The Lord of the Rings: Sauron vs. Morgoth – which of the Middle-earth villains is more powerful?

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER

September 27, 2024 at 2:23 p.m

Is “The Lord of the Rings” villain Sauron really the nastiest villain in Middle-earth? Not quite, because compared to his master Morgoth, Sauron comes up short.

The Lord of the Rings – The Rings of Power: Watch now❯

In the Amazon series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” we see how villain Sauron becomes more and more powerful. The Lord of the Rings films also present Sauron as the worst enemy of the free peoples of Middle-earth, but there is someone even more powerful than Sauron!

What is only reserved for book experts is that Sauron is not the original villain in Tolkien’s legendarium. His former master and predecessor as Dark Lord is Morgoth, who plunges Middle-earth and all of Arda into darkness in the First Age.

While Sauron is much better known in pop culture than Morgoth and the latter has not yet appeared in any film or series, Tolkien experts know that the question of which of the two Dark Lords is more powerful cannot be answered with popularity. We explore the question of whether Sauron is more powerful than Morgoth!

Maiar vs. Valar – the fight between Sauron and Morgoth is unfair from the start

Although Sauron is an extremely powerful and intelligent villain who can manipulate elves, humans and wizards through his manipulations, he is still a lot inferior to his former master. This is about what kind of beings the two are.

While Sauron is a Maia, Morgoth is a Vala. The difference is this: The Valar were created by Tolkien’s god, Eru Ilúvatar, to shape and rule Arda. The different Valar have different abilities, one can control the winds of Arda, another can control the seas.

The Valar even helped Ilúvatar sing Arda into existence. Due to their role in the larger universe, which was given to them by Ilúvatar, the Valar are very powerful and can, in a sense, be described as deities themselves. The Maiar, on the other hand, of which Sauron is one, are subordinate to the Valar.

They were created to support the Valar and often have similar abilities to their masters, which is why there are many parallels between Sauron and Morgoth. Before his fall, Morgoth had the ability to curse his enemies, was the physically strongest Vala, and was immensely large.

His sheer aura could manipulate those around him. If we look at Tolkien’s parallels to the Bible, a connection could be drawn here with God and the Devil, Ilúvatar as a god and Morgoth as a fallen angel in Tolkien’s legendarium.

It is basically obvious that Sauron by nature has no chance against Morgoth. Nevertheless, thanks to his cunning, Sauron hid in Middle-earth even after the fall of Morgoth until he had enough power to strike again.

Who ruled Middle-earth longer, Sauron or Morgoth?

• Morgoth: Reign of the Age Before Days and First Age: approximately 15,500 years
• Sauron: Reign in the Second and Third Ages: approx. 3,500 years

One difference between Sauron and Morgoth is that Sauron wanted to rule over Middle-earth. Morgoth, on the other hand, simply wanted to bring destruction to Arda. Nevertheless, it can be said without a doubt that Morgoth’s reign of terror and his troublemaking lasted significantly longer than Sauron’s.

Morgoth existed in the Age Before Days, which began before the First Age and the creation of the Moon and Sun. The time calculation was still different, but when translated into our time, Morgoth’s continued destructive rage comes only in the age before the days to at least 15,000 years.

In the First Age, the war against Morgoth really begins, because he creates the orcs. Morgoth is brought to trial by the Valar and banished to the halls of Mandos in western Valinor for three centuries of the Valian era.

After serving his sentence, Morgoth is released and first seduces a group of elves, the Noldor, causing discord. Finally, Morgoth flees Valinor and fights back together with the giant spider Ungoliant. All of this still happens before the creation of the sun and moon.

After the creation of the sun, Morgoth continued to wreak havoc for another 590 years before Eru Ilúvatar intervened and banished Morgoth to the void once and for all. In total, we come to at least 15,500 years of reign of terror. Sauron doesn’t have much to counter this.

It wasn’t until around 1000 years in the Second Age that he began building his fortress Barad-dur, and 500 years later he seduced the elves to forge the rings of power. It is a gradual process in which Sauron gradually tries to take control of Middle-earth.

If we take the construction of his fortress as a starting point, we come to a period of 2,500 years of rule in the Second Age, during which Sauron was also held captive by the Númenóreans. After his defeat at the Battle of the Last Alliance (seen in the prologue of “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring”), it takes another 500 years before Sauron begins to gather his armies again.

If we count this as the starting point of his new reign, which is admittedly a generous interpretation since Saruman in “The Hobbit” still speaks of peace 60 years before “The Lord of the Rings”, we would come to 1,000 years in the Third Age, giving Sauron a Total reign would have been 3,500 years, a little more than a fifth of Morgoth’s reign of terror.

Did Sauron have the larger army or Morgoth?

Both Middle-earth scoundrels have massive armies. In numbers, Sauron has an army strength of around 825,000 during the “Lord of the Rings” films, consisting of Orcs, Uruk-Hai, Haradrim, Easterlings, Oliphants, Cave Trolls, Nazgul and Fellbeasts (the winged mounts of the Nazgul). In “The Hobbit” he has gathered around 375,000 minions in Dol Guldur.

Sauron’s army culminated in the Battle of the Last Alliance at the end of the Second Age. There he has an army that exceeds 1.2 million in number (via Stack Exchange).

Since Morgoth’s army was never seen in a film and only briefly at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, it is difficult to estimate how large his army was. Tolkien himself does not give any figures in his works, but one can assume that Morgoth’s army during the War of Wrath was significantly larger than Sauron’s at its peak.

Had Eru Ilúvatar not intervened to stop Morgoth, he would have won the battle against the Elves and gained control of Middle-earth. In addition to the orcs and trolls, Morgoth also had Balrogs and dragons in his army, powerful beings that even Sauron did not have in his army.

It is unlikely that we will see Morgoth in “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” since the Dark Lord has already been banished by the time of the series. With luck there might be flashbacks.