Rings of Power Season 3 Must Avoid Turning the Dark Wizard Into Another Gandalf Mystery
The Rings of Power season 3 needs to just tell us who the Dark Wizard is, already. The mystery box storytelling simply doesn't work for this show.
This Lord of the Rings article contains spoilers for The Rings of Power.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power wrapped up its second season with an epic finale that featured everything from character deaths and legendary monsters to long-awaited face-offs and the revelation of hidden truths. The end of “Shadow and Flame” promised even bigger things in store for season 3—after all, (almost) all the rings of power are now in play, Elendil has taken up his sword of destiny, and Gandalf the Grey has, at long last, realized who he is. (Though he’s still quite a long way from the wizard of legend he will one day become.)
But The Rings of Power giveth answers and it also taketh them away. Or at the very least obscures them once more. Because even as the show finally told fans the truth of Gandalf’s identity—a mystery that went on for so long it’s a stretch to imagine how any regular viewer didn’t figure it out—it introduced yet another unnamed figure with a hidden identity. The Dark Wizard of Ruhn is clearly quite powerful, has an extremely sus agenda, and has confirmed himself to be one of the Maiar—like Gandalf—with knowledge of Sauron and the other wizards who have come to Middle-earth. But we still have no idea who he truly is, and it seems unlikely we’ll find out anytime soon. Which, let’s be honest, is definitely not a comforting thought.
If we count Halbrand turned Sauron, the unknown Dark Wizard is actually the third time Rings of Power has gone to this particular narrative puzzle box well, and we’re not sure that the ultimate answers were worth all the speculation in the first place. While it’s true that the existence of Halbrand has laced Sauron and Galadriel’s animosity with some intriguing new emotional beats, the mystery of Gandalf’s identity has had less overt payoff onscreen. Sure, there’s the fun of sticking many of the famous wizard’s most well-known lines in the mouths of other characters while they’re talking to or about him, and plenty of references to the kind of deep-cut lore that turn Tolkien fans into that Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at the screen meme. But thus far, much of the Stranger’s development has revolved around the question of whether or not he might be Gandalf, rather than establishing a baseline for who this iteration of the character actually is.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s something both charming and deeply Tolkienesque about the idea that one of the most powerful beings in the history of Middle-earth had to first walk with the smallest of its creatures before he could truly take up his magical staff and find the purpose he was sent to fulfill. But it’s unlikely that such an arc is in the Dark Wizard’s future and the show has already narrowed his identity down to the point where it’s unclear that keeping the answer from the audience will offer any additional depth we couldn’t get from just seeing the character (whoever he turns out to be) interact with the larger world of the series.
Plus, the Dark Wizard himself has already mostly told us who he is. He identifies himself as one of the Maiar, a group of five spirits sent to aid the people of Middle-earth in the fight against Sauron. (The show’s fudging the timeline a bit here, as technically they aren’t meant to arrive until the Third Age.) Alongside Gandalf, these include the beings who will one day become known as Saruman the White, Radagast the Brown, and two Blue Wizards, whose names, according to Unfinished Tales are Alatar and Pallando. Since the Dark Wizard is clearly not Gandalf and seems altogether too vicious to be the nature and animal-loving Radagast, our options for his identity are fairly limited—he’s either Saruman or one of the heretofore unseen onscreen Blue Wizards. But which is more likely?
There’s a certain symmetry to the idea that the Dark Wizard might be Saruman, given that the stories of the two revolve around one another throughout Tolkien’s works, and it is Gandalf who ultimately takes up his White mantle in the wake of Saruman’s treachery. That their ultimately adversarial bond might have roots this deep is admittedly an interesting one. Plus, who doesn’t want to watch Ciarán Hinds channeling Christopher Lee? (Those eyebrows! That staff!) But it would also make Gandalf and the rest of Middle-earth’s leadership look like absolute idiots, since right up until the events of The Fellowship of the Ring, virtually everyone trusted Saruman implicitly. His betrayal at Orthanc lands so spectacularly hard precisely because up until that moment, he’s been universally seen as one of the Good Guys—the leader of the Third Age White Council, and someone Gandalf unironically calls the wisest and most powerful of his order.
It’s hard to see how any of that happens if his character has already waxed poetic about claiming Sauron’s power for himself, threatened Gandalf, and destroyed the Stoors’ village out of spite. If he is Saruman, then the show is focused on exactly the wrong things—the mystery of his identity rather than how he apparently came to Middle-earth in the same evil packaging he always wore, and everyone was too dumb to notice until he told them.
If he’s one of the Blue Wizards, would it not be more interesting to simply say that outright, and use the character to explore the mission and culture of the Istari more broadly? Canonically speaking, it would give The Rings of Power a ton of narrative space to work with. Tolkien wasn’t all that clear about who the Blue Wizards—who may or may not have arrived in Middle-earth before their other three brethren—were, what they did in the fight against Sauron, or what happened to either of them. We know they went east, ostensibly to convince the men of Rhun who had once been loyal to Morgoth not to join the new Dark Lord’s cause. They may or may not have stayed together, they may or may not have founded some magical cults of their own. We don’t know, which means The Rings of Power could do almost anything with these characters, and tell stories viewers wouldn’t necessarily expect in the same way they would if the Dark Wizard is simply Saruman going by another name. (Or lack thereof.)
But in order for any of this to actually mean anything, they need to tell us who the Dark Wizard is sooner rather than later. In Tolkien’s world, things like lore and character are a means to an end in and of themselves, and just as important as any plot twist. But The Rings of Power repeatedly chooses to focus on the most basic, surface-level mysteries, when most viewers likely care more about what makes these characters tick than what we call them. Here’s hoping the show changes course in season 3, and just tells us who the heck this guy is, so we can figure out why his part in this story matters.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is streaming now on Prime Video.
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Lacy Baugher is a digital producer by day, but a television enthusiast pretty much all the time. Her writing has been featured in Paste Magazine, Collider,…