The Rings of Power is already doing a lot to change up what we knew from Tolkien’s writing about the history of Middle-earth. But its latest addition raises a ton of intriguing questions about one fascinating aspect of Tolkien’s worldbuilding the show has already played a lot with itself: the arrival of a new, sinister wizard.
Today Amazon officially unveiled the first look at Game of Thrones and Rome actor Ciarán Hinds’ new character. Although we’ve known that Hinds will appear in show for a while, this is our first confirmation as to 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 secrecy, and who has a legion of magic-wielding acolytes who obey his every command,” the Dark Wizard will form an important part of Rings of Power‘s storyline in Rhûn in season 2, as the Stranger (Daniel Weyman) and his Harfoot companion Nori (Markella Kavenagh) venture to the eastern lands in order 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 reborn, so whatever this Wizard is up to, it’s certainly no good.
Who Could the Dark Wizard Be?
“We have seen throughout Tolkien that powerful beings are tempted to evil. Gandalf will not carry the Ring for he fears the evil it could do through him,” Rings of Power co-showrunner Patrick McKay told Comicbook in a recent interview about the Dark Wizard’s origins. “Saruman turns to evil believing that that’s the best way to save the world, in whatever twisted logic he’s come up with. So we know that good characters can turn to evil and we know that even wizards can turn to the dark side, so to speak, and watching how that’s gonna play out with Ciarán Hinds is gonna be hopefully a real thrill for people.”
In Tolkien’s writings, only five of the Istari, known more colloquially as Wizards, were sent to Middle-earth during the Third Age. Agents of the Valar, the Istari were primordial spirits called Maia, transformed into mortal but magically-powerful form and tasked with helping the races of Arda combat the threat of Sauron, himself a fallen Maia. Those five from among the Maiar were known as Curumo, Olórin, Aiwendil, Morinehtar, and Rómestámo, who, in their mortal forms, became known as Saruman, Gandalf, Radagast, Alatar, and Pallando, respectively.
While much is known about Saruman and Gandalf, of course, and Tolkien explored Radagast briefly in The Hobbit, Alatar and Pallando (both known collectively as the Blue Wizards) were the most mysterious of the Istari. In some of Tolkien’s earliest writing and letters about Middle-earth, the Blue Wizards were briefly described as having been dispatched to the eastern lands, and likely failed in their missions there, eventually founding magical cults. But in manuscripts written closer to the end of his life–collected in the 12-volume series The Peoples of Middle-earth by Tolkien’s son, Christopher–Tolkien radically altered this idea, instead casting Alatar and Pallando as Istari who were dispatched 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 couldn’t locate where Sauron’s spirit had fled after the War of the Last Alliance in Middle-earth’s eastern and southern realms, they would play a major part in ensuring his influence and his agents could never match the power of the Free Peoples in the West during the latter period of the Third Age, helping in their own way to ensure victory in the War of the Ring.
There’s already plenty of reason to believe that The Rings of Power is setting up Weyman’s Stranger to become Gandalf. And it would be kind of weird, for as Saruman-esque as Hinds’ character looks, for the Dark Wizard to be a Saruman who fell to darkness in the Second Age, only to be redeemed and fall again in the Third. Radagast is just as unlikely a candidate, given what little we knew of him, leaving one of the Blue Wizards as a potential candidate for the Dark Wizard’s true identity. Rings of Power has already played a little bit with what we knew of the Istari from Tolkien in having them begin to arrive in the Second Age, but if season 2 draws on that conflicting idea that Tolkien had about them–initially that they failed and diminished in their duties, only to then re-imagine them as some of the Valar’s earliest agents against Sauron–and roles it into a singular story, maybe we’ll see the Stranger and his allies confront this Dark Wizard and turn him from evil?
Time will tell, when The Rings of Power returns to Amazon August 29.
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