The Rings of Power‘s first season began telling a beautiful backstory about the legendary Doors of Durin. That magical gateway, which famously held up Frodo and his companions in The Fellowship of the Ring, was borne from the special bond between Elrond and Durin IV. Now that passageway is ready to serve as Khazad-dûm’s West-gate. It’s also ready to serve as a lasting testament to a once unlikely connection between two proud races. Only, season two has now shown the tragic side of this otherwise touching tale. The Doors of Durin stands as a symbol of friendship between elves and dwarves, but fittingly it also stands as a testament to the dark lord whose watchful and deceiving eye it was made under.
J.R.R. Tolkien wrote that Celebrimbor and the celebrated dwarf craftsman Narvi made the Doors of Durin together. The Rings of Power showed them doing just that in season two’s fifth episode. The sequence also highlighted the significance of this joint endeavor. “Dwarves and elves working together?” said a smiling Celebrimbor. “It was said to be impossible. But our cooperation has achieved this wonder. And today we embark on a new dream, to enshrine our friendship in stone.”
The Doors of Durin are “un-breachable, visible only by moonlight, and guarded by a password known only to friends.” ( Or grey wizards who eventually figure it out long after they should have.) That gateway truly is a symbol of the “lasting friendship between elves and dwarves.”
That friendship will see its ups and downs, just as Elrond and Durin IV have. But it will always prove true when it matters most. Elves and dwarves will soon fight side-by-side against Sauron in the The War of the Last Alliance. And they will come together in the Third Age when the world needs them. Gimli and Legolas will join Frodo on his journey to Mordor. That journey that will bring them to much more than the Doors of Durin. It will lead to a lifelong bond.
The Rings of Power has also expanded the passageway’s lore by delving deep into the creation of mithral. In season one, the show shared an original tale about a battle between a pure-hearted elven warrior and a balrog of Morgoth. They fought above a tree said to contain one of the famed Silmarils created by Celebrimbor’s grandfather Fëanor, the greatest elf craftsmen ever. When a bolt of lightning struck the tree the elven warrior poured “all his light” into saving the tree. Meanwhile the balrog “channeled all his hate” into its destruction. Legend says their combined power led to the creation of mithral, which Gil-galad described as being equally “pure in light as good” as “strong and unyielding as evil.”
Mithral brought elves and dwarves together. Elrond asked for that special metal to save the elves of Middle-earth. But it also made both races vulnerable to Sauron’s false friendship. The Dark Lord is deceiving the world with rings of power. “Annatar” was also there when the two races came together to make the Doors of Durin, which fittingly uses mithral.. Celebrimbor made his magical moonlight inlay with ithildin, a thin, extremely refined form of mithril.
The very thing elves and dwarves made together—the one that encased their bond in stone forever, the door that will protect dwarves of Khazad-dûm until they must abandon their home because of greed driven by Sauron’s rings—contains both good and evil in it. Just as all of Middle-earth does.
Fortunately for elves and swarves the one power in Middle-earth that always proves un-breachable is friendship.