Rings Of Power Season 3 Officially Justifies Its Missed Wizard Opportunity

Published Oct 19, 2026, 8:30 PM EDT

Angel Shaw is a Lead Writer and Critic on ScreenRant's TV team, covering new-release and classic TV shows across all major streaming platforms. She has been a writer with ScreenRant since 2022 and specializes in Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and fantasy. 

Angel holds a bachelor's degree in language interpreting and is passionate about all things culture and communication—especially in how it relates to popular media throughout history (from Shakespeare to Friends to Game of Thrones).

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power missed out on what would have been a thrilling and valuable wizard story, but season 3 is making up for it. Overall, the entire concept of wizards in this Lord of the Rings prequel series has been divisive, since Prime Video has gone pretty off-book. The Stranger is officially confirmed to be Gandalf, even though this character shouldn't arrive in Middle-earth for a few thousand more years. Such a significant adjustment to the timeline carries consequences, especially if the other wizards in The Lord of the Rings aren't where they are supposed to be.

First things first, it's important to understand how things were supposed to go according to what Tolkien has suggested. Gandalf, Saruman, and Radagast, all angel-like shapeshifters from Valinor, arrive in Middle-earth early in the Third Age. This happens, specifically, after Sauron's downfall in the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, long after the events of Rings of Power. The only wizards that might have arrived in the Second Age (though there's still debate on this) were the two Blue Wizards, Alatar and Pallando.

Rings of Power introduced a total of two wizards by season 2. Based strictly on canon, these should have been the Blue Wizards, and showrunners Patrick McKay and JD Payne have confirmed that one of them is. However, season 2's ending definitively confirmed the other is Gandalf. It's a bit disappointing, really, because a strictly Blue-Wizard story could have achieved something truly monumental. Still, season 3 is ready to pay off the change.

Rings Of Power Missed Out On What Would Have Been A Truly Excellent Story

Rings of Power had a really intriguing opportunity with its wizard characters. One way or another, the show would have to take creative liberties. Tolkien didn't write about the Second Age in a way that would allow a strictly faithful adaptation, so several deliberate gaps would have to be filled. For the Blue Wizards, this would almost be their entire story. Tolkien revealed their names, suggested times when they might have come to Middle-earth, and confirmed that they traveled to Rhûn. However, he was never very clear about what happened to them.

Tolkien often discussed his works as if they were real-world histories that he hadn't yet uncovered all the answers about. So, when discussing what came of the Blue Wizards, the author only definitively states that they lost sight of their mission while only guessing that they might have established cults in Rhûn. Rings of Power has picked up part of that thread, as the Dark Wizard is seen to have acolytes and worshipers in season 2. The only real issue is that Gandalf was thrown into the mix while the other Blue Wizard is MIA.

It would have been really fantastic if Rings of Power had focused solely on the two Blue Wizards rather than trying to mix in the other Istari. Nearly everything about the plot in season 2, including one wizard preparing to face off against the other, could have stayed the same, but instead of Gandalf vs. Alatar or Pallando, it would have been just Alatar vs. Pallando. We could have seen a friendship and alliance break apart as one wizard turned to vanity, pride, and darkness, while the other tried—though would ultimately fail—to complete his mission regardless.

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Part of what would make this story so delicious is the way it would parallel and foreshadow Gandalf and Saruman's falling out. We would have watched the two Second-Age wizards face the same temptations and challenges, and seen, just as in The Fellowship of the Ring, one turn on the other. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is traditionally full of such character parallels, so Rings of Power had a fantastic opportunity to replicate them. Unfortunately, Prime Video didn't take it, but season 3 will at least do the next best thing.

Gandalf's Experience With A Blue Wizard Could Be Retroactively Powerful

It would have been preferable for Rings of Power to focus on potential discord among the Blue Wizards to foreshadow a similar fate for Gandalf and Saruman. However, some of the poetic symbolism this would have achieved can still be brought to the screen as Rings of Power season 3 fully dives into Gandalf's feud with the Dark Wizard. After all, it's interesting to consider that, thousands of years before Saruman betrayed Gandalf, the Grey Wizard experienced something similar in Rhûn.

This would imply that Gandalf wasn't as blindsided by Saruman's actions in The Fellowship of the Ring, or at least not in the way we thought. If this wizard had previously been pitted against another Istari who had turned away from their mission, it would mean he took a significant risk in continuing to trust his own kind. He put faith in Saruman, all the while knowing what the influence of this world and its evils could do. That could be considered foolishness, but this sort of trust isn't generally regarded that way in Tolkien's works.

Gandalf as a character is all about faith and mercy. It's for this reason that he was the only one of the Istari to achieve his goals. It's therefore characteristic that, regardless of how many of his kin he saw fall, he would continue to have faith in those around him until they made such actions entirely impossible. Saruman's betrayal was a bitter contradiction of what Gandalf hoped, but Rings of Power presents the idea that it wasn't beyond what the wizard knew was possible or even likely. It's not canon, but it still feels a bit like Tolkien.