It's hard to tell who really dies and who doesn't in "The Lord of the Rings." The Elves pass away overseas to the Undying Lands in the West. Gandalf falls to his doom and then comes back stronger than ever. Boromir really does perish, mown down by Orc arrows. Gollum dies too, tripping to his death at the Cracks of Doom. And Saruman? He doesn't die. His body is killed, and his spirit lingers on, empty and insignificant.

Technically speaking, the fate of Saruman varies depending on your Middle-earth experience. Those who only watched the theatrical versions of Peter Jackson's films likely don't have an answer to the question. The last you see of Saruman is the Wizard trapped by Ents in his tower of Orthanc at the end of "The Two Towers." Anyone who watched the lengthy extended editions of "The Lord of the Rings" movies will know that, in a previously deleted scene, Saruman is stabbed by Wormtongue (Brad Dourif), dramatically falls from the top of his tower, and is pierced on a spiked water wheel-looking device, which slowly turns, burying the Wizard in a watery grave. (The fact that this scene was cut from the beginning of "The Return of the King" literally caused Saruman actor Christopher Lee to snub the movie's premiere.)

Book readers know that both the unfinished and dramatically morbid on-screen endings are actually aberrations from J.R.R. Tolkien's source material. They're also too neat and tidy a resolution for the kind of being Saruman is. In reality, Saruman doesn't die like a Human or an Orc. Sure, his body is stabbed by Wormtongue, but this actually happens in the Shire (yes, you read that right), and Saruman doesn't perish after he's shuffled off this mortal coil. His spirit lingers on, defeated, trivial, and ultimately irrelevant -- a reality that, for the ambitious Wizard, is a fate worse than death.