system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
(LOTR) Could Sauron take physical form without the ring?

The movies seem to stay that Sauron was only a spirt and he was the Eye of Sauron himself. And even the Hobbit seemed to show him as the necromancer as simply a spirt as well. I haven't read the books in quite some time but from what I remember, the necromancer was and actual physical being, and after Gandalf chased him away Sauron fled back to Barad-dûr and was too weak to fight for himself, so he created the eye of Sauron.
gpt
In the Red Book of the Westmarch, we find Gollum, recounting his captivity at the hands of Sauron, telling how Sauron has "Only four [fingers] on the black hand, but they are enough." This is widely accepted as convincing evidence that the Dark Lord had taken physical form again during the later years of the Third Age, which the Wise had already feared was happening during the rise of the Necromancer at Dol Guldur. 

He was not able to take fair form again after he fled the Ruin of Numinor, but he had a physical form. The "Eye of Sauron" was already terrible to behold and hard to endure during the First and Second Ages, also it was taken up as a symbol by all servants of Mordor, so that it's hard to distinguish between the actual, physical eye and gaze of Sauron and its metaphysical use as a symbol for Sauron and his power.