In The Lord of the Rings, Sauron is seen as a disembodied eye overlooking Mordor — a symbol of pure evil. But he wasn’t always this way.
The new Lord of the Rings series will cover the Second Age era of Tolkien’s saga. Much like the six movies of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, the series will almost surely feature Sauron as the main villain. But the creator of the Ring wasn’t always evil.
Going only by Peter Jackson’s original trilogy, Sauron is a rather elusive and simple character. When he is introduced at the beginning, he is called “The Dark Lord, Sauron” who “poured into this ring all his cruelty, his malice, and his will to dominate all life.” It is therefore implied that Sauron was evil from the beginning; however, that is not the case.