The Return of the King recap

As Sauron's war breaks over the free peoples, the wizard Gandalf and the hobbit Pippin help defend Gondor's capital, Minas Tirith, while the ranger Aragorn takes a hidden road through the Paths of the Dead to raise reinforcements. The city is besieged by the Witch-king's host; Rohan rides to its aid, King Theoden falls, and the lady Eowyn and the hobbit Merry kill the Witch-king. Aragorn arrives with fresh strength and the battle is won, though the Steward Denethor despairs and takes his own life, nearly killing his son Faramir. To draw Sauron's eye from the ring, the captains march their small army to the Black Gate as a decoy. Meanwhile Sam rescues Frodo from an orc-tower, and the two struggle across Mordor to Mount Doom. There Frodo's will fails and he claims the ring, but Gollum seizes it and falls into the fire, destroying it and Sauron's power. Aragorn is crowned king and weds Arwen. The hobbits return home to find the Shire despoiled and set it right, but Frodo, too wounded within to heal, at last sails over the sea, leaving Sam behind.

The One Ring must be destroyed in the fire of Mordor, and the hobbit Frodo Baggins carries it there with his servant Sam. The Fellowship that set out with him has long since broken. The wizard Gandalf, thought lost after falling with a demon of fire in Moria, returned as Gandalf the White. With him, the ranger Aragorn, the elf Legolas, the dwarf Gimli, and the reawakened King Theoden of Rohan defeated the treacherous wizard Saruman and won the battle of Helm's Deep. But the hobbit Pippin looked into an enemy seeing-stone and drew the eye of the Dark Lord Sauron, whose armies are now massing against the realm of Gondor; Gandalf has ridden to its capital, Minas Tirith, to prepare its defence. Far to the east, the creature Gollum led Frodo and Sam toward Mordor by a secret way and then betrayed them to the giant spider Shelob. Frodo was stung and taken prisoner by orcs into the tower of Cirith Ungol. Sam, who briefly bore the ring, has learned his master still lives, and stands alone outside the tower, resolved to rescue him.

Gandalf and Pippin ride to Minas Tirith, the fortress-city of Gondor, where Pippin is presented to Denethor, the ruling Steward, and pledges his service in gratitude for Boromir, Denethor's dead son. The city braces for siege as the shadow of Mordor grows and the beacons are lit calling Rohan to aid. Denethor, proud and grim, mistrusts Gandalf and grieves bitterly for Boromir while slighting his surviving son, Faramir. Meanwhile Aragorn, parting from the main host, takes a desperate road: warned that time is short, he passes with a small grey-cloaked company through the haunted Paths of the Dead beneath the mountains, summoning the spirits of oath-breakers who long ago failed Gondor and are bound to answer his claim as heir to its ancient kings. Legolas, Gimli, and the Rangers of the North go with him into the dark, gambling that this hidden road will let him strike the enemy from an unexpected quarter.

Rohan gathers at Theoden's call; the lady Eowyn, forbidden to ride to war, goes secretly in disguise and takes the young hobbit Merry, also left behind, up before her. Sauron's host, led by the Lord of the Nazgul, the deadly Witch-king, crosses the river, breaks the outer city, and lays siege to Minas Tirith, hurling fire and terror over its walls. Faramir is gravely wounded in the retreat and lies as if dying. Just as the great gate is broken and the Witch-king rides through, the horns of Rohan sound: Theoden's riders charge onto the fields and scatter the besiegers. Theoden is thrown down by the Witch-king's flying steed, but Eowyn stands over him and, with Merry striking from behind, destroys the Nazgul-lord, whom no living man could kill; both are grievously hurt. Theoden dies. At the crisis Aragorn arrives up the river in captured black ships, not the enemy reinforcement the city feared but Gondor's own strength gathered on the way, and the tide of the battle turns to victory.

Despairing and half-mad with grief and the lies the enemy has fed him through a hidden seeing-stone, the Steward Denethor believes all is lost and tries to burn himself and the wounded, still-living Faramir together on a funeral pyre. Pippin runs for help, and Gandalf and the guards arrive in time to save Faramir, but Denethor takes his own life in the flames. In the aftermath, Aragorn comes quietly to the Houses of Healing, where many lie struck down by the deadly Black Breath of the Nazgul. With an ancient healing gift long said to mark the true king, he draws Faramir, Eowyn, and Merry back from the shadow of death and tends many others, though he does not yet claim the crown openly. The battle for the city is won, but at heavy cost, and the survivors know Sauron's full strength has not yet been spent.

With the city saved but weakened, the captains of the west take counsel. Gandalf argues that they cannot win by force against Mordor's numbers; their only hope lies with Frodo, who may still be carrying the ring toward the Mountain of Fire. To buy him time and draw Sauron's attention away from his own land, they resolve on a reckless gamble: to march the small remaining army of Gondor and Rohan straight to the Black Gate of Mordor and challenge the Enemy openly, as though they meant to invade. Aragorn, Gandalf, and the others lead this host east and stand before the gate. A mouthpiece of Sauron comes out and taunts them, displaying gear taken from Frodo as proof the ring-bearer has been caught, but Gandalf refuses the enemy's terms. The gates open and Mordor's vast army pours out to surround the tiny host, and the desperate last battle begins.

Meanwhile Sam storms the tower of Cirith Ungol, where the orc garrison has largely slaughtered itself in a quarrel over Frodo's captured gear, and rescues Frodo from his cell. Disguised in orc-armor, the two make their way down into Mordor and across its bleak, ash-choked plains toward Mount Doom, suffering terribly from thirst, exhaustion, and the ever-growing weight of the ring, which now torments Frodo almost beyond bearing; near the end Sam carries him bodily up the slope. They are stalked the whole way by Gollum. At the very edge of the fire, Frodo's will finally breaks: he refuses to destroy the ring and claims it for himself, slipping it on. Gollum attacks, bites the ring, and Frodo's finger with it, from his hand, and then, gloating over his prize, loses his footing and falls with it into the fire. The ring is unmade. With its destruction Sauron's power collapses utterly: his towers fall, his armies at the Black Gate are broken, and eagles carry Gandalf to pluck Frodo and Sam from the erupting mountain.

Frodo and Sam wake safe, healed, and honored on the field of Cormallen, hailed by the whole surviving army as the ring-bearers who won the war, and reunited joyfully with their friends and with Gandalf. The victors return to Minas Tirith. Aragorn is crowned King Elessar, uniting the long-divided realms of Gondor and Arnor and beginning to set them in order; Faramir is confirmed as Steward and made a prince of a restored province. When the elves come south for the coronation, Aragorn weds Arwen, Elrond's daughter, who has chosen a mortal life to be with him. Eowyn and Faramir, healed together in the Houses of Healing, come to love one another and are betrothed, and Eowyn turns from war to a life of peace and healing. The great alliance holds in friendship, and the surviving members of the Fellowship prepare at last to go their separate ways home.

The companions travel north together and part one by one along the way; Theoden is laid to rest in Rohan, and the hobbits eventually turn for home alone after a parting from Gandalf. Reaching the Shire, they find it has been seized and spoiled in their absence: trees felled, homes torn down, and the people bullied by ruffians under a hidden boss who proves to be the fallen wizard Saruman, taking petty revenge. No longer the timid hobbits who left, Merry and Pippin rouse the Shire-folk, and in a short, sharp rebellion the invaders are driven out and defeated. Saruman is confronted and, when he tries a last cruelty, is killed by his own abused servant Wormtongue at Frodo's very door; Frodo, sickened of killing, had tried to spare even him. The hobbits set about clearing the wreckage and healing the land, and Sam uses a gift of earth and a seed from Galadriel to help it bloom again swiftly.

The Shire recovers and even flourishes; Sam marries Rosie and starts a family, and Merry and Pippin are honored as heroes of the wider world. But Frodo does not fully heal. The wound from the cursed blade at Weathertop, the sting of Shelob, and above all the long burden of the ring have hurt him in body and spirit past mending, and he finds he can no longer feel at home in the land he saved. Quietly, he sets his affairs in order and passes his book and his home to Sam. At the Grey Havens he joins Bilbo, Gandalf, and the last of the elves leaving Middle-earth, and takes ship over the sea to a place of rest and healing beyond the world. Sam, Merry, and Pippin watch the ship go from the shore. Sam then returns home to his wife and daughter, and the long tale closes on him coming back to a full house and an ordinary life, the world saved and the age of the elves and their magic passing away.

The Return of the King closes with the war won and the world remade. The One Ring is destroyed in Mount Doom, undone at the last not by Frodo, whose will failed, but by Gollum, who seized it and fell into the fire, and Sauron's power is broken forever, his armies scattered and his strongholds thrown down. Aragorn is crowned King Elessar, reuniting the realms of Gondor and Arnor, and weds Arwen, who has given up elvish immortality for him. Faramir, healed, becomes his Steward and marries Eowyn of Rohan, who turns from war to peace; Merry and Pippin return home grown and renowned. The hobbits find the Shire itself has been seized and ruined by the fallen Saruman and his men, and they lead their people to drive the invaders out; Saruman is killed by his own servant, and the land is cleaned and restored. Sam marries and rebuilds, planting the Shire anew. But Frodo cannot recover from the wounds and the burden he carried. Finding no lasting peace in the home he saved, he leaves it to Sam and sails from the Grey Havens with Bilbo, Gandalf, and the last elves, over the sea and out of Middle-earth. The age of the elves ends, and Sam turns back to his ordinary life, the tale complete.