The Rings Of Power Season 3's Blue Wizard Twist Explained In Full

One wizard, two wizard, grey wizard, blue wizard. Tolkien canon be damned, Amazon couldn't very well make a Middle-earth TV series and not include wizards. In the first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Daniel Weyman was the sole magic man in town, and his status as an Istar only came to light in the season's climactic battle against acolytes of darkness.

In The Rings of Power season 2, Ciarán Hinds was introduced as a "Dark Wizard" leading a cult in Rhûn. It was at this point that Weyman's character was finally confirmed beyond all doubt to be Gandalf, cementing what viewers already heavily suspected. The Dark Wizard's identity remained a mystery, but the fact that he was up to no good made Saruman the obvious assumption.

Not so, as The Rings of Power's showrunners took to Reddit to announce Hinds was actually portraying one of Tolkien's blue wizards, the famous duo missing in action throughout The Lord of the Rings.

That revelation has now come to light in the series itself, but The Rings of Power season 3 has more shocks and surprises in store regarding its blue wizards.

Why Pallando The Blue Wizard Is Evil In The Rings Of Power

The Rings of Power season 3 names its blue wizard as Pallando, a moniker plucked straight from Tolkien's legendarium. The big difference on Prime Video, of course, is Pallando being an enemy.

Broadly speaking, Pallando's villainy has no real basis in the writings of Tolkien. While the blue wizards' movements during the Third Age and the War of the Ring are ambiguous, it's generally said that they were either distracted by other pursuits (similar to Radagast), or kept Sauron's forces busy elsewhere in Middle-earth. There certainly isn't any suggestion that Pallando or his pal went the way of Saruman and became a threat to other races.

The Rings of Power appears to be drawing on a single line of Tolkien lore that mentions the blue wizards being responsible for starting a few magical cults here and there. Pallando's gaggle of followers and the spell-casting acolytes he sent after Gandalf in season 1 lean into this detail, but it's entirely the show's invention that such cults posed genuine danger along the lines of Saruman and Sauron.

Tolkien's blue wizards are, at worst, morally ambiguous. In The Rings of Power, Pallando is still more of a color-swapped Saruman, seeking to align with Sauron before overthrowing the Dark Lord and taking control of Middle-earth himself.

Wait, Pallando KILLED The Other Blue Wizard?

Thanks to Reddit, The Rings of Power revealing Pallando's true identity in season 3 comes as no huge surprise. It was either him or the other blue member of the band, Alatar. The real shocker is that Pallando has fallen so far from grace, he actually killed Alatar before becoming the ruler of Rhûn.

This single act pushes Pallando far beyond a misguided soul or renegade fighting for the greater good, firmly enshrining him as a villain of the Second Age. Even Saruman in The Lord of the Rings resisted the urge to murder Gandalf after imprisoning him at Orthanc, remaining certain that the grey wizard would come around to a darker way of thinking eventually. It's difficult to overstate just how big a deal one wizard killing another is in The Lord of the Rings, and it's a concept that very much stands out as an Amazon original.

Alatar isn't actually dead, of course. The maiar are immortal, so his spirit would have found itself back in Valinor sooner or later, with nothing more than wounded pride and an ex-best friend to show for his time in Middle-earth. Importantly, though, Pallando wouldn't have known his victim would live on. The Lord of the Rings' wizards possess very little awareness of their lives in the Undying Lands, not fully comprehending their true selves and true power. Killing a fellow wizard, then, would have been very deliberate. The act remains one of callousness, greed, and evil.

With Alatar dead and Gandalf and Pallando already in the cast, that leaves only Saruman and Radagast. The White Wizard remains unaccounted for, but Radagast is possibly the "tree-talker" mentioned by Kemen in The Rings of Power season 3's opening episodes, meaning the kooky nature lover is fighting for the right team by thwarting Númenor's ability to hurt the Faithful.

How The Rings Of Power Can Line Up With The Lord Of The Rings Canon

The battle of the blue wizards is far from the first major canon deviation The Rings of Power has made. In fairness to the Amazon series, it has thus far found clever ways to reroute the narrative and reach a destination in line with events from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Celeborn was dead, but now he's returned. There were hobbits in Rhûn, but now they're heading off to create a paradise of their own that'll one day become the Shire.

In the same vein, all five staff-wobblers need to be in a position where they can return in the Third Age and fight another round against Sauron when The Rings of Power's wizard business is all said and done. Season 3 shows the path toward that destination.

After consulting with the Secret Fire, Gandalf learns his mission isn't to defeat Sauron or liberate Rhûn. He's supposed to save Pallando, and steer his colleague away from the dark path. If we assume Gandalf doesn't fail, The Rings of Power will end in a place where all four remaining wizards will stand on the same side after Sauron's defeat. They can then return to the Undying Lands and be ready to resurface in the Third Age, a revived Alatar in tow, when Sauron makes a comeback.

The only sticking point is that, in The Lord of the Rings' fictional history, Saruman's villainy was seeded from the very beginning: being tutored by Aulë alongside Sauron, demanding knowledge above all else, developing a burning envy of Gandalf, etc. The reasons for Saruman breaking bad are woven throughout his entire history. In The Rings of Power, the concept of an evil blue wizard (even an evil blue wizard redeemed) only has a passing correlation with the history of Arda.