Moral Event Horizon / Tolkien's Legendarium

"There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of men bad enough for such treachery. Down with Saruman!"

—Treebeard, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Moral Event Horizon in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle Earth Legendarium.

Books

• The Lord of the Rings: Saruman crosses the Moral Event Horizon at the very end when he does everything possible to destroy the Shire out of pure spite. Up until that point, he'd done plenty of awful things but had continually been offered (and refused) opportunities for redemption. The destruction of The Shire shows that he's irrevocably fallen from a wizard who was once great and wise to a bitter man with nothing left but hatred and the desire to harm others as much as possible. If Treebeard's infamous reaction is anything to go by, he may have crossed it earlier with his massacre of the Ents.
• The Silmarillion:
  • Melkor's destruction of the Two Trees, murder of Finwë and theft of the Silmarils. After this, he can never again take a form that looks anything other than completely evil, and he is named Morgoth, the Dark Enemy of the World.
    • Another idea is that he crossed this when kidnapping some of the Elves after they awoke and apparently torturing and corrupting them to create the Orcs, which is called his foulest deed and prompted the Valar to attack him again. Despite this after spending three ages imprisoned in the Halls of Mandos he was offered the chance to repent.
  • Feanor, after seizing the ships of Teleri and causing the Kinslaying of Alqualondë, which leads the Ñoldor to be cursed.
  • In the Akallabêth, after the Silmarillion but before the events of The Lord of the Rings, Sauron crosses it when he engineers the destruction of Númenor by corrupting its king; like Morgoth, after this action, he can never again take an appearance that is not evil. And that's without even considering that in all of Melkor's atrocities he had a great part in, he continued to breed Orcs long after his master's downfall. In short, almost everything he did from the beginning of time would be a line crossing for lesser creatures.
  • The best or rather worst examples from a side other than Morgoth's are undoubtedly Celegorm and Curufin, however. They boast such great feats as: being the only Elves we know of to ever try to force Lúthien to marriage and attempt to kill Beren out of spite even after he spared their unworthy lives, plotting to have Finrod (their first cousin on their father's side) killed so that they can take his kingdom, and actually encouraging the Second Kinslaying as a direct result of failing to get Lúthien. And yet, after all that, they are still unquestionably, absolutely, utterly against Morgoth while being every bit as vile as his servants.
  • Maeglin is known as the only Elf ever to betray his people and make a pact with Morgoth after being promised Idril's hand and led the Angband troops to Gondolin, causing the destruction of the once-indomitable city and the slaughter of lots of his fellow Elves. And even then he tried without any remorse to murder young Eärendil personally and fought Tuor until Tuor threw him into the ashes of the city whose destruction he caused.
  • Ar-Pharazôn usurps the throne of Númenor by forcing the rightful Queen Tar-Míriel (who is also his first cousin) to marry him against her will, and he becomes a horrible tyrant even before falling under the sway of Sauron. Afterward, he goes on to conduct Human Sacrifice to Morgoth in large numbers and ultimately makes war on the Elves and the Valar, resulting in the destruction of Númenor.
• The Children of Húrin
  • Saeros insulted Túrin's mother and sister, causing him to throw a goblet at him, breaking the Elf's mouth. His response? Ambushing Túrin and trying to kill him. When he hears what happened, Thingol pardons Túrin.
  • Androg and Forweg attempted to rape a woman in the woods for starters. Androg later killed Mîm's son with an arrow. It becomes quite clear why Túrin was ashamed and angered by the Outlaw's behaviour.
  • While never a morally upstanding guy, Túrin is one of the few sympathetic characters in Middle-Earth to pass this, at the climax of when he murders a lame man in a fit of rage, leaving even himself so disgusted that he commits suicide.
• The Fall of Gondolin: Maeglin crosses the line between "evil" and irredeemable" when he decides to force Idril to see how he murders his little nephew.

Other media

• The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies: Azog was clearly shown to be a bad guy in the previous two movies, but he crosses it here when he orders his army to attack the civilians who fled Laketown.
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor: Even with his limited screen time, Sauron shows he's still a monster when he took Celebrimbor prisoner after getting the One Ring back from him. Rather than killing him right away, he killed his family right in front of him, before beating him to death and turning him into a Wraith, forced to stay in the world and never move on.
• Middle-earth: Shadow of War:
  • After veering dangerously close over the line between Well-Intentioned Extremist and Evil Overlord, Celebrimbor finally crosses it when he willingly abandons Talion after the latter has a Heel Realization that they are similar to Sauron and refuses to go along with his plan to dominate their enemy and use his army to "bring order to Middle-Earth" - since Talion only wanted to destroy Sauron so he could finally rest in peace. And to further twist the knife, Celebrimbor tells him he is merely a vessel and he has others. This is to hammer the point that anyone who uses the Rings of Power for good eventually becomes corrupted by them.
  • The same moment also serves as this for Eltariel to some players. Not only is she an active participant in leaving Talion to die, but it's also only even possible because she agrees to serve as Celebrimbor's new host. Add in the hypocrisy of the person who spent most of the game warning Talion and Celebrimbor about becoming like Sauron suddenly embracing a plan to become Sauron 2.0, and it can be difficult to stay sympathetic. At least Talion calls her out on the hypocrisy when she begs him not to "betray the Man he used to be".