The Lord Of The Rings: Every Fellowship Of The Ring Member Ranked From Least To Most Powerful

Samwise Gamgee spends the entire trilogy keeping Frodo on track. Throughout The Two Towers and Return of the King, Sam has to fight to save Frodo countless times. While he is modest in all things, he turns out to be a badass warrior for the ages.

As he moves through his adventures, Sam becomes more and more capable with a blade. When they first meet Gollum, for instance, he is crucial in establishing that he and Frodo can defend themselves, keeping Gollum at bay the entire time. By the time he gets to Cirith Ungol, he is so heroic that the Orcs confuse him with an Elvish lord. While Frodo is captured, Sam plows his way through an army of Orcs like they're nothing. With each swing of his sword, he dispatches an enemy double his size. Because he's able to save Frodo here, Frodo is then able to save Middle Earth.

The highlight of his fighting, however, comes when he confronts Shelob. Tolkien tells us that this giant spider is the last child of Ungoliant, a creature so powerful in the first age that she kills the trees of the Valar and sets in motion the events of The Silmarillion. Shelob herself gives birth to the species of spiders that capture Bilbo in the Hobbit. She is an evil nearly as ancient as the Balrog.

An encounter with Shelob should be a death sentence, and for Frodo, it nearly is. Sam, however, is able to wound her, driving her off. Tolkien writes, "Not the doughtiest soldier of old Gondor, nor the most savage Orc entrapped, had ever thus endured her, or set blade to her beloved flesh."

Where all these great warriors failed, Samwise the Brave succeeded.