What Happens When a Maia Dies?

A Maia doesn't have a body the way we do. It weaves one, wears it, and can take it off again the way Arien did on her way out of Valinor, which makes "death" the wrong word for what happens when one is destroyed. Tolkien even coined a separate term, ëala, so a Maia's spirit would never be confused with an Elf's. But pouring yourself into the world converts the clothing into flesh. Morgoth ends up lame, burned and afraid of dying. Sauron is de-bodied three times and rebuilds more slowly each time, a hundred and ten years after Númenor against nearly three thousand after Dagorlad. Gandalf and Saruman were handed real human bodies that could be murdered, and one of them was, on a doorstep, with a knife. And over Durin's Bane, killed on Zirakzigil, Tolkien wrote nothing at all.

Published

29 September 2026

Runtime

34 min 37 sec