Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-26119768-20170222024948/@comment-31907131-20170223043737

Exactly, it preserved his power, so he could challenge the Free Peoples again. After it was destroyed, he became as Saruman did when slain.

"And as the Captains gazed south to the Land of Mordor, it seemed to them that, black against the pall of cloud, there rose a huge shape of shadow, impenetrable, lightning-crowned, filling all the sky. Enormous it reared above the world, and stretched out towards them a vast and threatening hand, terrible but impotent: for even as it leaned over them, a great wind took it, and it was all blown away, and passed; and then a hush fell."

Now we have two instances of this happening to fallen Maiar. It seems that when their bodies/ manifestations are destroyed, their spirit leaves, no longer to blight the land. And if Saruman and Sauron did not return to Valinor like the Elves, and like those Maiar who remained with the Valar, where then did they go? Again I say to the Void. All those things you said only happened to Saruman also seem to have take place at the death of Sauron, who had origins rather different than those of Saruman, and more alike to the Balrogs. But anyway, as Tolkien said, the maximum number of Balrogs was seven, not the minimum. So there is only a small chance of three Balrogs being left. And for the reasons I stated in earlier comments, there should not be any Balrogs in Utumno, in addition to the fact that it was long since destroyed. In any event, they have a stronger connection with Melkor in the Void as his servants, or Eru who created them, than that with Utumno.