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Well, this is rather discomfiting, to be sure, but no one should be taking any alarm here. I mean, really... good guys die all the time in Tolkien--especially if they're leaderly sorts. Take a quick glance over the Silmarillion, if you don't believe me. In fewer pages than it takes Robert Jordan to waffle about whether or not one character is dead or not, Tolkien manages to kill off five High Kings of the Noldor, six sons of Fëanor (and his mum), the whole kingdom of Doriath, and more secondary and tertiary characters than you can count on an army's worth of thumbs.
What should really be taken as crucially problematic here is that the Barrow-Wight wasn't just the forum's Fingolfin or Fingon--he was more in the line of Manwë or Eru. If he's dead, what chance does any of us have.
Still, Melkor can't win. Or Sauron. Or Herumor. Or any of the other successive waves of evil that Gandalf predicted.
All the same, let's not find ourselves in a latter-day Kin-slaying, as I rather fear we have.
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