The Scouring of the Shire may have been cut due to time constraints. Thus, it would make sense to tie up the Saruman storyline at the end of The Two Towers. I hope Peter Jackson keeps the "redemption/betrayal" motif for Saruman's death - an easy way to do this, of course, would be for Gandalf to allow Saruman to go free, after which Grima Wormtongue pushes his "master" out of a window. In fact, I suspect that is exactly what we'll see. Saruman's subsequent impalement on one of his own infernal machines could come across as poetic justice or as horror-movie cliche; I'll reserve judgement on *that* aspect of it until I see the execution.

--k