight - he still had scores of balrogs at his command and Sauron never tried to usurp him.
So, I like to think that orcs (and Sauron and balrogs and dragons etc.) were blindly loyal to Morgoth, because he poured his power and so much od himself into their corruption - to the point where they wouldn't even be capable of think about betraying him.
With Sauron, orcs were different. He could dominate their wills and minds - forcing them to be his slaves and do his bidding, even compeling them multiply so that he would have his armies, but we know that there were those who didn't obey him (left his army or served Saruman) and they definitelly were talking about leavng his war behind to do their own thing.
So, I don't think that there is any chance or redeeming an orc when Morgoth, or Sauron or even Saruman (if he got The One Ring) or any other potential Dark Lord are present, in power and capable of bending the orcs to their will. (I do not know, if it's true, bcs I don't remember where exactly I got it from , but I do remember reading somewhere that creatures of evil and darkness as naturaly drawn to their dark masters even though they do not want to followe them and hate them.)

But after Sauron's fall? I would say that perhaps if we give them a thousand years and therapy from Radagast, after a few generations they may be capable of at least stop being an active danger to society. Perhaps I am far too optimistic, but perhaps they might even create their own primitive settlements or land a few jobs as mercenaries in the east. I can't see them setting up trade routes and having a friendly relationship with Men, no. But perhaps learn how to live and survive without rading a pillaging? Sort of 'you leave me alone and I leave you alone' type of situation. Give them another thousand years and they might not even kill you on sight if you somehow wander into their land.

And if we should question whether or not they are redeemable spiritually, I think that is an easier question. Tolkien himself went back and forth on the question, but it would be consistent with the point of all his works that yes. Orc are redeemable.
Does it make our heroes any less good that they kill orcs without remorse? Of course not. Just because orcs do have potential to be redeemed in life or in death, doesn't make them any less despicable at present. Yes, they were corrupted from elves or men, so it could be argued that they are not evil by choice and it's not their fault, but that doesn't change the fact that they are evil and commit evil deeds. It doesn't excuse their action, it only explains them.
I really like the comparison with child soldier raised to hate the enemy from birth. You can understand that it is not really the soldier's fault (even if he is now an adult), but you will still defend yourself when he tries to kill you. And if said child soldier killed you entire family, you wouldn't be wrong to hate and hold him responsible for it.

As a personal footnote - when it comes to creation of orcs and that being Morgoth's greatest crime and most hateful to Ilúvatar, I think it stands from twisting and corrupting Ilúvatar's creation into something terrible - the orcs being created in mockery of children of Ilúvatar and all that - BUT it is also because of the way they are created.
I don't see many people acknowlege this in more then passing mention but the phrases 'with slow acts of cruelty' and 'breeding the race of orcs' have some really terrible and disguting implications. Besides the torture that could've lasted hundreds of not thousands of years and possibly several generation, until Morgoth was satisfied with the new race he "made", there also had to a lot of r*pe and forced pregnancies going on. Something that to me is really one of the greatest horrors anybody (but esp women, since it would be them getting pregnant) could be forced to endure and it would be happening again and again and endlessly because you can't really breed an entire new race if you have only two orcs in every generation.
We view creation of orcs as something that happened, let's say, to the elves. He took them, tortured them and then they were orcs and they multiplied... but it gives Morgoth even more sinister streak (as if he needed any more) if we see his this as more of a eugenics project that happened over many generation of selective breeding - in the same way we humans for example created new breeds of dogs and other animals to suit our purposes.

Hi RD. Hope you're keeping well. How's the book writing going? Are you posting anymore Untangled U tube videos? All the best Tarl.