Sauron’s followers were shrouded in mystery in The Lord of the Rings, but some were named, acclaimed, and legendary in lore. Undoubtedly, Sauron’s nine most loyal assistants were The Lord of the Rings’ Ringwraiths. Among the Ringwraiths were Sauron’s most powerful and mysterious servants, with only two named in LotR, and one of those in Unfinished Tales. Meanwhile, some of Sauron’s strongest minions were his least loyal, playing the long game in their involvement with him, biding their time until they could make their own play for power.
✕ Remove Ads
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2 continued season 1’s impressive adaptation of a Second Age Sauron, amplifying Sauron’s forces with original characters. These characters were Adar, the Nomad, the Ascetic, and the Dweller. However, all four turned out to be more complex than they first seemed, and were revealed, by the end of season 2, as independent agents, opposing Sauron in their own way. The Dark Wizard, likewise, confirmed that he opposed Sauron. The most influential of Sauron’s named servants were not, in fact, Amazon characters, but Tolkien characters from across the legendarium.
10 Captain Shagrat
Uruk Chieftain Of Cirith Ungol
✕ Remove Ads
Shagrat is one of the higher-ups of Sauron’s army, followed by Samwise Gamgee as his troops carried Frodo off to Cirith Ungol. He is an Uruk captain of The Two Towers, part two of J.R.R. Tolkien’s magnum opus, The Lord of the Rings, published in 1954 and adapted by Peter Jackson into The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers movie. Through Sam’s perspective, readers were given an insight into his powers and proclivities.
In the animated 1980 movie,
The Return of the King,
Captain Shagrat is voiced by Paul Frees.
Shagrat was not Sauron’s most loyal Orc, but clearly commanded the garrison of the Tower of Cirith Ungol. When asked what he was doing patrolling the mountain pass near Shelob’s lair, he responded, “I’m in command of this pass.” He conspired with Gorbag to “slip off somewhere” where there were no “big bosses.” However, in the face of Gorbag’s insistence on attacking Frodo’s unconscious form, Shagrat defended Frodo on Sauron’s orders.
✕ Remove Ads
9 Captain Gorbag
Uruk Captain Of Minas Morgul
Gorbag was the Uruk captain who joined Shagrat at Cirith Ungol and found Frodo in The Two Towers. He commanded over 80 Orcs, by Sam’s reckoning, and “seemed to belong to Minas Morgul.” Gorbag confirmed that it was “no game serving down in the city.” Perhaps the challenges of the city had helped carve out his savvy nature. He seemed to possess more authority and intelligence than Shagrat, working out that Frodo hadn’t been alone. Gorbag’s astute realization could have won Sauron the war, ultimately, if more care had been put into finding Sam.
Related Is Anyone Responsible For Their Actions In Lord Of The Rings? Free Will & Fate In Middle-Earth Explained
Fate and free will in The Lord of the Rings have been debated since the ’50s, but there are answers to these lingering questions in the legendarium.
Posts1
✕ Remove Ads
A rare case of a named Orc in Sauron’s army, Gorbag showed agency and independence, along with Shagrat. This demonstrated that Orcs were more than just automatons in Middle-earth. Although Sauron clearly used mind control on some Orcs, they were speaking and thinking beings. Tolkien reasoned in his later years that this earned them the same rights as all other species in Middle-earth, making them fully realized, dangerous fighters on Sauron’s team.
8 Bolg Of The North
Orc Chieftain
Bolg, son of Azog, was a powerful Orc chieftain in The Hobbit book and movies. After Bolg’s father was killed by Dáin Ironfoot, he took command of the northern Orcs. This imposing leader rallied the Orcs of the Misty Mountains to fight Dwarves, Elves, and Men in the Battle of Five Armies. Bolg lost the battle but beat down many of Sauron’s foes, weakening them in the lead-up to the events of The Lord of the Rings. About 60 years passed between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
✕ Remove Ads
Orcs’ lifespans weren’t well-documented in
The Lord of the Rings,
but some appeared to live for longer than humans, which makes sense considering their origins – Morgoth twisted Elves into Orcs.
Amazon Prime Video’s The Rings of Power courted controversy for creating the sympathetic image of an Orc wife and baby, but The Hobbit actually beat Rings of Power to the idea of an Orc family by years. However, Bolg’s warlike father-son relationship was hardly sympathetic in The Hobbit book and even less so in the movies. Peter Jackson emphasized Azog and Bolg’s allegiance to Sauron, which was more implicit in the book. Either way, this leader of the Moria Orcs was a powerful presence and lived to be over 142.
7 Azog The Defiler
Orc Chieftain
Close
✕ Remove Ads
Azog the Pale or Azog the Defiler was simply Azog in the book, but Jackson’s amped-up super-Orc certainly provided the story with a devilish villain. This northern commander was a long-lived Orc ruling in Moria, having taken it over from the Dwarves. Sauron began to people Moria with his creatures in the year 2480 of the Third Age, and Azog could well have been one of its original colonizers.
|
Tolkienian Age |
Event Marking The Start |
Years |
Total Length In Solar Years |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Before time |
Indeterminate |
Indeterminate |
Indeterminate |
|
Days before Days |
Ainur entered Eä |
1 – 3,500 Valian Years |
33,537 |
|
Pre-First Age Years of the Trees (Y.T.) |
Yavanna created the Two Trees |
Y.T. 1 – 1050 |
10,061 |
|
First Age (F.A.) |
Elves awoke in Cuiviénen |
Y.T. 1050 – Y.T. 1500, F.A. 1 – 590 |
4,902 |
|
Second Age (S.A.) |
War of Wrath ended |
S.A. 1 – 3441 |
3,441 |
|
Third Age (T.A.) |
Last Alliance defeated Sauron |
T.A. 1 – 3021 |
3,021 |
|
Fourth Age (Fo.A) |
Elven-rings left Middle-earth |
Fo.A 1 – unknown |
Unknown |
✕ Remove Ads
Azog would have been key in Sauron’s expansion as a leader in Moria. Sauron spent a long time building up his forces and growing his realm before he dared to start the War of the Ring. Sauron’s Third Age forces were among the strongest armies in The Lord of the Rings. Azog is one of the main antagonists in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit movies, featuring in lots of original material. Regardless, he remains a formidable and Tolkien-verified enemy of Elves, Men, and Dwarves.
6 Captain Gothmog
Lieutenant Of Minas Morgul
Another rare example of a named leader within Sauron’s military, Gothmog had many troops at his command in The Lord of the Rings. Although Gothmog was never immortalized and glorified in a movie to the same extent as Azog in The Hobbit, he was an important leader for Sauron during the War of the Ring. And, he was represented by Lawrence Makoare in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King movie.
✕ Remove Ads
Elijah Wood confirmed that one Orc design was modeled on Harvey Weinstein, and many fans pointed out the resemblance between Weinstein and Gothmog.
Gothmog’s species was never made clear in J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel. Peter Jackson’s decision to show Gothmog as a deformed Orc utilized creative license. However, it was unlikely that Gothmog was a Ringwraith, since he was named for an old Balrog commander, and the Ringwraiths had been leaders of Men once. An Orc was probably more likely to be named after a Balrog than a human. Either way, this high-powered leader was an apparently loyal and successful soldier.
5 The Mouth Of Sauron
Black Númenórean
Close
✕ Remove Ads
The Lord of the Rings’ Mouth of Sauron was a loyal and powerful Sauron follower in Tolkien’s novel and Jackson’s Return of the King. He appeared during the Third Age War of the Ring to negotiate with the Fellowship of the Ring outside the Black Gate. As was Tolkien’s style, he offered speculation as to the Mouth of Sauron’s origins, rather than confirming outright. The Lord of the Rings suggested that the Mouth was a Black Númenórean, a Sauron follower or a descendant of a Sauron follower originally from Númenor.
The Mouth was Sauron’s messenger, seemingly ranking as some kind of medieval equivalent of a Secretary of State.
Sauron had established himself there in the Second Age. But LotR, in-universe, was written by Hobbits and published in the Red Book of Westmarch, so the confirmation of specific details of Sauron’s forces wasn’t necessarily available. The Mouth was Sauron’s messenger, seemingly ranking as some kind of medieval equivalent of a Secretary of State, Foreign Office, or Head of Comms. For all that, the Mouth couldn’t quite remember his name, pointing to the decaying effect of working with Sauron for too long.
✕ Remove Ads
4 Thuringwethil
Vampire Maia
Custom image by Cristina Trujillo
Thuringwethil was “the messenger of Sauron” in the First Age, according to The Silmarillion. She was accosted by Lúthien and Huan and killed so that Lúthien could, gruesomely, wear her skin as a disguise, proving that Sauron’s enemies had their own nasty tricks up their sleeves. It wasn’t stated that Thuringwethil was a Maia, but she chose a vampire’s form to fly to Angband and report to Sauron, and Maiar were the shape-shifters of The Silmarillion.
Thuringwethil and Sauron both chose vampire forms at some point, taking the shape of huge, monstrous bats, demonstrating a certain vampiric preference among Morgoth’s adherents.
✕ Remove Ads
Although defeated by Lúthien – the half-Maia, half-Elf princess – she was innately vastly more powerful than most of Sauron’s followers, likely being the same species as him. If she was a Maia, the death of her physical body wouldn’t have killed her, meaning she could well have returned to Sauron’s service in some form in later years. But perhaps Lúthien put her off, since the Mouth of Sauron, not Thuringwethil, was Sauron’s messenger in the Third Age.
3 Khamûl The Easterling
Ringwraith
Close
Khamûl is one of only two named Ringwraiths in the legendarium, making him one of Sauron’s two most loyal named followers in The Lord of the Rings. These two are also among the most powerful of Sauron’s forces, wielding flying steeds and without any flesh and blood to damage. Long resigned to the wraith-world, Ringwraiths like Khamûl couldn’t be killed by any normal blade.
✕ Remove Ads
This was why it was confusing when Éowyn and Merry succeeded in offing the Witch-king in The Return of the King with their supposedly normal weaponry. But book readers knew that Merry’s blade was enchanted and built specifically to combat dark magic. An early version of a Lord of the Rings story put a “Black Easterling” in Khamûl’s place, suggesting a relationship between the two and that Khamûl was from the eastern land of Rhûn. However, this wasn’t clarified.
2 The Witch-King Of Angmar
Chief Of The Nine
Close
The Witch-king of Angmar was the Chief of the Nine, leader of Sauron’s Ringwraiths. The Witch-king was tied to Sauron by the One Ring and unable to resist his will, like the other Ringwraiths. His Morgul-knife poisoned its victims, dragging its victims into the wraith-world, bit by bit. Unavoidably loyal and incredibly hard to kill, the Witch-king led Sauron’s army in the War of the Ring and sabotaged Gondor’s rule earlier in the Third Age.
✕ Remove Ads
The Witch-king lured Isildur’s heir, Eärnur, to a duel that he knew the hot-headed Eärnur wouldn’t be able to resist, proving himself to be one of the most evil characters in The Lord of the Rings. Eärnur and the small company he had brought with him were never seen again. Since Eärnur had no heir, Isildur’s line was broken, leaving the Stewards of Gondor to take over, which politically weakened the realm. It took two to kill him – Éowyn and Merry, who had a magic blade.
1 Saruman
Istar Maia
Close
Sauron corrupted Saruman through one of The Lord of the Rings’ magical palantíri, leading him down a dark path that he couldn’t return from. Although originally one of the five Istari, Maiar sent to Middle-earth by the Valar to oppose Sauron, Saruman’s innate hunger for power provided Sauron a foothold in his corruption. The Valar were the 15 most powerful Ainur, and the Ainur below them in rank were the Maiar.
✕ Remove Ads
Related How The Valar & Maiar Are Different In The Lord Of The Rings Explained
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the Valar and the Maiar have a mysterious presence and the difference between the two is often confused.
Posts
As they were both Maiar, Saruman and Sauron had the same powers, innately. But Saruman hadn’t reached Sauron’s level in terms of sorcery and didn’t possess a Ring of Power like him and Gandalf. Although Saruman turned away from the task set him by the Valar and turned toward Sauron, he soon wanted Sauron’s position for himself. Although the most powerful of Sauron’s servants for a time, his disloyalty made him less effective than the Nine Ringwraiths in The Lord of the Rings.
The Lord of the Rings 41 9.3/10
Your Rating
10 stars9 stars8 stars7 stars6 star5 stars4 stars3 stars2 stars1 star Rate Now 0/10
Your comment has not been saved
The Lord of the Rings is a multimedia franchise consisting of several movies and a TV show released by Amazon titled The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The franchise is based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s book series that began in 1954 with The Fellowship of the Ring. The Lord of the Rings saw mainstream popularity with Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies.
Movie(s) The Lord of the Rings (1978) , The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring , The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers , The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King , The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey , The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug , The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies , The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim Created by J.R.R. Tolkien First Film The Lord of the Rings (1978) Cast Norman Bird , Anthony Daniels , Elijah Wood , Ian McKellen , Liv Tyler , Viggo Mortensen , Sean Astin , Cate Blanchett , John Rhys-Davies , Billy Boyd , Dominic Monaghan , Orlando Bloom , Christopher Lee , Hugo Weaving , Sean Bean , Ian Holm , Andy Serkis , Brad Dourif , Karl Urban , Martin Freeman , Richard Armitage , James Nesbitt , Ken Stott , Benedict Cumberbatch , Evangeline Lilly , Lee Pace , Luke Evans , Morfydd Clark , Mike Wood , Ismael Cruz Cordova , Charlie Vickers , Markella Kavenagh , Megan Richards , Sara Zwangobani , Daniel Weyman , Cynthia Addai-Robinson , Lenny Henry , Brian Cox , Shaun Dooley , Miranda Otto , Bilal Hasna , Benjamin Wainwright , Luke Pasqualino , Christopher Guard , William Squire , Michael Scholes , John Hurt TV Show(s) The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Expand