Why Releasing Gollum Was Sauron's Biggest Mistake

Gollum, Sauron, and the "Shire, Baggins" interrogation — why did Sauron catch the one prisoner who could finally give him the Ring's trail, torture the information out of him, and then deliberately let him walk out of Mordor alive? This Lord of the Rings deep dive opens Sauron's strangest gamble, straight out of Unfinished Tales and the Council of Elrond. We walk the road step by step. Gollum crawling out of the Misty Mountains in 2944 after Bilbo took the Ring, three years underground, then decades of hatred-driven travel through Mirkwood and Dale, searching for Baggins. The call of the Shadow drawing him south toward Mordor. Shelob in the pass. His capture in Barad-dûr. The two words — Baggins and Shire — the interrogation Peter Jackson's films stage so cruelly and Tolkien reports but never shows. And in 3017, the piece the films never explain: Sauron releases him. Unfinished Tales gives us the calculation — Sauron perceived something "indomitable" in the creature that the Shadow of Fear could not overcome except by destroying him, so he chose exploitation over destruction, hoping obsession would act as a bloodhound and his spies could track it back to the Ring. Then Aragorn in the Dead Marshes, the hunt that had already run for years, Gandalf's interrogation at Thranduil's halls, the Orc raid in 3018 that lets Gollum escape, and the final irony: Gollum does reach the Ring — but entirely outside Sauron's control, and his desire is what carries the Ring the last few feet into the fire. Sources: The Lord of the Rings (Council of Elrond, Appendix B), Unfinished Tales ("The Hunt for the Ring"), and The Hobbit. Was Sauron's release of Gollum his single biggest mistake? Let me know in the comments. 🔔 Subscribe for more of Tolkien's legendarium: https://youtube.com/@YourTolkienGuy?si=uxWw-V7wt0TdJ1fB 📜 Watch next: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8Ffig0ZKeGBUOVhaav45Yq9j3pOII9aa ───────────────────────────── FAIR USE All content falls under fair use: any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and "transformative" purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner. ARTWORK & ARTIST CREDITS This channel is built on the work of incredibly talented Middle-earth artists, and I want every one of them credited. Tracking down the original creator of a piece is often genuinely hard — art gets reposted, renamed, and separated from its source all across the internet. If your work appears in this video and you'd like a credit added, corrected, or your piece removed, just email me and I'll take care of it right away. Your wishes always come first. 📧 Contact / credit & removal requests: [email protected] Art credits (in order of appearance): Contact me for credits here! #LordOfTheRings #Tolkien #Gollum #Sauron #Mordor