What Happens To Sauron At The End Of The Lord Of The Rings Is Worse Than Death
Sauron is the big baddie of J.R.R. Tolkien's universe. Yes, Morgoth is the ultimate villain for much of the earlier source material of "The Silmarillion," but in the end, the author spends much more time developing and chronicling the rise and fall of Morgoth's successor, the Dark Lord 2.0, i.e., Sauron. That rise ends abruptly at the end of "The Lord of the Rings," when Gollum meets his own unexpected death, slipping into the Cracks of Doom and bringing the One Ring with him down into the fiery inferno.
The Ring melts, and that's it, right? No more Sauron? Kind of. The thing is, Sauron doesn't actually die. Instead, he's reduced to—gasp!—irrelevance.
In "The Return of the King" book, Gandalf explains Sauron's fate in more detail right before the Lords of the West march on the Black Gate to confront (and distract) Sauron from the final stage of Frodo's quest. In the dialogue, the Istari says if the One Ring is destroyed, "[Sauron] 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." It goes on to address what will happen to Sauron, himself, saying, "he will be maimed for ever, 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."
When the One Ring is cast into the fires of Mount Doom, Sauron doesn't die. He becomes an unimportant anonymity. It's a fate worse than death for a domineering immortal spirit that has spent millennia amassing power and trying to rule the fate of others.
The multiple rises and falls of Sauron
Right before Gandalf describes Sauron's horrifying fate if the Ring goes kaput, he says, "If [the One Ring] is destroyed, then [Sauron] will fall; and his fall will be so low that none can foresee his arising ever again." The fear of Sauron "arising again" is consistent with the history of Middle-earth. By the time of the War of the Ring, Sauron has either symbolically or literally taken on new forms and risen to power multiple times.
The initial rise to power is at the beginning of the Second Age, when Amazon's "The Rings of Power" show is set (making it possible to connect that early prequel directly to "The Lord of the Rings" timeline). This comes after Morgoth is defeated and Sauron escapes. Eventually, he helps the Elves forge Rings of Power and tries to conquer Middle-earth. At one point while living on the island of Númenor, his physical form "dies," and he has to take on a new form on the mainland again.
When the armies of the Last Alliance defeat him, and Isildur cuts the One Ring from Sauron's hand (as depicted in the opening scene of Peter Jackson's "The Fellowship of the Ring"), Sauron loses his physical form again. Over the three-thousand-year-long Third Age that follows, he slowly takes shape all over again, including Sauron's guise as the Necromancer in "The Hobbit." During the "Lord of the Rings" story, Tolkien doesn't specify what Sauron looks like (although he's clearly more than a glowing eyeball). His slow, difficult reincarnation reinforces Gandalf's words that, if he loses this form again due to losing the One Ring's power, he'll take such a hit that he simply won't be able to build a meaningful body again.
What does it look like when Sauron dies in the movies versus the books?
When the Dark Lord perishes in Peter Jackson's films, his eye-shaped form (which, again, is not actually what Sauron really looks like) bursts into flame, his tower topples, and then the inflamed ocular orb suddenly explodes, mid-air, sending a shockwave across the lands. Is this an accurate representation of what Tolkien wrote? Again, the answer is a definitive "kind-of."
The destruction of the Tower of Barad-dûr and the surrounding regions is accurate enough. Among a string of catastrophic descriptions in the wake of the destruction of the One Ring, "The Return of the King" book says, "Towers fell and mountains slid; walls crumbled and melted, crashing down." It describes sky-high smokes and steams. There are earth-shattering rumbles, crashes, thunders, and roars.
When it comes to Sauron, we get the words, "There rose a huge shape of shadow, impenetrable, lighting-crowned, 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 then, a great wind took it, and it was all blown away, and passed; and then a hush fell."
In his final moments, Sauron does his best to intimidate his foes once more, but his threat is impotent. It's harmless. It's irrelevant. The Dark Lord is no longer a lord. He's a nobody, doomed to a life of immateriality, inability, and, ultimately, insignificance. As he passes away, though, where does he go?
Sauron ends up in the Timeless Void
Sauron's ending in "The Lord of the Rings" is left vague. He fades away, vanishing in the wind. For years, that's all readers had to work with, until Tolkien died, and his son, Christopher, began posthumously publishing books like "The Silmarillion." In it, we get a summary of Sauron's entire trajectory in the wake of his master, which reads thus, "But in after years he rose like a shadow of Morgoth and a ghost of his malice, and walked behind him on the same ruinous path down into the Void."
What is "the Void"? We're glad you asked. During Tolkien's creation story, he references an area called "the Void," which, for all intents and purposes, is an empty, timeless place. Creation lies within that space, but it is separate from it and bound by time.
When Morgoth is defeated, "The Silmarillion" explains that he is "thrust through the Door of Night beyond the Walls of the World, into the Timeless Void." Based on Sauron's summary, presumably, he meets a similar fate as well, imprisoned on the edge of the world and even outside of time itself.
Does Sauron have a birthday?
If Sauron doesn't really have a death date, it begs the question: does he have a birth date? When does he come into being? How do you know how many candles to cram onto the Dark Lord's cake each year? Yet again, in Tolkien's infinite wisdom, he's made Sauron's birth date another tough question to definitively answer. However, we can get an idea of Sauron's age based on Tolkien's creation myth.
In the beginning of Tolkien's world, before time even exists, Illúvatar, the Creator of the world, makes the spiritual beings called the Ainur. In the opening paragraphs of "The Silmarillion," it says, "There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made." Sauron is amongst these, and the book later says, "In his beginning he was of the Maiair of Aulë, and he remained mighty in the lore of that people."
So, Sauron is around from day one—even before that. He sees it all, from the creation of the world to its destruction. From the highs to the lows. He, himself, becomes one of the leading drivers of the fate of Middle-earth and ultimately is destroyed as part of its salvation.
And yet, he doesn't die. He just continues, a spirit of malice unable to take shape or dominate those around him ever again. It is a fate worse than death.