The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

If you have been following along with these Parting Thoughts reflections, you already know that my 10-year-old self fell headlong into Tolkien’s world by the dim glow of hallway light, sprawled half off my bed with The Hobbit open on the floor. And you know that two years later, my 12-year-old self devoured all three volumes of The Lord of the Rings with an almost Sméagol-like hunger — returning to the library again and again, reluctant to let the story go. In September of last year, we explored the film version of The Fellowship of the Ring and how Tolkien’s world offers us a breathtaking map of the human soul — its parts, its burdens, and its longing to be led by something true and good.

The war within and without

Today, we press on. The fellowship has shattered. The road has grown darker. And Peter Jackson’s second installment, The Two Towers, confronts us with a truth that every therapist — and every honest pilgrim — eventually comes to face: the deepest battles are not fought on open plains. They are fought within.

So grab your popcorn. We are going in.

The world has fractured — and so has its people

One of the most striking features in The Two Towers is its structure. The fellowship — that beautiful, hard-won community of the first film — has been broken apart. Frodo and Sam press on alone toward Mordor. Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli run across the plains of Rohan in pursuit of Merry and Pippin. The hobbits find themselves in the company of the ancient Ents.

These are not merely separate plotlines. They are a narrative truth: fragmentation is the wound, and the story of healing is the story of how — and whether — those fragments can be restored.

In our previous reflection on the Fellowship of the Ring, I suggested that the races of Middle Earth — elves, dwarves, men, and hobbits — can be understood as parts within a grand self-system. In The Two Towers, we see what happens when that system comes under sustained assault.

The inner elves — those parts animated by wisdom, beauty, and contemplative clarity — are departing for the Grey Havens. The inner dwarves are displaced and disoriented. The inner hobbits are far from home, stripped of comfort and belonging. And the inner men? In this film, we see them at their most desperate, most conflicted, and — when grace intervenes — most noble.

This is the human condition under spiritual siege. And Tolkien, a devout Catholic, knew that siege well.

The most honest therapy session in film: Sméagol and Gollum

If the first film introduced us to the tragedy of Gollum, the second gives us something far more intimate and devastating — a front-row seat to his internal war.

In one of the most psychologically precise scenes in the entire trilogy, we witness Sméagol and Gollum conducting what can only be described as an externalized internal dialogue. Two voices. One tortured soul. And if you have ever sat with clients who are genuinely divided against themselves, you will recognize immediately what Tolkien and Jackson are showing us.

In Internal Family Systems (IFS) terms, Sméagol is the exile — the original, pre-trauma self who still remembers what it felt like to be loved, to belong, to be called by his own name. He speaks with a kind of desperate, childlike hopefulness. He wants to serve Frodo. He wants to be good. He whispers that they don’t need Gollum anymore — “Go away and never come back!” — and for one luminous moment, it seems as though he might be free.

But Gollum is the firefighter — fierce, feral, and utterly convinced that vulnerability will mean annihilation. He emerged from the wreckage of Sméagol’s trauma — the murder of his cousin Déagol, the centuries of isolation in dark caves, the Ring’s consuming corruption — and he has been running the system ever since.

It is worth remembering that Gollum was also tortured by Sauron in the dungeons of Barad-dûr when he gave up Bilbo, and “his precious,” in agony, “Shire!” and “Baggins!” Gollum’s cruelty is not sadism for its own sake. It is the logic of a protective part that has never been offered anything better than survival. “Master tricked us,” he hisses. “We hates them.” It is the voice of a part that has learned, through bitter experience, that hope is the most dangerous thing of all.

What makes this portrayal so extraordinarily honest — and so heartbreaking — is that Gollum is not entirely wrong. Sméagol’s openness is dangerous in a world that has used and discarded him at every turn. Frodo himself, affected by the Ring’s growing weight, will ultimately betray him.

The tragedy of Gollum is not simply that he chose evil. It is that no one with the capacity to truly help him ever arrived in time. He needed a parts work therapist, and instead he got five centuries alone in the dark.

From a Catholic Christian perspective, Gollum embodies what the tradition calls concupiscence, the disordering of the soul’s desires through habitual sin and proximity to evil. The Ring has not merely tempted him; it has restructured him.

The imago Dei, the image of God — remains in Sméagol, flickering and faint, but real. We glimpse it in those brief moments of softness. The Church has always insisted that no matter how disfigured by sin, the image of God in the human person is never wholly destroyed.

This is why Frodo — and Tolkien — never entirely abandon hope for Gollum. “I do not think Gollum is beyond hope,” Frodo says in the book. And he says it because he recognizes, with terrifying clarity, that he is looking into a possible future self.

There is perhaps no more powerful IFS illustration in all of cinema than this creature — lost, divided, yearning, and fighting himself in the dark.

The hijacked kingdom: Théoden, Wormtongue, and the art of unblending

If Gollum shows us the internal war of a single, broken soul, King Théoden of Rohan shows us what happens when a system — a family, a community, a kingdom — falls under the dominion of a rogue part.

When we first encounter Théoden in this film, he is barely present in the scene. He sits slumped on his throne, hollow-eyed and ancient before his time, surrounded by the stench of decay. Gríma Wormtongue kneels beside him — whispering, always whispering — feeding him a steady diet of despair, isolation, and paralysis. “What can men do against such reckless hate?“

In IFS terms, this is a textbook blended state. Théoden — who represents the inmost self, the rightful leader of his own inner system — has become so thoroughly corrupted by Wormtongue’s narrative that he can no longer access his own wisdom, strength, or capacity for action.

Wormtongue operates as a protector part gone catastrophically rogue: he is not, at his origin, entirely without protective intent. He fears the war. He fears loss. But his fear has curdled into treachery, and his “protection” has become the very thing that destroys what he claims to guard.

I have often used this scene with individual clients and with groups to describe various kinds of mental illness, especially addiction. Théoden has lost himself and is completely numb from all pain and indifferent to the circumstances around him. He’s the alcoholic in the gutter, the strung-out meth addict, the depressed person who cannot get out of bed. The people around him don’t know what to do, and feel helpless and hurt by his inaction.

What is remarkable about this scene — cinematically and therapeutically — is the intervention of Gandalf. Watch how it unfolds. Gandalf does not argue with Wormtongue. He does not debate the merits of the King’s current state. He walks directly toward Théoden, speaks to him with steady, grounded authority, and essentially calls the inmost self back to itself. “Théoden, King of Rohan. Too long have you sat in the shadows.“

This is what skilled, self-led therapeutic presence looks like. It does not capitulate to the parts running the system. It does not get drawn into their logic. It speaks — clearly, compassionately, and with authority — to the deeper reality beneath the burden.

When Théoden finally casts off Wormtongue’s influence, the transformation is visceral. Years seem to fall away. His eyes clear. He stands. He asks for his sword. The innermost self has returned to leadership, and the entire system reorganizes around that return. The kingdom of Rohan does not merely gain a functional administrator; it recovers its soul.

For Catholic readers, this scene resonates deeply with the sacramental theology of confession and absolution. There is a reason the Catechism describes the grace of penance as restoring what sin has diminished — not merely forgiving an offense, but healing a wounded soul. Théoden’s unblending is a kind of absolution made visible: the lies are named, the darkness is cast out, and the man who was buried beneath the burden is restored to himself and to his people.

It also calls to mind the writings of Saint Maximus the Confessor, whose reflections on the nous — the spiritual intellect, the innermost center of the person — remind us that the heart, however darkened, retains its capacity for illumination. The nous can be clouded by passion and deception, but it cannot be entirely extinguished. Théoden’s recovery is the nous breaking back through.

And yet, a price is paid by Théoden. His scars are not fully healed wounds. He becomes vulnerable to fear and shame and must fight to resist them. This speaks to each one of us on the road to recovery. We can experience incredible healing and moments of grace but perfection is still out of reach in this world.

Legacy burdens: the weight of what was handed down

In our last reflection, I introduced the concept of legacy burdens — those beliefs, fears, and emotional patterns that are not generated by our own experience but inherited from the systems that formed us. The Two Towers is saturated with them.

Faramir carries perhaps the most painfully recognizable burden in the film. He is a man of genuine virtue — perceptive, disciplined, and morally serious in ways his brother never quite managed. And yet, under the crushing gravity of his father Denethor’s contempt and his brother Boromir’s posthumous golden glow, Faramir can barely locate himself.

“I think at last we understand one another, Frodo Baggins,” he says, and in that moment of recognition, we see a man who has spent his entire life trying to earn a love that was never freely offered.

His temptation by the Ring is real. But what redeems him — what allows him, ultimately, to let the Ring go — is precisely his capacity for self-led discernment. He is able to hold the competing pressures of family expectation, military duty, and personal conscience, and to choose rightly. Not without a struggle, but rightly nonetheless. This is the fruit of a person who, despite carrying enormous burdens, has not entirely lost contact with his core self.

Aragorn continues to carry the legacy burden we identified in The Fellowship of the Ring which includes the shame of Isildur’s failure, and the fear that the weakness that destroyed his ancestor lives in his own blood. In this film, that burden is given new texture.

He is not merely uncertain about his lineage; he is afraid of what he might become if he embraces it. His relationship with Arwen is itself entangled in this fear — she is immortal, and to love her is to ask her to exchange eternity for a man who is not yet sure he deserves the kingship he was born to.

And then there is Boromir, absent from this film in body, but profoundly present in spirit. His death in the first film casts a long shadow over Faramir’s storyline and over the entire arc of Gondor.

Boromir carried the burden of being the “golden son,” the hero upon whom his people had staked their survival. It was not merely ambition that made him vulnerable to the Ring — it was the agonizing weight of a legacy that demanded he perform salvation rather than receive it. He was never allowed to be simply human. And that burden, unaddressed, proved fatal.

From a Catholic perspective, legacy burdens find their deepest healing not in therapy alone, but in the transformative encounter with a love that is not conditioned on performance. The theological word for this is grace: unmerited, unconditional, and inexhaustible.

Faramir glimpses it. Aragorn is moving toward it. Boromir, tragically, could not quite receive it in time. But the mercy that Frodo extends to Gollum — and that Faramir ultimately extends to Frodo — reflects this grace breaking through the walls of self-protection and inherited shame.

The Battle of Helm’s deep: when the night is darkest

No reflection on The Two Towers would be complete without some attention to its extraordinary climax: the siege of Helm’s Deep.

Ten thousand Uruk-hai descend on a fortress of women, children, and old men with only a handful of soldiers to defend them. As the rain falls, they all believe this night will be their last.

“What can men do against such reckless hate?” Théoden asks. It is the question of every soul that has ever stared down the full weight of its own sin, its own darkness, its own brokenness — and felt the walls closing in.

Aragorn’s answer is not a strategy; it is a posture. “Ride out with me.” Not because victory is certain and not because the odds have shifted. But because despair is not the final word, and to act from one’s deepest identity, from the inmost self — rather than from the fear and exhaustion of one’s parts — is itself an act of resistance.

And then, at dawn, Gandalf arrives with the Rohirrim from the direction of the rising sun.

I will not pretend this is subtle symbolism. Tolkien was a Catholic, and he was not in the business of hiding his lights under bushels. The dawn charge at Helm’s Deep is resurrection imagery, plain and unambiguous.

After the longest night, after the moment when all human resources have been exhausted, help arrives from beyond the horizon. This is not because it was earned nor because the defenders were adequate to their task. It is because grace is real, and it often arrives precisely when we are most convinced that we have been abandoned.

In IFS language, this is the moment when the inmost self — and the grace of God — breaks through the siege of parts that have been running the system in fear. When Gandalf appears at the edge of the cliff, blazing with light, the army of Uruk-hai cannot look directly at him.

This is what happens when the inmost self in the light of God’s grace — confronts the parts that have tyrannized us in the darkness. They are not destroyed by argument; they are overwhelmed by presence.

Just to be clear, I do not equate our maladaptive problematic parts with orcs. Perhaps it would be better to equate the orcs with burdens. The orcs are servants of the Dark Lord and his plan, his “Kingdom,” is one of hate and domination. The orcs then represent all the lies, all the self-condemnations, all the cognitive distortions, all the false beliefs, all the divisions, all the cruelty, and all the things that oppose God’s Kingdom of Love.

Frodo’s descent: when the protector becomes the prison

Meanwhile, in the quieter but no less devastating arc of this film, Frodo is losing his core self.

The Ring grows heavier with every step toward Mordor. And as it grows heavier, it does what the One Ring always does, it activates the protective parts, crowding out the inmost self.

Frodo becomes suspicious of Sam. He becomes dependent on Gollum in ways that are increasingly disordered. He is not yet gone, but he is slipping. The trust, the warmth, the clear-eyed hobbit courage that we fell in love with in the Shire is fraying at the edges.

Sam watches this with a kind of anguished, unflinching faithfulness that is one of the most moving portrayals of loyal love in all of fantasy literature. Sam is Frodo’s external self-energy — the relational anchor that keeps the ringbearer tethered to something real when the Ring’s seductive darkness threatens to swallow him whole. “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you.” He cannot take the burden. But he can remain present. He can stay.

This is also, incidentally, a profound image of what therapists do at their best — and what the Church at her best offers to those who are struggling. We cannot carry the burdens of those we love, but we can “carry” them by being present. We can refuse to be driven away by the frightened, self-protective parts that push us back.

Closing thoughts: Two Towers, one truth

In some ways The Two Towers is a more complex and disturbing film than The Fellowship of the Ring. It is darker, more fragmented, and more uncertain. There is less beauty and more mud. The victories are partial, provisional, and exhausting. Characters we love are pushed to their limits and, in some cases, beyond them.

But that, I think, is precisely its gift because this is where most of us actually live. Not in the bright beginning of the journey, when the fellowship is intact and the road leads out of the Shire into adventure. Not yet at the “eucatastrophe” — Tolkien’s beautiful word for the sudden, undeserved, world-reversing turn of grace that he believed was the deepest truth embedded in all good stories. But in the middle, in the long, grinding, uncertain middle, where the fellowship is broken and the dawn seems very far away.

And here, in the middle, The Two Towers tells us several things that are both therapeutically sound and profoundly Catholic:

The inmost self cannot be permanently destroyed, only temporarily overwhelmed as Théoden teaches us. The exile cannot be silenced forever, only buried as Sméagol testifies.

Legacy burdens can be named and, with grace, released as Faramir demonstrates. The deepest darkness is not the end of the story as Helm’s Deep proclaims. And love that refuses to let go, Sam’s love, Gandalf’s love, and ultimately God’s love, is the most powerful force in the world.

Tolkien once wrote that the Gospels themselves are the greatest fairy-story of all, and the one that actually happened. Every true myth, he believed, was a ray of light from that central story — a dim reflection of the redemption that broke into history on Easter morning. Viewed through that lens, The Two Towers is not merely a war film. It is a story about the soul’s long night, and about the stubborn, inexhaustible hope that morning will come.

My 12-year-old self knew that intuitively, reading by stolen hallway light. My adult self — therapist, Catholic, and still very much a fantasy geek — is grateful to have the language to say why.

Next month, we press on to The Return of the King. We are almost there.

The journey continues.

Dr. Gerry Crete

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