Rings of Power season 2 leaves its wizards almost as mysterious as season 1

The first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power loved his mysteries – a secret Sauron, a creepy sword and an amnesiac meteor man. And while we had a pretty good idea of ​​who that meteor man was at the end of Season 1, the Season 2 finale finally gives him a name.

However, showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay couldn’t give viewers all the answers – and they pulled off the clever trick of naming an unnamed wizard while teasing another unnamed wizard.

(Ed. remark: This piece contains spoilers for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power through the season 2 finale.)

This week’s episode concludes the season in several ways, including the anticipated showdown between the Stranger and the Dark Wizard. The Dark Wizard offers the Stranger a chance to reclaim his name, his past, and his staff, if only he turns to the Dark Side – I mean, if he only joins the Dark Wizard in his quest to defeat Sauron , and then replace him as Dark Lord. Once the Stranger saw through the Dark Wizard’s attempts to put a friendly face on his true nature, the Wizard blasted a hill apart and left, leaving the Stoors without a home.

Luckily, Nori and Poppy are on hand to teach the Stoors the Harfoots’ itinerary, and after a few farewells to the newly migrating hobbits – who call the Stranger ‘Grand Elf’ – the Stranger has a new name: Gandalf.

No, but it isn’t That far away. See, Tolkien didn’t come up with the name “Gandalf”; he got it from somewhere else. Gandalf first appears inside The Hobbitthat Tolkien wrote as a story for children (initially directly as bedtime stories, improvised for his own sons and daughter). The writer has no idea about rooting The Hobbit in his Middle-earth lore and languages ​​until he was almost halfway done with the design that became The Company of the Ringyears later The Hobbit had been published.

Instead of being rooted in one of Tolkien’s constructed languages, Gandalf and all the dwarves are rooted in it The Hobbit are cheekily named after dwarf characters mentioned in a section of the Völuspáa collection of anonymously written poems essential to the study of the Old Norse language – that is, essential to Tolkien’s own academic concentration. Gandalf, Thorin, Fili and Kili, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur and even Durin, the name of all the kings of Moria, come straight from the Poetic Edda.

Although ‘Gandalf’ is not derived from any of Tolkien’s fictional languages, the roots of the word gandafr actually means ‘reed elf’ in Old Norse – which isn’t such a bad derivation for a man who is ageless as elves and wields a staff. Gandalf was what the wizard was called in most human and hobbit languages ​​in northwest Middle-earth, though in Gondor, the closest elvish human nation on earth. The Lord of the Ringshe was called by his Sindarin elven name, Mithrandir.

In The two towersFaramir remembers Gandalf telling him about a whole series of names:

Many are my names in many lands. Mithrandir among the Elves (meaning ‘grey pilgrim/wanderer’), Tharkûn for the dwarves (staffman); Olórin I was in my youth in the forgotten West (his original name, which probably means something to do with dreams/vision/the mind), in the South Incánus (Tolkien changed his mind a number of times about the meaning of this ), in North Gandalf; I will not go to the East.

Suffice to say, Gandalf has found one of his names, but there’s a lot more to it than that The rings of power to choose from if he wants.

The Dark Wizard here confirmed that he was one of the Istari, or sorcerers, who sent the Valar to help the peoples of Middle-earth resist Sauron. But just because he looks like an evil wizard doesn’t mean he is one The Lord of the Rings‘most prominent evil wizard.

It is true, in Tolkien’s lore, that Saruman was always jealous of his Istari colleagues, especially Gandalf, and early on decided to grow his own power until he could locate the One Ring, seize it for himself, and defeat Sauron replaced, largely in the way he did. The rings of power‘s Dark Wizard wants to do.

But Saruman kept it all so completely secret that even at the time of the War of the Ring, Gandalf openly regarded him as “the greatest of my order” and trusted Saruman’s hard-won knowledge of Ring lore to be harnessed for the military. of good.

Saruman seemed to be a good guy to Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel and everyone else who knew him, until he imprisoned Gandalf in Orthanc in The Company of the Ring. That doesn’t seem consistent with this Dark Wizard, who simply tried to kill an entire village of hobbits in front of Gandalf. Maybe there’s a redemption arc in his future, but it’s hard to think of one that would be that compelling.

What is more likely is that the Dark Wizard, despite his monochrome robes, is one of the ‘Blue Wizards’. In this episode he confirmed that five Istari were sent to Middle-earth to oppose Sauron, and from Tolkien’s writings we know exactly who those five wizards are: Gandalf the Gray, Saruman the White, Radagast the Brown, and the two Blue Wizards. , as they are now called.

The Blue Wizards exist because of a phrase Tolkien gave to Saruman The two towerswhen the cornered wizard sarcastically protested Gandalf’s promise to give him back his staff later, based on good behavior. “Later! Later! Yes, if you have also the Keys of Barad-dûr himself, I suppose; and the crowns of seven kings, and the staves of the five wizards, and have bought yourself a pair of boots many sizes larger are the boots you are wearing now.

Tolkien only then returned to the question of the remaining wizards The Lord of the Rings was published in full. As he wrote in 1958 to a fan who asked about “the other two”: “I really don’t know anything clearly about the other two – as they do not relate to the history of (Northwest of Middle-earth).” In later writings, published only after his death, he gave the wizards a color (blue) and said that they went to the distant parts of Middle-earth and never returned to the key locations of his saga.

Since Tolkien isn’t listed that way, these last two Blue Wizards are ripe for it The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power to expand in subsequent seasons. But that’s not all. The rings of power can only place what is in the text of the Lord of the rings books themselves on the screen – and in The Lord of the RingsTolkien never gave the last two wizards a color. That means that even though he isn’t wearing blue at all, the Dark Wizard is actually a… Blue Wizard. And the appearance of a Saruman, the wisest and best wizard, could still be on the horizon.