Sauron’s ending in “The Lord of the Rings” is left vague. He fades away, vanishing in the wind. For years, that’s all readers had to work with, until Tolkien died, and his son, Christopher, began posthumously publishing books like “The Silmarillion.” In it, we get a summary of Sauron’s entire trajectory in the wake of his master, which reads thus, “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.”
What is “the Void”? We’re glad you asked. During Tolkien’s creation story, he references an area called “the Void,” which, for all intents and purposes, is an empty, timeless place. Creation lies within that space, but it is separate from it and bound by time.
When Morgoth is defeated, “The Silmarillion” explains that he is “thrust through the Door of Night beyond the Walls of the World, into the Timeless Void.” Based on Sauron’s summary, presumably, he meets a similar fate as well, imprisoned on the edge of the world and even outside of time itself.
