Major advances in mononuclear phagocyte biology have been made but key questions pertinent to their roles in health and disease remain, including in the visual system. One problem concerns how dendritic cells can trigger immune responses from certain tightly regulated immune- privileged sites of the eye. Another, albeit separate, problem involves whether there are functional specializations for microglia versus monocytes in retinal neurodegeneration. In this Review, we examine novel insights in eye immune privilege and, separately, we discuss recent inroads concerning retinal degeneration. Both themes have been extensively studied in the visual system and show parallels with recent findings concerning mononuclear phagocytes in the central nervous system and in the periphery.