This is the Withywaffle Rings of Power podcast, but with much shorter episodes, so each episode is not a whole Withywaffle, merely a bite of it. Unfortunately, it’s just me on the podcast this time, talking to myself sadly.
My microphone’s a little crackly – sorry about that.
This episode discusses the Dark Wizard and what the showrunners recently revealed about him
I even took it upon myself to make a transcript:
Hello, all my Uruk children, and welcome to the best podcast in all of Mordor. I’m Adar – well actually I’m Emma, and I’m alone today – and this is the Withywaffle.
This isn’t going to be a full waffle, if you get what I’m saying – this is more like a bite of Withywaffle, or you know when you take just one of the squares of a waffle, and fill it with syrup. That’s more like what this is. The reason for this is because we have no more Rings of Power to talk about, so there isn’t actually that much to talk about on the Withywaffle, which is about the Rings of Power.
So, this holiday; this Christmas season, I went to a carols service at another church, and the church’s name was Wychwood Baptist Church, because it’s in a place called Wychwood. It was a very good carols service – it was exemplary! It was quite… exquisite! Phenomenal! Tuneful and symphonic! There was a piano, violin, trumpet, drums, even some bagpipes! Anyways, anyways, “Wychwood” got me thinking, what if instead of “Wychwood”, it had been Wyzardwood? And Wizard wood is like a wizard’s staff, or gand, let’s say. And a gand is like Gandalf, and recently Gandalf in the Rings of power has been having a lot of dealing with the Dark Wizard, which brought to mind some very exciting news that we’ve heard recently about the Dark Wizard.
As this episode is going to be about the Dark Wizard, I could even call it the “Wizzywaffle”!
So, the showrunners have confirmed that the Dark Wizard actually is not Saruman. Now, I’m very glad of this, because I never thought he should be Saruman, because why would they trust Saruman later on, why would Saruman be the head of the Wizards and the head of the White Council if he had a dodgy history? I’m very glad of that. It makes sense.
The showrunners’ very words were: “We have no plans or intentions to have him be Saruman.” The reason why they’re saying “plans” and “intentions”, “We don’t intend him to be Saruman,” – it implies they don’t really know for sure. Maybe this is in reference to the fact that they didn’t actually know who the Stranger was going to be until they wrote season 2, so all throughout season 1 when nobody knew who the Stranger was, though many people strongly suspected he was Gandalf, the showrunners didn’t actually know themselves, and that helped them depict the vagueness of it. They didn’t even know themselves, and neither did the actor playing him; Daniel Weyman.
Further, it has been confirmed that the Dark Wizard is one of the two blue wizards. Now, the blue wizards are wizards that we aren’t as familiar with as, of course, Gandalf, Saruman, and Radagast. The blue wizards in the lore are named Alatar and Pallando. They mostly do their stuff in the East, which makes sense because the Dark Wizard is in the East; in Rhun. Some other names Tolkien had for them were Morinehtar and Rómestámo.
We’re really interested to see what the showrunners are going to do with this, because we’ve never seen them before on screen, and their stories weren’t very developed in the books; we just know that they did stuff in the East, and nobody really knew about them. Gandalf says in the Hobbit movies that he’s forgotten their names.
Because the blue wizards are always together, that means that hopefully soon we’ll see another blue wizard appear in the Rings of Power. I’m quite excited for them to meet. The Dark Wizard is on a dark path; he’s doing some evil stuff, so will the other guy bring him out of that, or will he drag him down into the darkness? What will happen there? I’m really excited to see this in the Rings of Power.
But really, it must be really exciting for the showrunners to be able to explore stories like this. Of course this won’t be canonical, but it’s nice to imagine; to fill in the plot hole in our our minds, to think about what could have happened, and try to do it in a way that Tolkien would have approved of. So many people don’t really like the Rings of Power because it’s not canonical, but then again is it supposed to really be? Are our plays about Julius Caesar or other historical characters, are they supposed to be really the way it happened, or are they just supposed to be us trying to fill in the hole of what we don’t know in a way that is really exciting? Think about how much fun it must be for J. D. Payne, for Patrick Mckay, and for Ciarán Hinds to bring this story to life, this story that has never been told before, even though it’s not canonical.
But again, the showrunners’ phrasing is quite vague, as they say: “We know there are five wizards talked about in the Lord of the Rings; one of them is Saruman, one of them is Gandalf, one of them is Radagast, and then there are two others. It is our expectation that he’ll be one of those two others.” So, they don’t outright say “Oh, he’s a blue wizard,” they just said “it’s our expectation”, but I think this is as good as confirmed.
Also another thing that was confirmed along with this is that we will get Rings of Power season 3, as that was also a little bit vague, there was a little bit of gray area there, but now it’s quite officially confirmed. It’s being written currently, and they say that they have a strong story for it, so I’m very excited to see what they come up with for Rings of Power season 3.
I’ve been Emma, and you’ve been listening, learning, and lamenting the fact that we currently have no new Rings of Power. But hopefully soon that will change, and I’ll see you next time!