The Rings of Power is already changing what we know about the history of Middle-earth from Tolkien’s works. But the latest addition raises a lot of exciting questions about a fascinating aspect of Tolkien’s world-building that the series itself has already played with a lot: the arrival of a new, dark wizard.
Today Amazon officially presented the first look at game of Thrones And Rome actor Ciarán Hinds’ new character. Although we’ve known for some time that Hinds will appear in the show, this is our first confirmation of who he’s actually playing: a mysterious figure known only as the Dark Wizard. Described by Amazon as “a dark and powerful wizard whose origins and intentions are shrouded in mystery and who has a legion of magically gifted acolytes who obey his every command,” the Dark Wizard will play a major role in Rings of Powers storyline in Rhûn in season 2, when the Stranger (Daniel Weyman) and his Harfoot companion Nori (Markella Kavenagh) venture into the eastern lands to help the former discover his own magical connections as one of the Istari. According to Amazon, it was the Dark Wizard who sent the mysterious acolytes after the Stranger in season 1, believing him to be Sauron reincarnated, so whatever The What the magician is planning is certainly not good.
Who could the dark wizard be?
“We have seen throughout Tolkien that powerful beings are seduced to evil. Gandalf does not want to wear the Ring because he fears the evil he might cause through it.” Rings of Power Co-showrunner Patrick McKay told Comicbook about the Dark Wizard’s origins in a recent interview. “Saruman turns to evil because he believes that’s the best way to save the world, no matter what twisted logic he’s come up with. So we know that good characters can turn to evil, and we know that even wizards can fall to the dark side, so to speak, and to see how that plays out with Ciarán Hinds will hopefully be a real thrill for people.”
In Tolkien’s writings, only five of the Istari, more colloquially known as wizards, were sent to Middle-earth during the Third Age. Agents of the Valar, the Istari were primordial spirits called Maia who were transformed into a mortal but magically powerful form and tasked with helping the races of Arda combat the threat posed by Sauron, himself a fallen Maia. These five from the ranks of the Maiar were known as Curumo, Olórin, Aiwendil, Morinehtar and Rómestámo, who in their mortal form became known as Saruman, Gandalf, Radagast, Alatar and Pallando respectively.
While of course much is known about Saruman and Gandalf and Tolkien briefly mentions Radagast in The HobbitAlatar and Pallando (both known together as the Blue Wizards) were the most mysterious of the Istari. In some of Tolkien’s earliest writings and letters about Middle-earth, the Blue Wizards are briefly described as being sent to the eastern lands, where they probably failed to complete their missions and eventually founded magical cults. But in manuscripts written towards the end of his life – collected in the 12-volume series The peoples of Middle Earth by Tolkien’s son Christopher – Tolkien radically changed this idea, instead portraying Alatar and Pallando as Istari, sent by the Valar much earlier than the others, during the Second Age, to disrupt Sauron’s influence in the East. In these writings, the Blue Wizards are more successful: although they were unable to locate where Sauron’s spirit had fled in the eastern and southern realms of Middle-earth after the War of the Last Alliance, they played an important role in ensuring that his influence and agents could never match the power of the Free Peoples in the West during the final stages of the Third Age, and in their own way helped to ensure victory in the War of the Ring.
There are already many reasons to believe that The Rings of Power prepares Weyman’s stranger to become Gandalf. And it would be Type odd, because as Saruman-like as Hinds’ character looks, the dark wizard is a Saruman who fell to darkness in the Second Age, only to be redeemed and fall again in the Third Age. Radagast is an equally unlikely candidate, given how little we know about him, which leaves one of the blue wizards as a possible candidate for the dark wizard’s true identity. Rings of Power has already played a little with what we knew from Tolkien about the Istari by heralding their arrival in the Second Age, but if Season 2 takes Tolkien’s contradictory idea of them – initially that they failed and slacked in their duties, only to then reimagine them as some of the Valar’s first agents against Sauron – and wraps this up in a unique story, then maybe we’ll see the Stranger and his allies confront this dark wizard and turn him away from evil?
Time will tell when The Rings of Power returns to Amazon on August 29th.
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