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Spoilers for The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power season 2 follow.

You may recall a couple of weeks ago when Popverse posited the theory that The Lord of the Rings: the Rings of Power's Stranger and Dark Wizard characters were not Gandalf and Saruman as they appeared to be, but rather the mysterious Blue Wizards from J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth history. By the end of the season, it looked like we completely missed the mark, as The Stranger revealed himself in full to be a proto-Gandalf, even saying the name to his buddy Tom Bombadil. But just recently, showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay threw a monkey wrench in popular theory, giving us hope we might at least have been half-right.

The story comes out of a Reddit Q&A that Payne and McKay hosted November 1, and that was reported on by Collider November 13. During the exchange, the showrunners were asked about the possibility of the Blue Wizards making an appearance on the show, and whether or not they could confirm the Dark Wizard (played by Ciarán Hinds) was absolutely not Saruman. 

"I think it's hard to say anything is 100%," writes McKay, "but we have no plans or intention to have him be Saruman. We are not thinking of him as Saruman. 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 will be one of those two others."

"What I'll say is," Payne chimed in, "I think it would be difficult logically to see how he could be Saruman. It would be sort of a 'fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me' for Gandalf. If the Dark Wizard was going to be Saruman, then he would be an evil wizard that Gandalf was interacting with and fighting in the Second Age. And then he'd have to become good again and regain Gandalf’s trust, only to later turn evil again and betray him. It would just sort of strain credulity."

Those quotes taken at perfect face value pretty much guarantee that we were right about the Dark Wizard; that he is, in fact, one of the mysterious Blue Wizards of Tolkien's legendarium. So why aren't we claiming victory here? Well, there's one phrase in McKay's statement that gives us pause. That is, "it is our expectation that he will be one of those two others."

The official truth, as that statement seems to indicate, is that the identity of the Dark Wizard is sill undecided as of this moment. He is neither Blue Wizard or Saruman because, in the writers' room, the decision hasn't been made. McKay writes in the Q&A later that "we're not sort of playing fast and loose or, or trying to be tricky," but even if that's true, there's still a range of possibilities for his identity that contradict neither the established Lord of the Rings lore or what's happened in the series so far.

For example, we know that the dark Wizard has knowledge of the Istari due to his comments to The Stranger in the last episode, but is his claim to be one true? After all, we know that in Tolkien's writing there is at least one character that seeks to make of himself a more magically gifted individual than he rightfully should be. He's a kind of, oh, I don't know how to say it... witch king?

What we can confidently tell you is that we won't know the truth behind the Dark Wizard's identity until we hear it from the show itself. And, unfortunately, that may be a couple of years away. Until then The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of power is streaming on Prime Video, and here at Popverse, Tolkien nerds Ashley V. Robinson and Grant DeArmitt are going to be covering every little bit of Lord of the Rings news we possibly can.

Even when we're wrong.

Whether you're Shirefolk, Elven, Dwarven, or something else, there's a good reason to love Lord of the Rings. We do! With that in mind, we have a dragon's horde of goodies for you from a Lord of the Rings reading guide, a Lord of the Rings watch guide, details on the upcoming animated film Lord of the Rings: The War of Rohirrim, a full the Lord of the Rings reunion panel you can watch, how the OG Hobbit actors stay in touch every day on a groupchat, and the true message of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, according to Gimli himself - John Rhys-Davies.