This post contains spoilers for The Rings of Power through Season 2, Episode 5.
Sauron may be busy forging rings, but another evil power is rising in the east on The Rings of Power. In Season 1, The Stranger and his harfoot friends ran into some pale, mystical baddies in the forest. It turns out that they hailed from the eastern land of Rhûn. They were the henchmen of a dark wizard, played by Ciarán Hinds, who was introduced in the second episode of Season 2.
Hinds is no stranger to fantasy adaptations: He has had roles in both Game of Thrones and Harry Potter. However, in The Rings of Power, he seems like a particularly ominous foe to The Stranger, who many have speculated to be Gandalf. But the Dark Wizard’s exact identity and ultimate goal had thus far remained a mystery throughout Season 2.
Here is what we do know about the Dark Wizard and our best guess at his motivations.
The new foe is likely one of the Istari
At the end of Season 1, three cultists tracked down the Stranger in the forest, believing him to be Sauron reincarnated. Of course, they are wrong: Galadriel’s friend (and potential love interest) Halbrand turned out to be the Dark Lord.
The Stranger is actually one of the Istari, a race of wizards that appear in writer J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books. Tolkien writes about five wizards, two of whom feature heavily in the Lord of the Rings books: Sauron and Saruman.
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At the end of Season 1, the Stranger defeated the cultists in battle. But they survived and fled back to their master, the magic-user played by Hinds. Amazon offers this official description of the character, which confirms that he, too, is a wizard.
It turns out, the mysterious being known as the Stranger is not the only wizard who has come to Middle-earth….for in the mysterious lands of Rhûn, another wizard awaits him. 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 — among them the three travelers who sought out the Stranger at the end of Season 1…on the Dark Wizard’s orders.”
It is yet unclear whether this wizard is one of the handful of Istari written about in Tolkien’s stories or whether he’s a new character entirely. But fans have some theories.
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He may be one of the blue wizards
You may remember that wizards in Tolkien’s stories are associated with different colors. (Gandalf the Grey, Saruman the White, etc.) Tolkien wrote about two blue wizards in Lord of the Rings named Alatar and Pallando. They both traveled to Rhûn to convince men who had been loyal to Morgoth—the evil power who was essentially Sauron’s boss—not to join Sauron.
Tolkien wrote that the blue wizards failed to stop Sauron and established cults of their own in Rhûn. They taught their human followers magic and encouraged the mortals to worship them.
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Given the Dark Wizard does seem to have a cult following, there’s a good chance he’s one of these two blue wizards.
He may be Saruman
If The Rings of Power hopes to make more connections to The Lord of the Rings, it would make sense that at some point they would introduce Saruman. The White Wizard did travel to Rhûn early in his time on Middle-earth, though Tolkien never wrote what he did there. It’s possible the show is trying to fill in that gap.
Still, Gandalf—that is, if The Stranger is Gandalf—would not approve of another wizard starting a cult when his mission is to stop Sauron. A confrontation between Gandalf and Saruman so early in their time together on Middle-earth seems unlikely considering that they were allies for thousands of years before Saruman became loyal to Sauron and betrayed Gandalf during the events of The Lord of the Rings.
He could be Khamûl
We know that Sauron will eventually forge nine rings for men, and the wearers of those rings will be corrupted and become ringwraiths or Nazgûl. The ringwraiths serve Sauron and they’re the hooded figures who hound Frodo and the fellowship throughout the Lord of the Rings books. We’ve probably already met a few of these mortal men on the show.
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Even though this mysterious man wields magic, he may not technically be one of the Istar from the books. If he’s a mortal man who acquired mystical skills, then he’s a leading candidate for the character of Khamûl, one of the nine wringwraiths and a man who hailed from the east.
He may be an entirely new character
Though many of the characters from The Rings of Power can be found in Tolkien’s texts—Isildur, Galadriel, Durin—some have been created from whole cloth like the elf Arondir or the harfoot Nori. It is certainly possible that this dark wizard character is brand new to the show. There is plenty of latitude for showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay to play with the stories in Rhûn given that Tolkien left much of the activity in that land mysterious.
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However, the writers also clearly want to keep the audience guessing as to the identities of certain characters and how they might fit into the canon. They left the reveal of Sauron until the end of Season 1 and are still playing not confirming The Stranger’s identity. So it’s likely that this Dark Wizard is indeed an original Tolkien character—even if it’s someone the fans do not expect.
