How Every Ring-Bearer In The Lord Of The Rings Dies

The "The Rings of Power" Season 3 is going to include one of the biggest events in Middle-earth history: the forging of the One Ring to rule them all. With the forging of the One Ring right around the corner, we thought we'd take a look at the ending of all of the different ring-bearers over the nearly 5,000 years of the Ring's existence.

The impressive list includes no less than 11 individuals who span the gamut, each one greater than the last. There are mighty warriors, kings, Wizards, and even two unidentifiable enigmas (for very different reasons). Impressively, fully five of the 11 ring-bearers are Hobbits.

As for the One Ring itself, it may start and end at Mount Doom, but it has a long journey in between. Over the centuries, its various bearers literally bring it to the opposite corner of Middle-earth, before Frodo takes the long slog back to Mordor to return it. We've followed that journey and mapped out the end of everyone who bears or touches the Ring along the way. Here are the fates of those precious 11, presented in order of their endings.

First stop on our "One Ring to end them all" tour is Isildur. The Númenórean king of Gondor is famous for being the guy who cuts the Ring from Sauron's hand in battle with the shards of his father's sword, Narsil (which later becomes Aragorn's reforged sword, Anduril). 

When he claims the Ring, Isildur is riding high. He's the king of Gondor and its northern sister kingdom of Arnor. He has defeated his greatest foe in battle and saved Middle-earth from Sauron's terror for an age. But his inability to part with the Ring sets him up for a premature death.

We get a little teaser of this scene in the extended edition of Peter Jackson's "The Fellowship of the Ring," but it just shows Isildur (Harry Sinclair) ambushed as he leads a long line of troops along the road. In the book "Unfinished Tales," we get a more detailed account, and there's a lot more fighting. 

As Isildur heads north after the war with Sauron, his guards are surrounded by a rogue group of Orcs. They're attacked over and over, as Isildur's men (including some of his sons) die fighting around him. Seeing no hope of escape, Isildur pops on the Ring and attempts to flee. But the Orcs hunt him down by smell. They sniff him out and, as he tries to swim across a river called the Anduin, the Ring slips off his hand. Isildur is spotted and shot. His body is never found. And the One Ring? It lies at the bottom of the Great River for centuries, waiting to be discovered so it can catch its next victim.

After hundreds of years, two Hobbit-like creatures (similar to the Harfoots in "The Rings of Power") show up right near the Ring. One of them, a fellow named Déagol (Thomas Robins), goes fishing and catches a big fish. It pulls him in, and he lets go of his fishing pole. He sees the shiny golden Ring lying in the riverbed and grabs it, bringing it over to the shore.

There, his friend, Sméagol (Andy Serkis), gets a single glance of the Ring and covets it. He demands it from his friend as a birthday present. But Déagol turns his friend down, saying he already got him a different present that was already more than he could afford. (Hobbits love presents.)

Sméagol won't take no for an answer — so much so that, in his lust for the powerful Ring in front of him, he catches Déagol by the throat and strangles him. While there is no stated amount of time between the Ring's discovery and Déagol's murder, it has to be only a matter of minutes — making Déagol's demise the fastest post-Ring-bearing death on this list.

Boromir never touches the One Ring in J.R.R. Tolkien's books. He doesn't in Peter Jackson's movies, either. But if we're being technical (and why not be overly technical with subject matter this important?), he does "bear it" for a few seconds.

In "The Fellowship of the Ring" movie, when the fellowship is heading over a snow-clad mountain, the Ring falls off Frodo's (Elijah Wood) neck when he slips in the snow. Boromir (Sean Bean) picks it up on its chain with his gloved hand. He looks at it, musing about how strange it is that the fate of the world is tied to such a small thing. He leans in to touch it when Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) snaps him out of it, and he returns the Ring to Frodo. He acts like everything is fine, but he clearly is falling for the lure of Sauron's artifact.

Not long after this point, Boromir tries to take the One Ring from Frodo by force. He fails and never gets to touch it, but his failed theft shakes him out of his temptation. The repentant hero dies shortly afterward in a heroic attempt to save the Hobbits Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd) from a raiding party of Uruk-hai. While he never actually touches the Ring, Boromir is emblematic of its overwhelming power to tempt anyone, great or small, to claim it and possess it.

Sméagol bears the Ring longer than almost anyone else. After murdering Déagol, he takes it and eventually disappears into a reclusive multi-century existence in the Misty Mountains. Centuries later, the Ring abandons him just in time for Bilbo (Ian Holm) to come along, sending the creature, now called Gollum, into a decades-long spiral (one that will be the central story of the upcoming "The Hunt for Gollum" film, which takes place between "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings").

In the end, Gollum catches up with Frodo and helps him with his quest. All that time, he doesn't get to touch the Ring, no matter how close he gets. Gollum does try to betray Frodo and Samwise (Sean Astin) to Shelob, but the plot fails. When they approach Mount Doom and the Ring grows in power, Gollum goes all in again. He attacks Sam and Frodo, biting off the latter's ring finger and finally, at long last, reclaiming his Precious. 

But that ends up being the death of Gollum. As he gloats, he topples over the edge of the Cracks of Doom (or falls over the edge while fighting off Frodo, if you want to go with the movie version). The wretched creature falls to his doom, disappearing in the fiery depths below and taking the One Ring with him.

At this point, the One Ring has gone with Gollum into the fiery depths of Mount Doom. But the stories of more than half of those who bear it don't end until after it's gone. The fifth of the 10 ring-bearers on this list is Sauron, and his ending — which is worse than death – comes right on the heels of the demise of his Ring.

Sauron is the one who creates the One Ring. He pours part of himself into the Ring, and when it is destroyed, it brings his power to an abrupt end. As Gandalf says when the Ring is destroyed in "The Return of the King" (the book): "[Sauron] will lose the best part of the strength that was native to him in his beginning, and all that was made or begun with that power will crumble and he will be maimed for ever, becoming a mere spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows, but cannot again grow or take shape. And so a great evil of this world will be removed."

And that's what happens right after Gollum slips into the Cracks of Doom. Sauron's power collapses. His servants become leaderless. The last we see of his spirit is when a great shadow rises up out of his fortress of Barad-dûr, stretching its arm menacingly out toward its enemies before the wind blows it away. We never see him again. However, there is a hint of his final fate in the beginning of "The Silmarillion," which says, "But in after years he rose like a shadow of Morgoth and a ghost of his malice, and walked behind him on the same ruinous path down into the Void."

After the One Ring is destroyed, there are three people who bear its spiritual scars. Frodo is the most obvious of these. He suffers torment, even in the peace after Sauron's fall, and is eventually driven to seek healing in the immortal West, away over the sea.

Bilbo, another long-time Ring-bearer, is allowed to go with his cousin (yes, Frodo and Bilbo are actually cousins, not uncle and nephew). This is partly done as a thank-you for his work with finding, keeping, and giving up the Ring. Gandalf (Ian McKellen) also pulls some strings to get Mr. Baggins a ticket to the immortal country. And Bilbo is sent as a companion to Frodo, since no Hobbit should ever have to live alone in a distant land.

The last of the trio to head into the West is Samwise Gamgee, who bears the ring very briefly. In the movie, he doesn't even put it on. He does in the books, but within hours, it's back with Frodo. Still, Sam's work during the quest means he can go too, and after living a full life, he heads to the Grey Havens at the ripe old age of 102. All three Hobbits are never seen again, but it can be safely assumed that they all made it over the sea and died at some point, happy and hopeful in the Undying Lands.

The final three people, like Boromir, are only technicalities — although Tom Bombadil does legitimately wear the Ring. When Frodo and his Hobbit friends stop by Bombadil's house (in the books only), there is a point where he asks if he can see the precious Ring. To Frodo's annoyance, he goofs off with it and even puts the trinket on. The crazy part is, he doesn't vanish. Clearly the Ring doesn't have power to control someone as enigmatic and cryptic as Old Tom Bombadil.

Gandalf also bears the Ring, twice, but only for an instant each time. In the book "The Fellowship of the Ring," when Bilbo drops the Ring in an envelope when he's leaving Bag End, Gandalf stoops and seizes the package and puts it on the mantelpiece. Again, when the Wizard visits Frodo in his Hobbit hole years later, he holds up the Ring before throwing it into the fire to reveal the letters emblazoned on it, touching it for the first time and "bearing it" for the second time.

As for their endings, Gandalf's is unclear. He merely heads into the West with Frodo and Bilbo at the end of the story. And Tom Bombadil? The last we hear of him is toward the end of "The Return of the King," when Gandalf heads off to have a long talk with him.

The last person we'll mention here is never named. In the book, when Frodo wakes up in Rivendell after being chased by Black Riders, he finds the Ring has been taken from his pocket and put on a chain around his neck. We don't know the name or identity of this person, though, nor do we know anything about their ending.