I’ve seen how eagles earn their keep, bullying hard-working ospreys to steal their catch. For all their friendship, Gandalf could no more trust the king of the (sentient and arrogant) eagles not to take the Ring for his own. You think Dark Galadriel was scary? You aint seen nothin!
One does not simply fly into Mordor …
Trying to sneak into Mordor with a handful of picked special forces operators is a high-risk strategy, but challenging Sauron directly on his own turf – which is what an eagle-based aerial incursion would be – might be even more dangerous. And if Sauron gets lucky and downs the eagle carrying the Ring, then it’s game over for the good guys.
i’m still curious why they didn’t just take the ring to the undying lands. i mean nice to destroy it and everything, but taking it straight to sauron seems a bit daft. sauron and the nazgul being dead already dont seem like they’d have much influence somewhere without death, not to mention far away from middle earth.
( and if there were giant eagles. how big were the whales? seems like an oversight for sure.)
By ship? One word: krakens.
That is the best theory yet, IMO.
Tom Bombadil refused to take it because it was beneath him, he’d only lose it.
Perhaps Gandalf didn’t trust the eagles enough to deliver the ring without it corrupting them, but trusted them enough for a rescue mission after the fact.
(hark at me, ffs, haven’t read this for forty years but it still rankles)
Yeah, all the Big Goodies in LotR know they shouldn’t take the Ring, that it would corrupt them; Gandalf, Elrond, Aragorn, and Galadriel. I could see Gwaihir noping out for the same reason.
“…and thank you for flying Deus Ex Machina Airlines!”
The assumption here is that Sauron, even if he were given knowledge of the plan to destroy the ring the moment it left Rivendell, had literally no other servants or magic he could have called upon to keep it away from the volcano. That seems doubtful. This is one of the Ainur…we see where he is able to draw evil to him, to corrupt the desires of those around him, to blot out the sun in preparation of his invasion…but since we haven’t seen him stop a giant bird coming in from thousands of miles away, we trust there’s nothing he could improvise?
But one would think that if Sauron had anything other than Nazgul/Fellbeasts to throw at the eagles he would have done so when the eagles finally did show up.
It’s not clear to me the eagles were so thoroughly outclassing the Nazgûl in that fight, though. They are trying to keep them off the soldiers and it ends when the Nazgûl retreat to try to save the ring.
But in any case he wouldn’t even need to defeat the eagles, just make it impossible for them to throw the ring in the cracks of doom, and then he’d be at leisure to prosecute the rest of the war until their eyries are destroyed and one of his servants can grab it. Like, a few hundred archers and a screen over the top of the volcano would be enough. How much would you want to bet he couldn’t manage anything like that?
Likewise the eagles wouldn’t need to defeat the Nazgul/Fellbeasts, just clear the way for a single eagle to make it through to drop off the ringbearer near the volcano entrance. Or just drop the ringbearer right down into the lava from above depending on how much of a hurry they were in.
If Sauron couldn’t be bothered to post even a single guard at the ground entrance to the volcano where the hobbits walked in then it seems unlikely he would have a flock of Fellbeasts on high alert 24/7 to defend against a surprise aerial strike.
This is the one thing the book does make explicit, that there isn’t a single guard because it literally never occurs to Sauron anyone might try to destroy the ring. He would never throw away that kind of power and trusts someone – Aragorn or Galadriel or who knows – is planning to use it to challenge him. Until Frodo finally puts on the ring at the end and he realizes too late. I think it makes a really good bookend to the start of the Silmarillion, where the good guys fail to stop evil because they don’t understand it; this is the opposite.
I have to assume that if there were no stealth, just a flock of giant eagles carrying the ring in full view of the all-seeing eye, his priorities might have shifted very quickly. Again, all it takes to defeat your plan is a handful of guards and a wire screen. The idea that the Dark Lord of Mordor where the shadows lie, an ancient evil who has been ruling since before the world was changed and has outwitted even the very wise, couldn’t possibly manage that much let alone something more magical seem really silly to me.
So, again, that means it would be very unlikely he’d have air defenses in place to defend against a surprise aerial strike to drop the ring in the volcano.
All it would take to defeat the plan the Fellowship DID go with would be a single hobbit-proof door.
Just think how cool it could have been, though. A flight of giant eagles doing a wing-over above Morannon, and lining up on Mount Doom, sweeping though volleys of flaming arrows, while Frodo steers them in to the target area; all to the sound of…
At the time of the Rivendell summit, he was merely Gandalf the Grey, and not the White Wizard.
Definitely, and it almost failed from that, since both the Morannon and Cirith Ungol were pretty close to hobbit-proof. Then even places like the Emyn Muil almost stopped them once they were separated from their guides and, of course, at the end Frodo failed his will save and so Sauron almost got the ring back anyway.
Which is why it is repeatedly described as a Hail Mary play, one depending entirely on a low profile and being something Sauron wouldn’t expect to have any chance at all. I hope nobody would argue you were supposed to be able to simply walk into Mordor.
Those really skilled at it were SAM-wise.
But that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have air defenses in place to defend against a surprise aerial strike against himself, at Barad-Dur, by a Ringbearing assassin (which is totally a thing Sauron would do).
He was genuinely afraid of a Ringbearing Aragorn.
So Aragorn shows up at the gates of Barad-Dur to distract Sauron while the eagles sneak in from the other end of Mordor and drop a hobbit and the accursed ring he carries into the volcano. If they moved quickly enough they would have the job done before Saruman the White even had a chance to start breeding his army. Win-win.
While I read all your discussions, I find the answer given in the video succinct, on point, concise, pertinent, appropriate and, above all, hilarious.
Thank you, @beschizza. I stared my day with a laugh. That’s the nicest gift you made, mate.
