Sauron’s followers were shrouded in mystery inThe Lord of the Rings, but some were named, acclaimed, and legendary in lore. Undoubtedly, Sauron’s nine most loyal assistants wereThe Lord of the Rings’Ringwraiths. Among the Ringwraiths were Sauron’s most powerful and mysterious servants, with only two named inLotR, and one of those inUnfinished 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.
The Lord of the Rings:The Rings of Powerseason 2continued 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.
10Captain Shagrat
Uruk Chieftain Of Cirith Ungol
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 ofThe 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 intoThe Lord of the Rings:The Two Towersmovie. 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.
9Captain Gorbag
Uruk Captain Of Minas Morgul
Gorbag was the Uruk captain who joined Shagrat at Cirith Ungol and found Frodo inThe 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.” Perhapsthe 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.
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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.
8Bolg Of The North
Orc Chieftain
Bolg, son of Azog, was a powerful Orc chieftain inThe Hobbitbook 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 Mountainsto 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 ofThe Lord of the Rings. About 60 years passed between the events ofThe HobbitandThe Lord of the Rings.
Orcs' lifespans weren’t well-documented inThe 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’sThe Rings of Powercourted controversy for creating the sympathetic image of an Orc wife and baby, butThe Hobbitactually beatRings of Powerto the idea of an Orc family by years. However, Bolg’s warlike father-son relationship was hardly sympathetic inThe Hobbitbook and even less so in the movies. PeterJackson 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.
7Azog The Defiler
Azog the Pale or Azog the Defiler was simply Azog in the book, butJackson’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.
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Azog would have been key in Sauron’s expansionas 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 amongthe strongest armies inThe Lord of the Rings. Azog is one of the main antagonists in Peter Jackson’sThe Hobbitmovies, featuring in lots of original material. Regardless, he remains a formidable and Tolkien-verified enemy of Elves, Men, and Dwarves.
6Captain Gothmog
Lieutenant Of Minas Morgul
Another rare example of a named leader within Sauron’s military,Gothmog had many troops at his commandinThe Lord of the Rings. Although Gothmog was never immortalized and glorified in a movie to the same extent as Azog inThe Hobbit, he was an important leader for Sauron during the War of the Ring. And, he was represented by Lawrence Makoare inThe Lord of the Rings:The Return of the Kingmovie.
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.
5The Mouth Of Sauron
Black Númenórean
The Lord of the Rings’Mouth of Sauronwas a loyal and powerful Sauron follower in Tolkien’s novel and Jackson’sReturn of the King.He appeared during the Third Age War of the Ringto 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 Ringssuggested 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. ButLotR, 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.
4Thuringwethil
Vampire Maia
Thuringwethil was “the messenger of Sauron” in the First Age, according toThe 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, butshe chose a vampire’s form to fly to Angband and report to Sauron, and Maiar were the shape-shifters ofThe 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.
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.
3Khamûl The Easterling
Ringwraith
Khamûl is one of only two named Ringwraiths in the legendarium, making him one of Sauron’s two most loyal named followers inThe 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.
This was whyit was confusing when Éowyn and Merry succeeded in offing the Witch-kinginThe Return of the Kingwith 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 aLord of the Ringsstory put a “Black Easterling” in Khamûl’s place, suggesting a relationship between the two and that Khamûl was fromthe eastern land of Rhûn. However, this wasn’t clarified.
2The Witch-King Of Angmar
Chief Of The Nine
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.
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 ofthe most evil characters inThe 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.
1Saruman
Istar Maia
Sauron corrupted Saruman through one ofThe 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.
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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.
As they were both Maiar, Saruman and Sauron had the same powers, innately. ButSaruman hadn’t reached Sauron’s levelin 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 inThe Lord of the Rings.
The Lord of the Rings
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.
