For all the mysteries it clears up, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2 still leaves viewers with at least one major question to mull over as they await the show’s return. The series’ second season specifically does not reveal the identity of the mysterious villain known right now only as the Dark Wizard (Ciarán Hinds). The character’s physical appearance and seeming allegiance to Sauron (Charlie Vickers) have nonetheless led many fans to theorize that he may be Saruman, the wizard famously played in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films by the late, great Christopher Lee.
However, in a post-finale interview with Vanity Fair, The Rings of Power showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne seemed to shoot that particular theory down. “Given the history of Middle-earth, it would be highly, highly, highly improbable that this could be Saruman,” McKay said, to which Payne added, “If not impossible.”
“The Dark Wizard has an important role to play in the doings of Middle-earth and in the development of our wizard, who’s now coming into his own,” McKay continued. “The Dark Wizard’s fate is not decided, and his name is not out there yet, but it would almost defy the laws of gravity and physics for it to be Saruman.”
According to J.R.R. Tolkien’s original canon, Saruman doesn’t actually arrive in Middle-earth as a wizard until the land’s Third Age — i.e., several hundred or thousand years after The Rings of Power will presumably end. The same is true of Gandalf, though, a character whom The Rings of Power‘s season 2 finale reveals The Stranger (Daniel Weyman) has secretly been all along. In the wake of that reveal, fans began to really believe the Prime Video series was going to similarly rewrite Saruman’s canonical backstory by making him Hinds’ Dark Wizard. Now, it doesn’t look like that is going to be the case.
That should come as a relief to diehard Tolkien fans. After all, it wouldn’t make much sense for Gandalf to place the trust in Saruman that he does at the start of the War of the Ring if his fellow wizard had already proven himself capable of evil so many years prior. Making Saruman the Dark Wizard would also rob the former’s betrayal of Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring of all of its dramatic weight.
It still remains to be seen who the Dark Wizard actually is in The Rings of Power. There are a few canonical options left, including a pair of Blue Wizards whom Tolkien wrote vaguely about several times throughout his life. For now, though, Rings of Power fans can at least rest easy knowing he very likely isn’t Saruman.
Seasons 1 and 2 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power are streaming now on Prime Video.