5 years from now in cinema: "Somehow.. Sauron returned"

Morgoth (chopped up and drifting in the Endless Void): "Okay, okay, don't panic, Morgy, Sauron knows the plan, we talked about it, he's gonna do the ring thing, he's gonna take over, he's gonna fish me out of this place-" Sauron (bodiless) " Hey." Morgoth: ".....fuuuccckkkkkkkkk...."

He drifted off into the East, and now does cold calls selling solar panels

Those artworks, the constant deep dark ambient melody in the background, the narration puts you into the story as if you are a part of it. Massive. Well done.

Tolkien wrote he was maimed and became a “spirit of malice” that would gnaw at itself in the dark, but never again could he recover or take shape.

Sauron would be happy with the way things are going today.

A good ending for Sauron would be to lose his malice and his will to dominate all life, as he poured that into the ring and it would be destroyed together with the ring. This would make Sauron probably still vengeful for some time, but he would find himself unable to focus on his old character traits and would have to get used to the existence without them.

I couldn’t imagine a worse fate than being a shrivelled husk, forced to watch the world pass you by, forever.

I forgot for a second that Sauron is a fictional character and felt his dark presence. Excellent storytelling!

Hold on a second. This makes me wonder... Sauron's ring is not so much a ring of power but a ring of defeat mitigation. In RPG terms, imagine a game in which everytime you die your stats are reset to 1 when you respawn and you have to grind again or wait and slowly recover the stats back through resting. So then, in order to mitigate this you forge a ring and you transfer 60% of all your stats when you're the most powerful you've been. That means when you die again you will reset back to 1 but put the ring back on and you get all those stats you had stored in the ring previously. Allowing to bypass a lot of penalty from defeat

He is hanging out with his old master Melkor, testing each other with riddles, to see who gets to go hunt for the ‘Imperishable Flame 🔥’ of Illuvatar

I love that this feels like a documentary made in universe.

Off to the void with you. Void being the cold nothingness of space. No stars or anything else, just cold, dark, lifeless void.

Sauron being a malignant spectre gnawing at itself without the best part of himself from the beginning from which all his strength came must be such a curse indeed... Forever as time went on... All his memory gets older and older and that time that he once was the dark lord is gone. To have lost the war for middle earth must impress upon him forever like a doom worse than death.

This video immediately enthralled me just wow this channel never fails to impress, all the love and admiration of the Valar

Melkor and Sauron sitting there in a dark void... waiting. What could ever possibly go wrong? 😅

Man.. you've put this whole franchise into a beautiful perspective for me. Because at the end of the trilogy, the only thing I wondered was: "what happened to Sauron after all this?"

Sauron existing today would explain a lot.

Poor Sauron. He was a good boy. He just got with the wrong crowd. He was misunderstood.

The artwork in this one is fantastic. These just keep getting better and better!

In other words, a Hungry Ghost, wandering in the Bardo.

He holds a podcast, complaining that he lost the war, due to mismanagement from some of his orcs, and blames the Witch King for being vague with the prophecy. He would lose subscribers, when a leaked audio clip was revealed of him making inappropriate comments to an elf who was only 99 at the time. Things didn't get better when Gandalf and Galadriel decided to do a video call with him on Twitch, to discuss this. He would constantly dodge the questions, and say that it's just the haters trying to ruin his reputation. His Patreon is still up, but it isn't as large as it used to be during the War of the Ring.

Excellent video! Only one small remark: at the end of the Third Age, what "killed" Sauron (i.e irretrievably damaged his body ) was not the destruction of the One Ring, it was instead the collapse of Barad-Dur that immediately followed.

My own head cannon has always been that Sauron lost the ability to manifest himself in any physical way. He exists in Middle Earth, barely coherent, nearly insensate, lingering forever in quasi unconsciousness.

I don’t think Sauron is the best villain ever, but he certainly is one of the most unique ones. When you learn his whole story he becomes such an interesting topic to talk about. He combines understandable motivations and primordial horror

Imagine Sauron came back today, and the Orcs have access to modern military equipment and an air force.

Holy shit, I'm starting to see why fans like this stuff so much.

A surprisingly good video. I expected the usual "he lost his ability to interact with and affect the world", but this was a very indepth and thoughtful analysis

I like to imagine sauron managing a dmv somewhere on the east coast these days.

The One Ring was the original Horcrux...

Actually when men die, their fëar first go to the Halls of Mandos for a short time and then go to a place set aside by Eru as a "Gift."

Sauron lives on as a powerless evil fart cloud. Yet though he strives mighty to dealt it no one in Middle Earth ever again smelt it. Mainly because Tolkien never wrote Return of the Shadow.

From what I hear, he's been hanging around, spending most of his time in the pub at the bar, and getting drunk... And reminiscing about the good old days!! He is making an absolute pain on himself! Yet it must be hard being a former dictator, now exiled, knowing that everyone hates you.... Meanwhile he's plotting his revenge!!!

He was reincarnated into our reality as a guy who tends the shoe rental counter at a bowling alley. Probably one in Toledo.

I commend you for not only your reading of the texts in the HoME series, but more importantly your solid COMPRESSION of them. Well done indeed. This video is what is getting me to subscribe. If it's quality is representative of all your content, I'm only sad I didn't find the channel sooner. ❤

The Numenorian Soliers who followed their King into the undying lands, but werent actually evil but just following orders, entrapped in earth for eternity until the last day: "Man this blows. ..."

Sauron is waiting for Half-Live 3 to have an excuse to return.

Great channel! I also like the new narration voice

In the barely started sequel to LOTR, "Return of the Shadow" ,it's possible the cult worshipped the ghost or idea of Sauron

Where did this channel come from? It’s amazing; respectful of the source material, informative and sophisticated and the narrators voice is just *chefs kiss*

Narrator voice is perfect ❤ Focusing me. Sharping my mind and thoughts❤

He is at a retirement community in Florida called the villages. He's having fun and meeting new and exciting people.

Fantastic story telling and summary of Sauron. I feel like i just lived his life

Straight up attenborough quality storytelling

I’ll save you 30 minutes. He’s floating in the void playing solitaire until end of time.

Was "King of Kings" vainglorious though? Was it really? Or was it all part of the plan to allow Sauron to get close to Ar-Pharazôn so he could poison him against the Valar? Seems much more likely to be the latter to me.

One thing I know. When it comes to good and evil. One cannot exist without the other. For good to exist, evil must exist. Sauron as a shadow still can have a chance of returning to the world. Whether by pure chance, or by the hands of someone else. When you consider the idea that as time continues, more opportunities and possibilities can arise. So pretty much the longer it takes to eventually reach the end of the world. The possibility of Sauron coming back increases.

He’s now Sauroff

These are really, really spectacular. I hope you cover every single topic forwards and backwards

Love this channel 🖤

He is sitting in the great beyond with his former master propably getting the worlds most boring talking to from Eru Illuvatar

The destruction of Numenor is like a story from the Old Testament.

he is but an angry fart in the wind

I think it's been mentioned before, but why did the movie take out the most important part of the story? And that's what happened AFTER the ring was destroyed and all the hobbits rising up and now having the courage to fight against the evil that entered their home?

So basically, Sauron's fate is pretty much hell on Earth from hia point of view, able to see, yet to do nothing, unable to control or do anything, forever to suffer until the world ends, unless the surpeme one, sends a helping hand to give him a chance of remeption, maybe after a few million years of suffering from his own folly, thou that is unlikely and will likely end up in the void with his former master, the first Dark Lord

11/10 LOTR lore vid. Thanks for this, it makes the story so much richer

So Sauron became Disney...

Amazing work

The co-author of the fandom's longest fiction-in-progress applauds you for this extremely well-presented exposition! While our own creation has taken a different tack with Mairon/Sauron in order to explore different eschatological themes, it's wonderful to find a video containing such thorough research that also differentiates the critical elements of publications personally approved by the Professor vs. not, and (standing ovation here) sifts the prejudices/reliability of in-story narrators (the Elves, or even words about Sauron voiced by Gandalf while in his role as an Istar vs. what he might understand when possessed of his faculties while serving as Olórin). Bravo!

Great video - it also brings to mind the demise of Saruman (a fellow Maiar), …”about the body of Saruman a grey mist gathered, and rising slowly to a great height like smoke from 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 a sigh dissolved into nothing.”

So well done

I always thought that Sauron would start helping Morgoth destroying Angainor to free him in the Void. Sauron's help will finally make it possible that Morgoth will return in the Dagor Dagorath.

What i found fascinating and also terrifying in the book was when Saruman is killed by Grima. In the book the hobbits see his spirit exit the lifeless body in the form of almost a cloud of dust and begin looking towards the west (valinor) but a gust a wind blows in from that direction and sends the spirit off eastward essentially banishing him from ever returning to the west. Its interesting to me because it almost seems that his spirit was looking for forgiveness or passage but because of his pure bitterness and failure to uphold his task as a member of the Istari he was ultimately banished from Valinor by the Ainur or maybe by Eru himself

I bet Gandalf missed the Leaf of the Halflings when he returned to Valinor, but then again, perhaps Frodo brought some seeds with him 😂

um, dead So I guess in the Middle Earth version of Hell

I've read a rings of power season 2 spoiler, turns out all white male elves were the real enemy and the daughter of sauron and galadriel single handedly defeats them all and then everything is good forever

Meanwhile in Valinor the Valar are celebrating. Manwë: "The materialist-imperialist Sauron has finally been defeated! The age of gods and mages is over, who would lord over man no more! Here comes the Age of Man!" Mandos: "Yo, Manwë! Look! You accidently created communism!" Manwë: "Aww s***! Here we go again!"

Always have a backup plan. Sauron should have had a way to reclaim the power he put into the ring incase it was destroyed.

Where is Sauron now? What does he doing millennia after Battle of the Morannon ? Sauron: Well, I took vacation on Bora Bora, days, moths, years passed and now I hold barbecue bar and small Inn at the beach, 'At Rings Master', proper name, heh...

He decided to move out to the far country, sat out on the porch for a good few decades smoking a good fill of pipeweed and decided ‘ahh, I can’t be arsed just now’. Maybe he’ll return as a woman when the copyright comes up again and is bought by Disney…. Seems to be working for the Star Wars and Marvel stuff…

It might be breaking the plot rules but the image of a vast, malevolent shadow emerging from the skies trying in vain to reach down to the dying Ring before vanishing in a gust of wind would be just as epic a villain defeat as the collapse of the tower was in the film. No doubt some talented graphic artists could do some real magic with that.

He's cracking a cold one with the boys.

Evil never dies. Sauron was a second generation Valar. He had less power than Morgoth. He would be a demon now. Eru removed the immortality of the rebellious Valar( psalms 2, I think). So, Sauron is a first generation nephilim.. he got too ambitious. He used the rings to ensnare others into his web. When his one ring was destroyed, he became a bodiless spirt (demon) once again.

He got a job as a political commentator on NewsMax. Heard Morgoth changed his name to Trump and ran for president in some place called America.

He drifted away far to the east to a call center now inquiring about your car’s extended warranty

It’s explicitly explained in the books lol. He’s reduced to a harmless, shapeless spirit. Doomed to wander the world as an impotent nothing, never again able to take physical form.

Sauron's spirit runs the modern media, and woke movement

Sauron will always be around. He’s immortal. He’s part of Alluvitar’s plan.

missed opportunity to have a thumbnail of sauron getting chased by the paparazzi

personally I have always seen Sauron as a shadow of Morgoth *shrugs* but still very much enjoyed the show :)

The thing is, Melkor and Sauron could return. That was what Sauron was trying to do on Numenor after all - open the gates of night

came across ur channel about a month ago, watched all ur vids and GET SO FRICKIN HYPE WHENEVER U DROP ANOTHER 1 LETS GO BABY WOOOOOOOO!!!

Ahh, the story of how SAURON became SAUROFF

He became a mere shadow form that had no power at all. The age of men had now finally come true ✨️🧙‍♂️

I swear, this beats rings of power hands down for me! I just can’t get into warrior Galadriel and “don’t call him Sauron he is Halbrand” I’m sorry, Halbrand who??!! 😂😂

very nice video. love the sound effects & music in particular

There’s one way to defeat Melkor with a single utterance. Speak this secret word and he shall be utterly defeated: *_Smellkor_*

I love to watch these before sleep

“Where is Sauron now” has a real “what happened to The Parking Lot Karen” vibe.

How curious that not even the gods know where mortals go after death.

How lucky that Mt Doom didn't become dormant in the third age! ;)

In other words, Sauron will spend eternity in the Void which is devoid of time. That is worse than hell if you think about it.

After Númenor sank, Sauron's ëala carried the One Ring all the way back to Barad-dür. At least, that is what Tolkien said happened.🙄

Presentation, narration and visual images are excellent - had me engrossed throughout. :)

In the Kremlin, back to ruling the Orcs.

2:56 “Flickering endlessly, never to truly be extinguished.”

I hope a movie is made about Sauron after Tolkien's most bitter relatives have passed.

dude, those images from the Silmarillion at the beginning of the video were amazing, excellent find/make

He is waiting on Peter Jackson to make LOTR 4

Sauron made the One Ring as a support point (a kind of hook he threw into Arda) to be able to realize his incarnate existence on Arda even if he lost his physical form. As long as the One Ring exists, he always feels and senses it in his being. In this way, even if his physical form is destroyed, he maintains his will to reincarnate. When the One Ring is destroyed, the spiritual power he connected to it is dispersed to Arda, and since his essence spirit cannot sense it in his being (he loses access to it), he loses his will to reincarnate forever and is reduced to an ineffective spirit that cannot physically interact with it for the Seen World. On the other hand, I believe that he may have continued to have the ability to realize ósanwë (a kind of telepathy) with his spirit based on the main power he did not connect to the One Ring, as is the case with the disembodied elves. This must be the case, and I think it may have indirectly affected the New Shadow story in the following period.