Did Sauron survive The Lord of the Rings?

sauron is a maya and maya are immortal spiritual beings so despite the ring being destroyed did sauron actually survive the lord of the rings hi everyone this is robert welcome to in deep geek on this channel we cover the lord of the rings a song of ice and fire the witcher and much more the best in fantasy books and tv shows if that sounds good then please consider clicking the subscribe button in the bottom right of your screen and the bell icon at the end of the lord of the rings the one ring is destroyed and sauron's evil reign is ended aragorn is crowned legolas and gimli go on a road trip and the hobbits head back to the shire restoring it to its innocent natural beauty everything seems perfect evil is vanquished the best way to end an epic fantasy story but this is where a geeky attention to detail gets in the way because is there a chance that sauron actually survived yes the ring was destroyed and his tower collapsed but isn't he a maya that level of being in tolkien's legendarium that is fundamentally a spiritual being you can kill his physical body but his spiritual being lives on and potentially takes on a new form sometime later we see this most famously with gandalf another maya his body is killed in his battle with the bell rock but his spirit survives and he returns as gandalf the white sauron makes regular use of this shape-shifting ability and seems pretty proficient at it in the first stage he shifted shape frequently in the tale of baron and luthien he shifts into a werewolf a serpent and a vampire all in short order in the second age he famously took on an aspect of fair hue in tolkien's words and the identity of anata the lord of gifts that's how he managed to mislead the elves and keller brimbur in particular to forge the rings of power with them a disguise so good that the wise like gilgalad and elrond might have had their suspicions but no one knew it was sauron sauron was defeated by the last alliance of elves and men and the ring cut from him but then he returned to menace the world once more millennia later i know he appears in the films as basically just that one fiery eye but he does have a physical body at that point so might he have just done it again after the lord of the rings well let's start as we always should with what tolkien actually wrote this is his description of the end of sauron from the perspective of those outside the black gate the earth rocked beneath their feet then rising swiftly up far above the towers of the black gate high above the mountains a vast soaring darkness sprang into the sky flickering with fire the earth groaned and quaked the towers of the teeth swayed tottered and fell down the mighty rampart crumbled the black gate was hurled in ruin and from far away now dim now growing now mounting to the clouds there came a drumming rumble a roar a long echoing roll of ruinous noise black against the pool of cloud there rose a huge shape of shadow impenetrable lightning crown filling all the sky enormous it reared above the world and stretched out towards them a vast threatening hand terrible but impotent for even as it leaned over them a great wind took it and it was all blown away and passed and then a hush fell that last part where the huge shape of a shadow loomed reaching out and then a great wind blew it away that was sauron himself it would appear a spirit or shadow blown away interestingly this is a similar way to how tolkien describes the end of sarah mann's life another maya to the dismay of those that stood by about the body of sarah mann a grey mist gathered and rising slowly to a great height like smoke from a fire as a pale shrouded figure it loomed over the hill for a moment it wavered looking to the west but out of the west came a cold wind and it bent away and with the sigh dissolved into nothing this is more specific though the wind came out of the west that's figuratively where valinor is and the valar are the implication is clear the valar and perhaps manway himself blew sarah man away scattering his spirit so it seems that technically sauron did survive the destruction of the ring but his spirit was blown away in some way which is all very poetic but what does that actually mean well gandalf has a go at explaining it in the council of elrond they really did have quite a wide-ranging discussion there he says this if it the ring is destroyed then he will fall and his fall will be so low that none can foresee his arising ever again for he will lose the best part of the strength that was native to him in his beginning and all that was made or begun with that power will crumble and he will be maimed forever becoming a mere spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows but cannot again grow or take shape and so a great evil of this world will be removed because you see sauron's situation really is quite different to gandalf's when he came back or even sarah manns when he was killed by grima it was different for two reasons first because sauron had poured so much of himself his strength and will into the one ring so when that was destroyed part of him was destroyed but secondly we shouldn't view sauron as the same as other maya at this moment in time although as far as we know sarah mann only ever had or used that one body sauron is the equivalent of a battle-scarred veteran still powerful but having lost a lot of his previous powers and abilities he wasn't in possession of the ring for one thing but also he had been irreparably damaged by what happened at numenor he had been there when god aru louvitar intervened directly to destroy the entire island continent submerging it beneath the waves all mere mortals were killed sauron himself was killed his body destroyed and his spirit left to limp back across the seas to mordor this god event was so destructive that he could no longer shape-shift afterwards he could slowly take on a physical form once more but only one that represented his true being that of an evil tyrant put simply his maya ability to take on a physical form had been irreparably damaged this is why with the one ring cut from his finger at the end of the second age he disappeared for so long it took him millennia to regain his strength with the one ring destroyed not just missing at the end of the third age in gandalf's words again his fall was so low that none can foresee his arising ever again all of which brings us to the startling conclusion that yes sauron did survive the end of the lord of the rings but he is now just a spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows tolkien would not of course have us think that evil was therefore fully defeated here's gandalf again other evils there are that may come for sauron is himself but a servant or emissary yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world but to do what is in us for the sucker of those years wherein we are set uprooting the evil in the fields that we know so that those who live after may have clean earth to till what weather they shall have is not ours to rule indeed tolkien even started writing a sequel to the lord of the rings exploring this very issue called the new shadow i've done a video about that if you're interested it was set a hundred years into the reign of aragorn's son aldarion tolkien stopped writing it but we are left with an intriguing moment where bolas an old man and the protagonist of the extract we have smelt as it were the scent of an old evil yes sauron was gone defeated dead but he also lived on as a spirit that cannot take bodily form and in echo or as a memory of the scent of evil if you'd like to see more videos about tolkien's legendarium please click on the link to the playlist on the left of your screen or if you'd like to support this channel or get access to some content i produce just for my patrons please click on the link to my patreon page on the right of the screen thanks for watching that's all for this time i'll see you again soon

Channel: In Deep Geek

Views: 734,492

Keywords: in deep geek, deep geek, idg, lord of the rings, the lord of the rings, lotr, tolkien, middle earth, history lore, history, lore, sauron

Id: 7p7BujCw9vg

Length: 9min 6sec (546 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 18 2022