Lord Of The Rings: 10 Persistent Plot Holes FINALLY Debunked
9. Sauron Putting All His Power Into The Ring Was A Strategic Blunder
The Claim: Sauron committed a strategic error in making the Ring easy to cut from his hand, thereby making him easy to defeat.
This ‘plot-hole’ is a silly one, so silly that it doesn’t even require a dive into the books to debunk.
As we saw in the prologue of The Fellowship of the Ring, in order to get to the Ring you must get to Sauron and to get to Sauron you first need an army powerful to defeat the hundreds of thousands of Orcs at his disposal. That army, the Last Alliance, was a once-off deal, proven by the fact that Elves and Men were never able to muster a force as strong again.
Then, when you do meet Sauron combat, you’re facing one of the most powerful beings in Middle-Earth, a being who, let us not forget, bested both the king of the Elves and of Númenor and had he not got cocky, would have killed Isildur as well. No, Sauron had every reason to be confident.
And Sauron wasn’t defeated. He lost power, yes, but as we see he more than regained it. To truly defeat him you need to get the Ring to Mt. Doom, and as the previous entry in this list points out, that is far from easy.
So hubris? Yes. Strategic blunder? No.