Lord Of The Rings' Third Age Of Middle-Earth Explained

J.R.R. Tolkien's admittedly complicated (and often straight-up convoluted) history of Middle-earth covers a lot of ground. It starts before the creation of the world and initially covers thousands and thousands of years of vague "early history." Thankfully, things eventually settle down a bit into a predictable rhythm, with the bulk of the detailed storytelling being divided up and stuffed into four distinct ages.

While we've covered the First Age and the Second Age elsewhere, our goal here is to break down the extremely busy Third Age in order to make heads or tails out of it. To be clear, we're not going to cover everything in detail — an overwhelming task that would be as daunting as destroying the Ring itself — but rather to highlight some of the bigger events that take place between the moment that Sauron loses his precious Ring and that time we meet Frodo Baggins calmly reading under a tree, 3,000 years later.

After all of the Last Alliance drama that closes out the Second Age, the first few centuries of the Third Age begin with a well-earned dose of peace and quiet. This makes sense as the age kicks off with Sauron's defeat, the loss of his Ring, and the scattering of his servants. During these early years, Elrond of Rivendell gets hitched to Galadriel's daughter, Celebrían, and they have three children, twin sons and a daughter named Arwen — yes, that Arwen.

In addition, fresh off of his victory over Sauron, Isildur becomes the high king of the realms of both Gondor and its sister kingdom of Arnor. He spends a while in Gondor, where he records the story of how he acquired the One Ring, an account that Gandalf would dig up in the archives of Minas Tirith thousands of years later.

After initially taking care of business in the south, Isildur leaves the kingdom of Gondor and heads north towards Arnor. He never gets there, though. On the way, he's ambushed by orcs and killed in the Great River, where the Ring sinks to the bottom of the water and disappears from history. Isildur's heirs continue to rule over Gondor and Arnor, both of which steadily thrive in the initial absence of the Dark Lord.

Before getting too far into the story stuff, it's helpful to point out one quick but important geopolitical shift that takes place in the Third Age. As we already mentioned, the First Age was primarily focused on the elves, who were at the peak of their immortal power at the time. In the Second Age, the focus shifts to a mishmash of elves (who are still powerful), men (who are on the rise), and dwarves (whose power is also peaking thanks to their then-splendiferous underground kingdom of Khazad-dûm).

However, the Third Age sees a major shift in Middle-earth politics as the elves and dwarves slowly begin to fade into the background and the surging power of men steps further into the spotlight. In other words, when you break it down, the era is primarily focused on men, even if, technically, all of the Free Peoples are gearing up together for another round in their ongoing grudge match with Sauron — who, we can assure you, may be down for the count but is nowhere near defeated.

Even though it manages to survive and even thrive for a while, over time, Gondor deals with a variety of different challenges that sap its strength. One of the biggest of these revolves around the simple fact that, about 2,000 years into the age, their childless king, a macho dude named Eärnur, is challenged by the Witch-king to single combat. Mocking the Gondorian leader and playing off his ego, the Witch-king's challenge lures Eärnur into a trap set by the Ringwraiths, and the king of Gondor disappears without an heir.

This hamstrings Gondor's leadership and takes a good amount of the wind out of its national sails, metaphorically speaking. Since there are no witnesses of the king's death, the event leaves the stewards (that is, the second-in-command) ruling the ever-shrinking nation for the last third of the age. In The Return of the King, it tells us that each steward accepts the position with the understanding that it was only until the king "shall return," setting the stage for Aragorn's return a thousand years later.

Gondor manages to deal with most of the various invasions and crises that are thrown its way over the course of the Third Age, but around 2,500 years into the age (right around the same time that Gollum discovers the One Ring), they run into a challenge that they straight-up can't handle. A massive army of Easterlings called the Balchoth savagely attack Gondor's northern province — a lightly populated area of rolling hills and grassy plains called, at the time, Calenardhon (with the "dh" making a "the" sound.) Initially, the province is overrun, and Gondor's armies are sent packing.

But then, at the very moment of imminent defeat, a massive cavalry led by a dude named Eorl shows up. These horsemen lived in the north and had responded to a request for aid just in time to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. After collectively mopping up their enemies, the Gondorians award their new best friends the entire region as a sign of gratitude. The horsemen decide this sounds like a pretty grand idea, and they'd like to stick around and help these Gondorians when they can. They migrate into the area and settle down in their new homeland, which they rename Rohan.

With all of these epic events swirling, it's easy to lose sight of one of the most quietly famous of all of Tolkien's peoples — hobbits. While they generally live their peaceful lives in the background, though, they do pop up on the radar from time to time. The little people don't appear in Middle-earth history until the Third Age. Once they show up, they slowly migrate into the northwestern portion of the continent. Here, in the year 1601 — a very important date for any hobbit — they found the Shire. They receive permission to do this from one of the kings of the already splintered kingdom of Arnor, and in The Fellowship of the Ring, it even explains that they "sent some bowmen to the aid of the king" during the final part of the destructive war with the Witch-king.

After Arnor fully collapses, the hobbits of the Shire more or less rule themselves, occasionally dealing with challenges of one sort or another. Sometimes, these are minor events, like when things get too cramped and a group migrates out of the Shire to create the area called "Buckland" — the same mini-country that Merry Brandybuck hails from. Wolves invade at one point, too, and a few hundred years before The Lord of the Rings takes place, a group of goblins even attack the Shire. This last event leads to the Battle of Greenfields, one of the only two battles to take place in the Shire during the entire Third Age.

So far, we've talked an awful lot about the doings of men, hobbits, elves, and wizards ... but what about the dwarves? Where were the bearded folk during all of the Third Age hubbub? As it turns out, they certainly weren't sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Ever since the Second Age, their epic subterranean mansion of Khazad-dûm — later known as Moria — had been the crown jewel of the dwarven dwellings of Middle-earth. It had survived and thrived during the Second Age and continued to blossom for the first 2,000 years of the Third Age.

However, 1,981 years into that age, the busy miners discover the last thing that they expected — a balrog. The fiery demon had likely hidden deep under their mountain kingdom ever since the end of the First Age, over 5,000 years earlier. And now, like a mindless construction worker who hits a gas pipe while they're excavating, the dwarves unearth the balrog and wake it from its slumber. The monster attacks the dwarves, kills their king and his son, and then drives the survivors out of their ancient home. This is when the mines become known by the dark, new cognomen Moria, meaning the "Black Pit." Scattered by the unexpected event, the dwarves spend the next couple of decades wandering in sorrowful, dispossessed exile. However, some of the hardy folk find a new lease on life when they head northeast and eventually arrive at the Lonely Mountain, where they settle down and start over.

As if balrogs and dragons weren't enough trouble, in the late Third Age, the dwarves also conduct a violent war with the orcs of the Misty Mountains. This happens after one of their leaders — Thorin Oakenshield's grandfather, Thror — is irreverently killed by the orc chieftain Azog (the white orc in The Hobbit trilogy films). The call for vengeance goes out, and dwarves from across Middle-earth gather together.

This leads to the War of the Dwarves and the Orcs. In The Return of the King, it's said that the war is "long and deadly, and fought for the most part in deep places beneath the earth." It also explains that it's a cruel war in which "both sides were pitiless, and there was death and cruel deeds by dark and by light." The dwarves steadily destroy every orc stronghold they can find until the only enemies that remain are a huge army of orcs cooped up in their old mansion of Moria.

The two sides then fight a massive battle in front of the gates of Moria. Thorin gains his nickname of "Oakenshield" during the conflict, and contrary to the Peter Jackson films, Azog meets a violent death in the fighting, as well. The dwarves are victorious, but nearly half of them die, and they decide that they cannot defeat the balrog and reclaim Moria at that time, leaving most of the bearded folk in tragic exile, waiting for their revenge on Smaug.

As Sauron's power continues to build and the Free Peoples steadily weaken, a group of wise leaders — including Gandalf, Saruman, Galadriel, and Elrond — form the White Council to resist what they collectively suspect to be the growing might of the resurgent Dark Lord. The council only meets a handful of times, but eventually, they decide to attack the Necromancer and drive him out of Mirkwood. Counting on this, Sauron gives way and pretends to retreat — only to use the opportunity to relocate to Mordor.

Oh, and around this time, a small hobbit-like creature also happens to stumble across a ring while he's fishing. His name? Déagol. He's murdered shortly afterward by his covetous friend, Sméagol, who claims the ring as his birthday present. The future Gollum is gradually perverted by the bauble — which happens to be the One Ring that Isildur lost 2,500 years earlier — and is eventually exiled from his home. Taking his powerful jewelry with him, he worms his way deep into the Misty Mountains, where he lives for the next several centuries.

At this point, we're starting to reach the well-trodden years of the very end of the Third Age — stuff that's thoroughly covered in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings stories. First up, we have the legendary showdown between Smaug and the dwarves. As the decades roll by after Smaug the Golden overthrows the Kingdom under the Mountain, the exiled dwarves steadily dream of revenge.

Then, one day, the mover and shaker Gandalf the Grey bumps into Thorin Oakenshield at the Prancing Pony in Bree. Together, the wizard and the dwarf hatch a plot that eventually sees 13 dwarves and a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins traveling east to reclaim the dwarves' homeland. The adventure leads to Bilbo finding the One Ring, Smaug being killed, and the Battle of Five Armies annihilating the goblins of the Misty Mountains, all of which perfectly tees up the fast-approaching War of the Ring.

When the dust settles after the War of the Ring, the One Ring is destroyed, and the Dark Lord is finally, truly defeated. He isn't "killed" per se, but as Gandalf puts it in The Return of the King, "If [the Ring] is destroyed, then [Sauron] will fall ... and he will be maimed forever, becoming a mere spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows, but cannot again grow or take shape."

Sauron's final defeat paves the way for the Ranger Aragorn to finally become the long-awaited king, not just of Gondor but of Arnor, as well. The four hobbit members of the Fellowship of the Ring return to the Shire where, in the book, they find their homeland overrun with Saruman's minions and have to fight the Battle of Bywater in order to drive the invaders out.

After this, everyone settles down and begins to live life again — except for Frodo. His spirit irrevocably damaged by the ordeal of bearing the One Ring, Frodo joins his cousin, Bilbo, and Galadriel, Elrond, and Gandalf — the three keepers of the Elven Rings — and sails away with them into the West, headed for the Blessed Realm. And with their departure, the Third Age comes to a somber yet happy ending.