Who is Sauron?

Oddly enough for the titular character of “The Lord of the Rings”, Sauron is not a central character in the story. Especially in Peter Jackson’s movies, Sauron is rarely seen, and when he is seen, he’s almost always depicted as a great eye.

Warning Spoilers ahead.

The new Rings of Power show, however, changes all of that, putting Sauron front and center of the epic conflict. But just who is Sauron?

As it so happens, there is actually a lot of info on Sauron within Tolkien’s Legendirium. So let’s cover the basics and help you understand a little better just who is Sauron.

Sauron is Not the Original Dark Lord

Before the big bad guy that is Sauron came into being as we know him, there was another, greater Dark Lord. Called Morgoth, Morgoth was actually an even higher being than Sauron. He was one of the Valar, the original children of Eru Ilúvatar, Middle Earth’s version of God. However, Morgoth wasn’t into the idea of serving Ilúvatar’s vision for creation. He wanted to do his own thing.

Long story short, Morgoth caused a lot of trouble in the First Age of Middle Earth, including wars and other shenanigans. And his chief servant was none other than our boy Sauron.

Sauron Was A Master Craftsman

You may have picked up on this from the new Rings of Power show, but Sauron was really good at making stuff. In fact, that was probably his chief power (that and tricking people into doing stuff). It was his craftsmanship abilities, after all, that enabled him to forge a ring of such great power that it could dominate all other rings.

He’s sort of like that artsy kid you knew in high school, only he used his powers for bad.

Sauron Was Repentant, at One Point

After the fall of Morgoth, Sauron’s boss, Sauron briefly repented of his ways. Whether or not he was truly sorry for what he did we do not know, but we do know that he did eventually fall back into his evil ways due to his own inability to submit himself to the judgement of the Valar. Tolkien does point out, however, that to some extent Sauron’s inability to really ever get over the evil stuff wasn’t entirely his fault. Morgoth had placed “powerful bonds” on him, which implies at this point, being a bad guy was somewhat habitual.

Sauron Was a Maiar

Okay, so now we finally get to the part where we talk about what Sauron actually was. Was he a man? An elf? A dwarf?

Actually, Sauron was none of the above. He was a “higher” being, meaning he was higher up in the hierarchy of the created world. In fact, he was pretty much in second place on that hierarchy, just behind the higher beings of the Valar.

To better understand this, you can think of Sauron as being on a similar playing field as Gandalf. Although it is never explicitly said what kind of created being Gandalf is, Tolkien has said he was one of the Valar, and it seems likely he was a Maiar as well.

Fun fact: the Balrog’s were also Maiar, corrupted by Morgoth.

Of the Maiar, Sauron was arguably the strongest – at least of those that we run into. Although Gandalf could give him a run for his money, Gandalf is forbidden to match Sauron power for power. So that’s a showdown that we never would have seen play out.

What Are Maiar?

Elves, men, dwarves and even the Valar are somewhat easy to understand. The first three of those beings being created creatures of body and soul like you and me. Easy enough to understand. The Valar are sort of like the Greek gods or Norse gods or whoever you want to call them. The Maiar, however, are trickier to understand. The best way I can explain them is they are sort of like Angels, if you are familiar with those. They aren’t mortal the way men and dwarves are, or even as limited as Elves (that’s right, Elves aren’t mortal and when they die they actually wind up back in Valinor).

Maiar are much more powerful, however, and they can’t ever really die. They also aren’t as tied to their bodies as Elves, men and Dwarves are. We see Gandalf, for example, sort of die and then come back. Sauron is the same. Killing his body isn’t enough to stop him. He’ll just come back.

Sauron is a Deceiver

One last thing about Sauron is that he’s really good at shapeshifting. Probably due to the above lack of a strong connection to his physical form, Sauron at base actually is formless. But throughout Tolkien’s history we see him take many shapes – as a good looking dude who tricks the Elves (we see that in The Rings of Power), as a werwolf, a vampire, and eventually an eye on the tower.

At one point in time, however, Sauron does lose the original body he was gifted with when one of his plans backfire. So during the third age, he is no longer able to take on what Tolkien calls “a fair form”, basically meaning something pleasant to look at (fair as opposed to foul like the Orcs).

And that’s it – that’s just about everything you need to know about Sauron!