2. Aragorn Decides To Let Wormtongue Go & Inadvertently Dooms Thousands - The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
When Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli and Gandalf arrive in Rohan in
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, they discover a slimy, pale-faced fellow called Wormtongue is manipulating the king, a golden-bearded chap named Theoden, as a puppet to the evil wizard Saruman. Gandalf puts a stop to this instantly, of course, and manages to remove Saruman's grip on Theoden, returning him to his former self. Upon learning that his right-hand man is actually aligned with evil, then, Theoden attempts to slay Wormtongue on the stone steps outside his house. Enter Aragorn, the
Lord of the Rings character who pretty much everyone wants to be - brave, intelligent and valiant, he's the kind of hero who never makes a wrong decision and always opts for righteous path. And in this scenario, Aragorn wishes to do good and steps in to prevent Theoden from hacking Wormtongue to death because (and I quote) "enough blood has been spilt on his account." And this might've been fair enough, had Wormtongue been some homeless guy with a few magic tricks up his sleeve, but that's really, really not the case. Wormtongue is aligned with the most power dark wizard in Middle-Earth. Upon being released, he flees Rohan and goes crawling straight back to him. When he gets there, he reveals information about the weaknesses of Helm's Deep, the fortress where the climatic battle takes place at the end of the movie. Thousands of soldiers die because of these exposed weakness - deaths that are technically on Aragorn's hands. They didn't need to kill him, but why didn't they put Wormtongue in jail or tie him up in the basement? Just letting him go makes no sense at all.