20 Idiotic Decisions Made By Characters In The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy

12. Merry & Pippin Try To Help Frodo And End Up Getting Themselves Captured - The Fellowship Of The Ring

Merry and Pippin are often distinguished by their willingness to help without thought of the consequences of their actions. They are the only members of the Fellowship (save Samwise and arguably Aragorn) who learn that Frodo was going to go off on his own before he actually went and did it. When they did, a party of Uruk-Hai is bearing down on them. So Merry and Pippin do the helpful thing and distract the Uruk-Hai in order to allow Frodo to escape. What are friends for? But this is the point where the consequences start to outweigh the benefits. After the Orcs notice them, Merry and Pippin find themselves set upon by the entire horde of Uruk-Hai. Boromir defends them valiantly and dies, and they are abducted and taken away. Aside from splitting the fellowship even further, this decision directly prevented Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli from helping Frodo and Sam accomplish the ultimate goal of their quest, as well as leading them on quite a lengthy wild Goose chase throughout Rohan.

11. Saruman Cuts Down The Forest Of Fangorn - The Two Towers

For most of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, Saruman is one of the most effective antagonists the good peoples of Middle Earth could possibly have. A powerful wizard, he builds one of the strongest armies possible from the ground up, using everything from mind control to manipulation to gain allies from the Wild Men of Rohan and the Dark Lord of Mordor. But during the course of all this scheming, he makes one small mistake that costs him dearly. Saruman is guilty of perhaps the most cliche of villain flaws: Hubris. His pride turns him to the industry of war, and he turns Isengard into a veritable war machine - churning out weapons and armies of Uruk-Hai to use them. However, fuel is quite important when churning out armies, so Saruman uses the nearby forest of Fangorn as fuel for his furnaces. What he doesn't figure on is how the Ents will react once they see the damage he caused. The consequences Saruman experiences due to this little oversight are drastic and unforgiving: The Ents come and attack Isengard, destroying his factories, flooding his grounds, and effectively destroying any chance he ever had of recovering from the defeat at Helm's Deep. As Treebeard said, "A wizard should know better."