Fade to grey: The end of good vs evil in fiction?

There’s been a disturbance in the Force. Have you felt it? All across popular culture, we have been witnessing an interesting phenomenon: the blurring of lines, the fading to grey, the end of good and evil. It’s all a matter of perspective, haven’t you heard?

Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve always been drawn to stories about good and evil, particularly in science fiction and fantasy: Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, Harry Potter, A Fire Upon the Deep, Dune. All of these stories have been clearly about the struggle between good and evil, often presenting extremely clear-cut and unambiguous examples of evil: Sauron, Emperor Palpatine, orcs, trollocs, the Blight, the Harkonnens, The Dark One, Mashadar, Voldemort. This Manichaean view of the world has often been criticised as simplistic; the world never presents such duality, there are more nuances, there are more grey areas, people can be both good and evil in equal measure.

As a response, many stories have risen with more ambiguous and flawed characters, with less clear-cut depictions of evil, flawed heroes and misunderstood villains. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve also enjoyed many of these more ambiguous stories: The Magicians, the Culture novels, the First Law books, the Malazan books, Discworld, Dune Messiah, A Song of Ice and Fire. All of these are great, and ambiguity has its role in literature as well, but the original “good vs evil” stories remain an important part of storytelling.

That is, until recently. As the original stories were adapted, an interesting thing has been happening: there has been a noticeable move away from the original spirit of good versus evil in many recent adaptations, and there has been an attempt to add moral ambiguity to stories that clearly had none to begin with. Let’s look at some examples.

[SPOILER WARNING FOR THE ACOLYTE, THE WHEEL OF TIME, AND THE RINGS OF POWER]

Wheel of Time

Let me start with the recent adaptation of “The Wheel of Time”. I actually liked it because my expectations were low, and this is one of my favourite fantasy series. I’ve read it several times, which is no small feat as it’s 14 humongous books. The book series is a “chosen one” story of Light versus Dark, pitting the Dragon against the Dark One. 14 books later, countless braid tugs and skirts smoothed later, and Rand al’Thor, the Dragon, defeats the Dark One, but dies in the process (or does he?). There’s little ambiguity here; sure, some of the protagonists are flawed, often infuriating, but there’s no doubt that they represent the Light and all things good. The evil Forsaken are all evil, sometimes a bit too much, but there’s little room for motivation other than ambition, greed, and a desire to rule and crush your rivals.

The TV series on Amazon Prime has angered quite a lot of fans, sometimes because of the casting choices, but most often because some argue that it tells the story badly. As I mentioned, I liked the adaptation, but it has a lot of flaws, and the main one is the depiction of evil. Series 2 in particular starts trying to make some of the main antagonists, the Forsaken, more ambiguous and likeable. Take this line of dialogue from Ishamael, one of the most evil lieutenants of the Dark One in the book series. Here he’s talking to a little girl during a meeting with some Darkfriends, people who have pledged their allegiance to the Dark:

ISHAMAEL: A lot of people call me a monster, too, you know. Along with a litany of other unflattering names. Father of Lies. Betrayer of Hope. Forsaken. Do you know why they call me and the other Chosen such hideous things?
GIRL: No.
ISHAMAEL: ‘Cause if they called me what I really am, no one would be afraid.
ISHAMAEL: After all, how do you prove you’re not a monster? How do you prove that the things you’re doing are good or evil? Right or wrong? Look at this creature. Part man. Part animal. It’s so hard to be something between. What if he isn’t evil? What if he isn’t wrong? What if he’s just… hungry?
ISHAMAEL: Look at me. Do I look like a monster to you?
GIRL: No.

This ambiguity is present in other parts of the series. Ishamael and other Darkfriends aren’t evil; they just want an end to the cycle of resurrection that is a big part of the mythology of the books. They’re motivated not by evil but by tiredness. Other Darkfriends are also given different motivations for their actions. In the end, we are presented with a more ambiguous scenario in which the evil people aren’t truly evil. Not really.

This is completely against the spirit of the books. If this was just an isolated event, I would just let it go. But this is a trend, and we are seeing it across other adaptations, which brings me to the second case study.

The Acolyte

If you type “The Acolyte” into YouTube, chances are that you will be presented with hundreds of videos explaining just how dreadful the latest Star Wars show is. A cottage industry of wannabe culture critics has arisen as a result, as dozens of content creators realised that this was algorithmic gold. It would be easy to dismiss such concerns as the ramblings of grifters, or you could take a hint from the producers and actors and accuse critics of being motivated by racism and misogyny. But take it from an original Star Wars fan, The Acolyte is awful. Words do not serve to describe just how awful it is. The acting, the writing, the premise, the plot holes, the stupid sniffing hamster creature thing, the use of neologisms like resetting a droid to “factory settings”, the laughable “Power of One” song—I could go on and on.

If you missed The Acolyte, you are not alone; it’s been cancelled after it failed to draw an audience. Having cost $180 million USD, it’s difficult to see where all the money went. Besides the many problems with the series, I’d argue that the depiction of the Jedi and the Sith was one of the most problematic. From the start, the Jedi are presented as fallible, corrupt, incompetent, and arrogant Space Cops (and ACAB, right?). While this could have been an interesting premise for a show, the Sith are also presented as ambiguous. Qimir is a Sith; I call him Darth Smiley as we’re never given his Sith name. His motivation is that he wants freedom to do as he pleases without the Jedi interfering. This is, sort of weird? The Sith in canon were wiped out by the Jedi and have remained hidden, plotting their revenge. They’re unambiguously power-hungry and evil. Then Qimir wipes out an entire expedition of Jedi (with some cool lightsabre duels, it must be said), but the very next episode he is presented in a nicer light, bathing in the sea showing off his muscles, seducing the protagonist Osha, who just lost a few of her new friends, killed by this guy. And then she just flips and switches to the dark side, just like that. It is also hinted heavily that Qimir turned to the Dark Side because he suffered abuse from his Jedi Master.

This was unforgivable to me. One of the best things about Revenge of the Sith is Anakin’s believable descent into darkness; it takes years of corruption by Palpatine and the fear of losing Padmé to make him lose it. Here, the switch to the Dark Side is just something that happens in a matter of hours. But it’s not only the fact that Qimir is turned into a sympathetic character, or that becoming a Sith is so easy; the ambiguity was made evident in several interviews, with one of the actors going on to say that “there’s no such thing as good and evil”.

May Lucas have mercy on you.

Just to finish, it’s not impossible to make a morally ambiguous show about Star Wars; it’s already been done, and its name is Andor. That show is more about the banality of evil, about mediocre bureaucrats just following orders, about bored officials in dead-end outposts; it’s about politics and flawed characters who do bad things to win. And it is glorious.

The Rings of Power

And that brings us to the latest show that is following this trend, and that is Amazon’s The Rings of Power. The original stories by Tolkien are unambiguously about good versus evil, Aragorn even explains this in The Two Towers:

“Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man’s part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.”

Tolkien also famously hated allegory, so the one thing that The Rings of Power had to do to remain faithful to the spirit of Tolkien’s work was to follow those two golden rules. But they completely missed it. In Season 1, we’re presented with a likeable and handsome Sauron who seduces Galadriel (yes, it’s as bad as it sounds). Season 2 takes this ambiguity and runs with it. I’ve only watched the first three episodes, but already we have been given reasons to feel sympathy for Sauron as he was stabbed by his own orcs after he gave a “many of you will die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make” speech, so he has to escape, meets a man who suggests that he should be good, and then he’s on his way to Númenor to become a good person. Sure, he’s evil, but he’s dreamy and handsome, can’t you see?

And the orcs. The orcs. What can I say about the orcs? They don’t really want to fight, you see? They have families and little orc babies and orc wives.

I wish I were making all of this up.

The moral ambiguity will probably be lost at some point, but for now it’s a big part of the show, and makes me want to scream. I will continue watching though, because I sometimes love to hate-watch something.

Concluding

It is a strange time being a nerd. I never thought that we would have access to so much content, with some making adaptations of my favourite books and movies. I should be delighted, but I continue to be disappointed by some of the output that we’re seeing. The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy seems like a distant memory, and the modern adaptations are just not up to the challenge. In Star Wars, things have been moving in the wrong direction since The Last Jedi, a movie that I actually liked, but that was retconned by the atrocious Rise of Skywalker which everyone hated. In retrospect, the brave decisions made in that movie could have turned out to be interesting if they had been carried forward. I liked The Mandalorian and Andor, but everything else has been either ‘meh’ or poor. And please, stop assuming that anyone who doesn’t like the latest output is a racist; people of colour are more than capable of disliking these shows and movies for what they are: terrible adaptations.

But at least I won’t have to be tempted to hate-watch another season of The Acolyte. It’s as if millions of geeks cried out in unison and expressed their joy.