The lack of information regarding The Blue Wizards makes the whole world feel more real. Tolkien could have easily given them a complete back story. Instead he keeps up pretense that we're reading a history of a real world and sometimes things get lost to time and become legend.
He was clearly debating on setting up the new threat story arc... had he actually bothered to focus on secretly writing the new threat, it would seem those two Blue Wizards would have been pivotal to the story and how the remaining races would deal with them given that most of the elves are gone.
The blue wizards left "middle earth" into the east. It's a story of middle earth when they don't return to the region they don't return to the story. What Saruman did in the east isn't in the store. My thoughts.
Exactly, the fact not every character (even powerful ones) get fleshed out completely does make it feel more real, like a world. We live in an era of fiction (movie/tv franchises especially) getting, frankly, explained to death. Star Wars especially. They'll take the most inconsequential background character and announce a whole streaming series about him. And not because it’s good for the the imaginativeness, but money. Money they're happy to take and money some fans are happy to pay, whilst not respecting the value of restraint, and not petting their puppy to death.
Tolkien certainly built his story like a real legendary tale, with threads like this. There’s no other work I can think of that feels like something that came about as stories for an old history in a different world, as told by people passing down legendary tales of the past. It just feels like a real kind of world with stuff like this. I love it.
Great video as usual, Robert. The major problem is that the Professor didn't live to be 200! So much left to write! I'm so grateful for what he DID leave.
Indeed. I'd like to see a video of why or how the Istari became associated with their colours. White it seems always intended for the most powerful. Perhaps in opposition to the dark, perhaps to suggest purity, and light, although that didn't seem to fit Saruman at all, even in the beginning. Grey is more ambiguous, perhaps purposefully so in a story perspective, but in terms of Middle Earth as if real, then why? Is it one down from White on the paint chart? Supposedly less noticable, but not to be underestimated? And brown, well yes, nature is brown, sort of, although I'd suggest green would have been more apt a representation for Radagast. And the blue are the most curious colours of all. Blue to suggest the sea? The sky? And I know they both came to Middle Earth as friends/brothers of sorts, but surely there are enough colours in the rainbow to distinguish them.
Great video. I never thought of what you speculated about the Blue Wizards in the sequel Tolkien briefly started. I like it. Tolkien is so visionary. I don’t doubt he omitted the Blue Wizards purposely for future tales.
I think in this context Saruman’s obsession with the One Ring makes total sense. He consulted with the Blue Wizards and realized, with their help, that defeating Sauron was pointless unless the One Ring was also destroyed. Or maybe they succeeded in finding Sauron or the One Ring and were destroyed, either through carelessness or hubris. Perhaps even the behavior of all three wizards we DO know reflect their own reactions to the failure of the Blue Wizards. Radegast distrusted his own power and opted to ignore the ring and Sauron, attempting to avoid the conflict altogether by focusing on treating its symptoms. Saruman trusted his own power and believed he wouldn’t fail the same way as the Blue Wizards, but his search to destroy the ring turned into an obsessive desire to possess it for himself. Gandalf, meanwhile, learned the humility necessary to act indirectly (like Eru Iluvitar, notably) and entrust the act to a worthy proxy, refusing to even TOUCH the ring himself.
interesting take, I can see it tbh. I think Saruman didn't wanna discuss the blue wizards at all because they were effectively spies behind enemy line, making them known could tip off sauron's goons to search for them and finally destroy them.
Just to check, wasn't Gandalf's reluctance to touch the Ring made up for the movie? I'm pretty sure he handled it when he took it out of the fire in Bag End…
@@Pikktryne yes but in the end the point still stands. Radagast was to afraid of the corruption of his power to get involved while Saruman was so confident in his power that he fell to that corruption. Gandalf walked the line between those 2 using his power to help but making it so that someone more suited for the task were to destroy the ring.
@@ChBrahm i do agree with his take completely just confirmed that the reluctance to just touch the ring is movie stuff since i happened to read that passage of the book a day or so before writing the comment :)
You forget the Tolkien has said that old Toby, or leafweed was just tobacco. He actually wrote that. It was not marijuana. That was the stupid movie that totally screwed things from the book.
I like to think the phrase "fell to evil" means that they were defeated / killed / otherwise overcome by evil, not that they became evil and servants of Sauron. Maybe the reason why Saruman came back was because HE betrayed THEM. Or ran off when they needed his help. I think this is just as plausible as the other speculations.
Perhaps both, perhaps one turned evil and then captured the other to prevent any challenges. 1 good one and one evil one. That could make for a good tale.
This would honestly be in line with the way they hampered Sauron's mustering of the Easterlings. They started cults which in a way made complete domination of their masses by Sauron more difficult, like fighting fire with fire. Sauron or his agents must have had to deal with them, but by the time of the War of the Ring, the damage to their cause was already too deep
Side note: this type of throwaway line is my favorite kind of world building. It implies a thing that is knowledge to others but has little to do with the current narrative. Classic example is the throw away line about the "clone wars." That had nerds and geeks speculating for years.
I was always suspicious that the Blue Wizards were eventually betrayed by Saruman in some manner. I suspect Saruman learned all he could from them, then betrayed them in a manner, where he was anonymous to Sauron and his Easterling minions, but the Blue Wizards never suspected he had set them up. These were just two powerful men agitating insurrection against Sauron or the local kings in the region and they were betrayed in a manner where they were caught unaware and quickly killed, while Saruman was away on some errand they had sent him on. I think if they had fallen into Sauron's hands alive to be twisted to his service, Saruman would not have been trusted as much as a servant of Sauron as Sauron would have figured out the reason he had the Blue Wizards fall in his lap was Saruman's treachery and therefore he couldn't be trusted at all as an ally and was clearly after Sauron's ring for himself. After all, they managed to do some kind of mission in the East for over a thousand years with Saruman along for the ride, so it wouldn't seem like they were stumbling and bumbling their way through the East for that long only to be suddenly capture due to their own mistakes, yet Saruman wasn't with them when they finally got caught? Yeah, I think there is a strong case of betrayal by Saruman in some manner.
@@mr.campwell3655 I can see that too. Maybe they were having little if any success and had abandoned their mission and that is why Saruman left as they were already fading, or after Saruman left they grew discouraged and faded. Or maybe they grew bitter at the Valar sending them on a thankless task with no backup and just gave up or switched sides as Sauron made them a better offer of a cushy retirement or comfy position administering his allies in the East.
@@raydavison4288 Would explain why he had so little to say about them when he returned from the East despite spending over a thousand years with them and seemingly mentioning little of what he did in the East either. Of course, if I was reading this novel for the first time back in the 50's, 60's or 70's I probably wouldn't have such suspicions as the novel hardly mentions them. It is only later works drawn from Tolkien's notes that shed even a slight bit more light on who the Blue Wizards were. With the passing of years we all overanalyze what info there is as a kind of parlor room chat exercise trying to fill in an information vacuum.
You actually got it all wrong this time, Maestro. Tolkien says that they failed in 1958, but the note of their success and early coming to the Middle-earth was written much later. And nowhere in that note it is said that they went back to Valinor the first time around. It's just another case of the Professor changing his mind and re-writing his initial tale of their failure. If we stick to Tolkien's late writings the story goes like this: they arrived early, helped a lot but did not return to Valinor with Gandalf. Why? We do not know, of course. Maybe there still was some job to be done in the East, who knows...
If I had to guess, they probably developed some strong connections to the peoples' they encountered, much like Gandolf did in the Shire. One or both of them perhaps felt obligated to stick around after the Second Age in an attempt to right some of the deeper wrongs in Middle Earth. It's one thing to defeat a dark lord, it's an entirely different matter to wipe away cult practices and beliefs that made some of these groups predisposed to autocrats like Sauron. In this, I feel they had only mixed success. Perhaps these efforts even led to actions that caused men to form new cults around the wizards themselves.
Yeah this video is basically mixing up older and newer narratives on the Blue Wizards and trying to make story of them, when in fact its obvious that the later narrative is what Tolkien intended to be their story,
I had hoped they found a good calling in place of their original one. Might go against what was planned for them but I never liked to think they became evil, rather traveled wide and saw problems to quash and people to help.
Personally, I like to reconcile the two stories by having one of the Two fall to the Shadow, and the other remaining true to their mission, with the two brothers slaying each other in a greek style tragedy. Pure Fanon on my part, but it makes for fun contemplation.
I've tried to learn about the blue wizards, but the information is minimal. This video covers all the lore we have, and I learned new things about them too. Great video Robert, I always love watching your Middle Earth videos!
Was Sauron powerful enough to currupt them to that extent? Even Saruman was never really on Sauron's side and only wanted the power of the ring for himself.
@@gustawek If it came down to pure power that is true but I don't think that is as big of a factor. Gandalf despite being less powerful than Saruman was able to resist taking the ring because he was far wiser than Saruman. I don't think there are many examples in Tolkiens writing where true power comes from actual power.
@@tabularasa0606 Tolkien states that Saruman was the most powerful of the maia who were sent to middle earth. So Gandalf was definitely less powerful, instead his strength comes from his wisdom.
Gandalf was a Maiar of Manwe and like him focused on the big picture. Saruman was a Maiar of Aule and like him focused on crafts (ring lore). Radagast was a Maiar of Yavanna and like her focused on growing things. The blue wizards were Maiar of Orome, the hunter of all evil creatures. Tolkien says that Radagast strayed from or failed 'the mission'. But did he really? He was sent by Yavanna and focused on her interests. Perhaps the blue wizards 'failed' in a similar way, focusing on hunting any and all evil creatures as the Vala who sent them would, and not necessarily hunting Sauron specifically.
Yes Radagast failed the mission. People often say that he was there for Yavanna's purpose, but why would Yavanna's purpose supercede all the Valar's? They were sent to rally the people of middle earth and be the enemy of Sauron, not to be distracted by their own hobbies. In my opinion Radagast was short sighted and let his own interests consume him and largely ignored or procrastinated on the actual charge given to him. It's a good thing they got lucky with the ring, because if Sauron emerged victorious from the war, all the forests and animals would have been at the mercy of his destructive touch. And Radagst in that confrontation would not have lasted long at all.
@@garicb9271 Of course the Valar sent Radagast, they made him a member of the Istari, the Order specifically made to be Sauron's enemy. He's not just some random git that got to tag along with the others, he is counted among them. So the Order's purpose is also his purpose. Yavanna may have vouched for him because she thought he had a good chance of succeeding, just like how Manwe thought about it of Gandalf. I don't think she's this nature obsessed hippy that cares more about grass than the people of middle earth. She had already made assurance long ago that the forests cannot be abused freely, and that is in the form of giant angry walking talking Ents.
@@jeji000 I cant recall but is the term Istari ever used in Valinor? That seems more like a Middle Earth construct referring to all the wizards (regardless of mission). And the way I read the forming of that group, Gandalf, Saurman and 1 of the blue wizards were 'the picks', and yavanna asked saruman to bring radagast (she didnt ask the council of Valar, or do it during that meeting), and the other blue wizard went along 'as a friend'. So I dont think the association with the group 'istari' = being on the same mission. Honestly it read more like they needed to hitch a ride on their boat. I guess trips TO middle earth were hard to come by.
Can we talk about how Radagast took the biggest L though? From the vast countries that were Middle-Earth, he only had to watch _one_ forest. And it just so happened to be the forest Sauron was hiding in. And he totally missed that. It's almost impressively incompetent 😄
Ahh....but his task was NOT to watch Mirkwood. He simply chose that place as an effective hideout against his true calling. He was not searching from Sauron, he was effectively HIDING from him. That is why he didn't discover anything.
Yeah, I've always wondered how the wizards missed that one. Who or what exactly did they think this "Necromancer" was? Are dark magical figures just a dime a dozen in Middle Earth to the point where Gandalf, Radaghast, and Saruman just can't tell which magician in some woods might be the dark lord himself. Ok, we know such entities particularly by the 3rd age aren't in any way common, which is why it's a bit of a headscratcher for me. I mean, "The Mirkwood" even though it used to be "Greenwood the Great" suddenly goes all dark and nobody is like "hmm, I wonder if there's something evil hiding in them trees somewhere? Maybe even at Dol Guldur?". Even if they considered it could be one of the Nazgul perhaps, that would still warrant investigation. I guess the question is, what were the Istari doing for most of their time in the 3rd Age?
Interesting. I never connected them to the discarded sequel. I also thought it was competing ideas that Tolkien never settled on if they were secretly aiding the resistance to Sauron in the east, or fallen and founding secret cults, never thought the intention could be both combined. But ultimately I don’t think they were the villains of the New Shadow - Tolkien also wrote that Sauron’s defeat was the last time there was an evil really centered on and embodied by one supernatural figure, and how the new story was about Men (I’d presume Black Numenoreans and/or the Mouth of Sauron were behind the New Shadow).
I like the idea of them being the next big bad, but I also understand why Tolkien decided not to continue his final story. The age of man is too dark, because we are so easily corruptible.
Didn’t Tolkien change his mind about the blue wizards later on though? I swear in every discussion on them I’ve heard it mentioned that Tolkien’s last conception of the blue wizards was that they did fulfill their mission and didn’t fall, and eventually returned to valinor.
Makes sense. He was constantly looking for ways to re-write in order to match the amorphous, changeable story in his head. The best example is how the original publication of The Hobbit had Gollum willingly give the ring to Bilbo. But it's all through his work - some of the writing compiled but his son feature the older versions of whatever story, then the most recent version (I won't say final version because I'm convinced Tolkien was never finished). It's really neat because you can see both the way his writing style changed through different eras of his life, as well as getting a snapshot of his processes in crafting a story. I HIGHLY recommend Beren and Luthien for this.
@@DavidOfWhitehills yeah, it was the published version for decades actually. And then Tolkien wrote it into the narrative of the later series - Bilbo had two versions of his story: the manuscript in the Red Book, which was the truth where he finds it and runs away from Gollum, and the one he told everybody in which Gollum gives it away. Tolkien made new decisions about the One Trying when writing LotR and he had enough influence to go back to the publisher and change the text they'd use in future Hobbit printings. This is what I mean, he really enjoyed giving his story room to grow and change over the decades he spent developing it.
@@DavidOfWhitehills Yup, Tolkien released the revised addition just before publication of fellowship. It was brilliantly woven into the lore, as the other comment describes. It was especially effective with readers of the first edition, because they had a whole other version in their head, and then had Gandalf reveal it to be a lie. A plot twist decades in the making 😄 I haven’t looked, but I’d bet that first edition versions of the hobbit are pricey, but I’d also love to read it
Honestly I love this conclusion because it fits very well with Tolkien's works and the themes of the Lord of the Rings. I can imagine that he wouldn't write a return of Sauron but I can imagine him writing a story about a cult lead by the Blue Wizards that tries to bring back Melkor. Maybe even for supposed good reasons. We know of the idea that the world will be remade one day. Maybe the Blue Wizards tried to free Morgoth so that the Ainur would fight him and restart the world, this time without discord and therefore evil. I love that idea, it's very similar to how Tolkien writes his characters who fall to evil. They're not evil for the sake of evil. They're essentially (corrupted) utilitarianists.
I like to think they did their tasks well enough in the other lands that it wasn't a full on invasion from the Lords of those lands but seemingly smaller armies of marauders who joined Sauron.
I like the way you stitch this together and it makes a lot of sense. Its hard to say if it's what Tolkien intended but it's more satisfying than "we don't know. He was all over the place with them"
This is all fine and well but you're forgetting one important thing, Tolkien changed his mind a lot. Sure at one point he wrote that the Blue Wizards failed, but his last writings on them completely changed their story, having them arrive in the Second Age, and being crucial to the defeat of Sauron in the War of the Last Alliance and the War of the Ring. It doesn't make any sense to try and tie in their older narrative as its clear that was discarded by Tolkien.
Tolkien was a big procrastinator and he even said that without the constant encouragement and badgering of his friend, C.S. Lewis, he never would have completed the Lord of the Rings. By the time he started writing the Sequel, the Inklings were no longer meeting to read to each other and his friendship with Lewis had waned because of the affairs of life: Lewis was further away from Oxford, working in Cambridge as Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature, and Lewis had met Joy Davidman who eventually became his wife.
Another important reason the sequel was never created Was that he felt it was simply too dark and pessimistic And he just couldn't really figure out a good way to introduce a reason for the story to exist with both dark lords gone there's really no one who can reach that level of power even say a blue wizard is not going to be threatening the entirety of middle Earth And as he wrote it he just plain as I said didn't like the dark tone and was turned off by its growing cultish feel
...another insightful research - much more than I ever hoped to find out about them - thanks so much. To me this piece of history somehow indirectly magnifies even more the importance of Tom Bombadil, although he kept quite away from the troubles of the third age - but he was at ease dealing with the barrow wights and kept the evilness of the trees at bay, the ring had no power over him, and he had many a talk with Farmer Maggot, and Gandalf spent 2 years with him at the end of that age - what could they have talked so excessively about? ...certainly about the upcoming fourth age and the dominion of men... would love to hear anything more about what they talked of, and also: what did Tom (and Goldberry) do in the fourth age, except for what they always did...?! Tom fascinates me at no end - he was like a counterpart to the desperate war of the ring... was he just to hold up and maintain the spiritual presence of Eru? - alas, I stop here for now...
This makes me want to make a D&D or RPG campaign set in such a world. Either between the wars or after the fall of Sauron, with the Blue Wizards as the bad guys.
There are D&D source books for 5ed and some of the others that are set after the hobbit, up in dale. I'm sure you could adapt the setting to a later time and roll from there. They're called "Adventures in Middle-Earth"
Thank you for all you do Robert your content is amazing in so many ways. I've been watching most of your asoiaf videos and it's funny listening to you say any day now on wow lol
As a man from a culture that has guyliner, let me tell you, we use it to protect the edges of our eyelids from being burnt up by the severe UV rays that shine on our lands.
This was such a cool video. I loved the part about the blue wizards forming weird magic traditions, etc. and being the big bags in the sequels. i wish books were like movies and someone could just write it. like a great writer would just take it upon themselves to write the sequel, maybe patrick rothfuss or george rr martin.
@@martavdz4972yeah that is a good point. he does love the books though. he could probably change his style. i only have two his books. i have all the tolkien books just about
There is a second letter that Geek has missed, because Tolkien changed his mind constantly, In it he states that like their first sojourn in the west they did what they had been sent to do, cripple the Easterlings ability to send reinforcements to aid Sauron.
I'm quite sure Gandalf met at least one of them. I have an idea that he procured his hat from one of them, since it's blue - not grey like the rest of his garments.
Gandalf was truly a great dude, out of 5 angels come to earth he was the only one who saw it through. That makes me wonder about rhadaghast tho, where was he during the final battle? Was he fighting the good fight in the north?
Yeah, a lot of fans and the video on this channel think he did. Also, Radagast sent the eagle that rescued Gandalf from Orthank, which was one of the things crucial to success - he came to Weathertop in time to fight the Nazgul and weaken them, otherwise they might have finished Frodo off. Radagast could also have sent the eagles that rescued Frodo and Sam from the exploding Orodruin. And as his birds gathered intelligence for Gandalf at the beginning of the war, it´s possible that they continued to do so for the Mirkwood and the Dale.
I ran a Middle Earth role playing campaign long ago that was set in the Fourth Age. It involved a group of heroes, under orders from King Eldarion, travelling into the far east of Middle Earth to investigate news of a new empire that preached a cult of Morgoth and was breeding orcs, enslaving men, and putting to the sword the last remnants of the Avari. Upon reaching this distant empire the heroes discovered that it was ruled by the two blue wizards, who had indeed fallen under Sauron's sway and were now twisted and evil. Sauron, before his defeat, had convinced the blue wizards that Iluvatar had betrayed and tricked his first-born children, the Ainur, by tempting them out of the void and into Arda on the promise that they would do great and wonderous things in this new world, only for them to discover that Iluvatar's true plan was that Arda and the Ainur's power would fade, with Arda ultimately destined to be a world for Iluvatar's weakest, and most inferior children; men. Sauron had tried to prevent this destined Age of Men by mastering and wielding what powers still remained in Arda. Ultimately Sauron's plan had failed, but the blue wizards had come up with a plan of their own. In the utter east they had discovered the ruined foundations of the Gates of Morning, still left in the world from when Arda had been made round, and with their empire of slaves, the blue wizards had begun a grand project to rebuild the Gates, tapping into what magical power still remained in the ancient foundations. They believed that completing this project would trigger an alternate Dagor Dagorath, by allowing Morgoth to return from the void here and now, through the Gates of Morning instead of through the Door of Night, at the end of time, as originally prophesied. And further they believed that this utter subversion of Iluvatar's planned timeline for the world would bring his music to a crashing halt, and that Iluvatar would have no choice but to come-to-the-table, so to speak, and negotiate with his first-born children for a new destiny for Arda. Obviously upon discovering what the blue wizards had planned, the heroes had to set about stopping it.
At 5:30 you talk about the Blue Wizards returning to Valinor and then making a trip back to Middle-earth. What is your source on this? Because I have never seen nor can I find a reference to their return to Valinor at any point. You also ignore that in his last writings about them is when he gives them the names Morinehtar and Rómestámo and states that they helped reduce his forces from the east.
@@CosmicOdeum there's no presumption. Tolkien says the only Istari to return to Valinor is Gandalf. Tolkien didn't say that only was after the defeat of Sauron, at no point did any Istari go back to Valinor.
To think of it, you don’t get a name like “Darkness-slayer” by simply plotting in the dark. Sauron didn’t put much thought on Gandalf, let alone Radagast, but he sure gave more attention to Saruman... and he probably wasn’t even the boldest among the 5 wizards. If Sauron focused on strength alone, he would’ve surely prioritised two enemies of darkness with seemingly supernatural powers. As always, he was crazy but he wasn’t stupid...
Some wonderfully robust speculations in this - glorious in fact. Well done. I do recall reading somewhere once that an abandoned idea for the Blue pair was they were murdered by Saruman in the wild lands of the far East, but I can't recall where I saw it. It doesn't matter. I enjoyed this video more than some of your other excellent work.
The Blue Wizards were always very intriguing for me. 🧙♂️ 🧙♂️ I like that Tolkien purposefuly made some bits of the legendarium mysterious & obscure. I hope they did help the good to win in the end. Blue is also a nice color. 💙
With Tolkien, you never know whether he purposefully made something mysterious, or had been planning to write something about it but died before he could. All the same, I totally agree that fantasy is at its best when some things are left to imagination. In my language, "fantazie" means "imagination", so I grew up thinking the whole genre was about making you think and invent your own stories 🙂
Interesting. I was always curious about the Blue Wizards. Thanks for doing the research and explaining your thoughts. I kind of wish Tolkien did the sequel. It would’ve been fascinating.
11:25 ish That's not "exactly" what we were told they were doing based on the quote you had just cited. Outlasting Sauron doesn't mean they kept Sauron's name alive, just that the magical cults he supposes they might have created (within or outside of their instructions seems unclear) would have continued on. Great video though, brought up some info I hadn't ever heard before and excellent production in general.
The Blueses have always been a point of interest to me, much like the magicians in Pharaoh's court who used magic to try to beat Moses. What happened to all these random magicians? You'd think they would've stood out a little more. Thanks for the video.
Brilliant! I’ve only read The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, but I read them thoroughly, and I came up with exactly this kind of continuation of The Lord of the Rings. I didn’t realize until now that I was thinking just like Tolkien!
I like more optimistic interpretations of their actions. The idea that they had an unseen and uncelebrated role in Sauron's defeat is much more interesting and inspiring than them just failing and becoming cult leaders. I know some characters' failures are part of teaching lessons, but in a world dominated by dark evils, why not have two more good dudes who did good with no reward or honor for their actions. Also I generally just don't like how the entire vast eastern regions just get written off as easily falling to Sauron and being generally corrupted. It feels to simplistic sometimes even if it just wasn't Tolkien's focus.
Agreed. It is certain that not all Easterlings were loyal to Sauron. That’s just not plausible. We know that Bór’s sons were killed, but they may have had sons of their own, or Bór might have also had daughters. There’s still a good chance that he had surviving descendants who shared his faithfulness to the Eldar, and were thus able to be inspired by the Blue Wizards to reject Sauron. Also, if you look at the history of the Easterlings, there are several gaps of hundreds of years in the timespans between their attacks on Gondor. Why did it take so long for them to resume attacking? If there was a civil war within Harad, with a resistance opposing the Men of Darkness led by the Blue Wizards, this would be quite explanatory.
@@12classics39 Yeah those are good points. Maybe Tolkien thought about expanding on the East but just never had the time for it. Would have been interesting to see but again I understand why he never got around to it.
Not gonna lie you combined the 2 viewpoints Tolkien had for them masterfully although I must say this theory makes it sound a bit weird that Saruman is the head of the order when Blue Wizards were the ones that arrived earlier and had much more experience and had actually done things before unlike Saruman.
Did he take down his video for the sequel to lord the rings? Just playing catch up on some of his older videos and I can't seem to find it after hearing this.
The moment The Hobbit and LOTR become public domain, you should record an audiobook version of them. You have a very pleasant voice and it suits the genre very well.
I don't believe they became servants of Sauron. They may have fallen to evil but if they served Sauron I believe we'd know for sure because he would have used them.
Perhaps we can say that Gandalf did his job so well b/c he didn't want to be there to begin with. Yes, that is a bit contrary, but we can look to the quote about "those who wish to rule are the least qualified to do so".
This is what Amazons show should have been about. They wouldn't be constrained by the books and in fear of messing things up. I would have hired Peter and Fran to show run. 🧙🧙
An interesting later conception of the Blue Wizards from Tolkien that I wasn't aware of.. last time I read "the lore" they simply arrived in the Third Age and vanished in the East, which is the story I prefer. For one thing, this version leaves two powerful Istari in the East after the fall of Sauron, and where were they during the War of the Ring? Istari are far more powerful than Nazgul. And if it were up to me I'd leave the Wizards out of the Second Age story entirely (although I'm sure the hack fan-fic writers at Amazon have already slotted them in), since it blunts the story of the Last Alliance, where the combined power of Elves and Men still in their prime were *just enough* to defeat Sauron.
You know what. I give in. I love this channel. And I accept being a total geek. I'll Subscribe and come to turns and live geeky for the rest of my days.
Blue Wizards, immediately after the fall of Sauron: "Hey, guys, what's up? Let's kick some Sauron ass, are we ready? What's that? He's dead? How? Ring? What Ring? Are you kidding me right now? Okay, well. Guess that's that. Big feast, right? We know how to make something called pastries. You'll love them. Party time!"
I remember Gandalf telling BIlbo there were two blue wizards but he couldn't remember their names. I've wondered since then if they would ever play any part in the story.
it's sad that he died before fully finishing the world, things like that sound like he had somethings in mind for some characters, but never realized them
If the estate can sign off on and help produce whatever the hell was just on prime, then they can and should sign off on somebody exploring either the blues or Aragorns adventures pre-lotr. THAT fans would love. THAT isn’t twisting and changing already existing source material.
My theory is that saruman played them against each other. Probably assigning them missions in regions that are politically opposed, with the claim that it is to make peace between them, but knowing that they would each empathize with the group they were assigned and find themselves at odds with each other. I like the idea of one of them going to Rhun and the other to South Harad, both intending to secure peace but ultimately meeting each other in battle, both believing their side to be the righteous one. I also think that while it would be humans of different nations doing most of the fighting, the seed of the conflict would be much older, the result of ancient wars between the avari elves and the eastern dwarves (orchestrated by the dark lord, obviously). While their tale would be tragic with lots of danger & betrayal, I'm sure that there would be an ending with hope & forgiveness, and they would return to Valinor together, reminescing on all the things they saw & pondering what the Avari will sing about Arda in the reshaping of the new world. Tolkien never got to write his sequel to lord of the rings, but if he did I think it would have been something like that.
I find the line of reasoning here, as expressed in its entirety, unsatisfactory. Of course, very little is known at all of the activity of the Blue Wizards, even in the periods when it’s pretty well established that they were in Middle Earth. As for what ultimately became of them, “In Deep Geek” reports correctly that Tolkien wrote (in a somewhat informal essay that Christopher Tolkien later referred to as the “Essay on the Istari"), that “Their fate was unknown. But some held that they fell into evil and became servants of Sauron” (7:10). IDG, in fact, admits that any statements about those wizards’ fates are necessarily speculative, and that people simply don’t know what happened to them. But then, for the last four or five minutes of the video, IDG just goes ahead and makes the leap to the conclusion that that •is• what happened: that the Blue Wizards definitely succumbed to the temptations of Sauron, or at least some evil that was much akin to Sauron. I simply cannot fathom that shift to certainty, where the source texts firmly state that •uncertainty• is the fundamental state of our knowledge here. Is it just a case of intellectual laziness, or sloppiness? I’d have no problem if IDG said, “Tolkien hints that the Blue Wizards may have fallen to the allure of evil, although the truth of such rumors is not known. But let’s examine the implications, were those rumors actually to prove true . . . .” That would be a respectable way to work through those hypotheses. But I just do not get the approach here, which seems to be, “Tolkien says that something •might• have happened . . . yeah, so that means Case Closed; it’s a done deal, and for sure that’s how it •actually• went down. Absolutely.” I just see no compelling reason to transform Tolkien’s ambivalent hints into canonical certainty.
You are correct. Especially because Tolkien completely abandoned several of his ideas. He scrapped “The New Shadow” and never finished it. I highly doubt he even wanted the few pages he did write to be made public at all. Thus we cannot assume that anything written in the unfinished “New Shadow” actually happened in Middle-earth. But beyond that, he clearly changed his mind about the fate of the Blue Wizards. In his later writings, he rescinded his earlier rumor that they fell to Sauron and affirmed that they did remain true and prevented loyalty to Sauron from spreading through 100% of the Easterling population. He seemed to imply that they led a rebellion/civil war against the majority of the Easterlings who were loyal to Sauron, and thus prevented even more destruction that Sauron’s Easterlings could’ve caused.
In some of the pictures, one is Indian and one Chinese or Vietnamese or thereabouts. In some others, their clothes are reminiscent of Central-Western Asian traditional female clothes, from Afghanistan, Iran or Tajikistan.
There is also one thing: when Gandalf was going to Shire from Gondor after reading about the One Ring, he met Radagast who told him to go to Saruman, Orthanc, where he was captive later. Gandalf said that he didn't guessed Saruman's thoughts because it was sent Radagast, from his order, and not others. But who are the others? The Blue Wizards? So Gandalf didn't trust too much the Blue Wizards? Also, they could be traveling to Orthanc. Also, another thing: why blue? Why not red? What could be meaning of the colours in Tolkien's work? White is the supreme color, meaning the highest and pure form of energy. Black is for the bad. Red is fire. Multicolour is worse ( see bad Saruman). But blue? Any connection with the blue sky or blue water?
The symbolism isn´t always perfect, as the honourable guards of Minas Tirith wear black, and yet obviously aren´t associated with evil. Tolkien is surprisingly vague about the symbolic meaning of blue. Gandalf wears a blue mantle at the end of LOTR and it seems to have no meaning, other than creating the effect of white light coming from under blue clouds. But he seems to usually connect blue with the sky, so I´d say the sky.
This is the absolute best video I have ever seen on the subject. Except the entirely speculative bit about them becoming corrupted by Sauron. The only thing we know is that they failed to find his hiding place, that is the only failure Tolkien himself applies to them. We also know the reason, they were looking in the wrong place, but that is where they were charged to go because they were sent to raise rebellion against Sauron's rule. We know that they most likely ended up becoming the founders of secret cults and magical traditions, but that does not mean that they became servants of Sauron, it only means that they may have done something similar to Saruman, by using their powers to create large organizations. We don't know anything else about what they did, because Tolkien himself specifically said that these characters don't directly come into the story he was telling, and therefore he knows very little about them. If they, like Radagast with animals, had become enamored of the peoples of Middle Earth, they may have stayed and attempted to guide them after the fall of Sauron, which was not explicitly their job. That does not mean they fell, nor were they corrupted, it is much more similar to the brown wizard putting aside his charge in order to do what Yavanna wanted. Radagast also did not go to Valinor, not because he was evil, or did not have permission, as far as we can tell, but because the things he was most interested in were still in Middle Earth. The same could be said for the blue wizards, their job was to raise rebellion against unjust rule, the idea that they became attached to the people they were helping rebel is perfectly natural. No corruption needed, nor intended as far as I can tell. Also, not for nothing, there were two of them. Even if the sequel had followed the plan you outlined here, that does not necessarily mean they both fell. It would certainly follow the pattern set out by the events of the previous ages for both the Great Enemy, and the Great Helper, to be Ainur. One who tries to rule directly, and one who counters him through advice and inspiration.
Its interesting that he suggests that they started cults of magic, when magic in Tolkien's world isn’t really all that much. Other than influence, there isn’t like magic schools or entire archives of spells to study like in harry potter. Even when the wizards do use "magic" its not a whole lot.
I would love to see a cinematic depiction of the Blue Wizards’ travels through the east. It obviously would not be strictly canon because of the gap, but I wouldn’t mind as long as it weaves back into the canon.
This is a fascinating analysis. I wonder if it might have been something like a Frankish/Holy Roman Empire (Numenoreans/Gondorians) in comparison to a Byzantine Empire or Ottoman (Easterlings/Haradrim)? The Blue Wizards being active to sow insurrection in a land where Sauron may have been seen as a god-king, like the Old Persian kings were viewed. They would have had the cards stacked against them, more than likely. And, I imagine the human kingdoms in the East were probably less civilized compared to idealized Numenorean kingdoms - e.g. slavery and suchlike, but probably not anarchic and evil in and of themselves, and such as it was, the domination of Sauron over their kings and kingdoms may have even created some sort of order, and it's understandable that they had conquering armies and would have gotten that Sauron propaganda that the West were their hereditary enemies.
I've always seen Gondor more as the equivalent to the east roman empire while Arnor was more akin to the western empire and perhaps the franks/holy roman empire to a certain extent. Constantinople and Minas Tirith faced similar challenges over their history and the general look of Gondorean civilians and even the architecture evoke the byzantine empire to me. As for the blue wizards, I think it was implied in some writings that over time they lost connection to their original mission, 'went native' for lack of a better word. I could see them as Istari not falling to the level of Saruman perhaps, but perhaps opting to become god kings/emperors of the people of the east. Perhaps initially with benevolent and altruistic intentions but ultimately haughty and self serving. And in the same way that Gondor and the west of middle earth can be evocative of the ancient west of our world, the Istari who eventually ruled over the east (the theory i subscribe to) helped form cultures that were evocative of the ancient India and Chinese civilizations. Realms that were strong in their own territory and free from the dark influence of Sauron. But insular and not ideal either due to becoming despotic.
@@BVargas78I'm not sure I understand in what sense the eastern nations would be described as insular and despotic, in your analysis, but the western nations of middle earth wouldn't be? Tolkien is a product of colonial Europe, despotism was brought to them in the form of colonial nations, they were no more or less despotic in the middle ages than European nations. Equally, they were no more insular, medieval eastern cultures had vast amounts of trading between them and the west, they have done since Alexander the Great, they've had meaningful cultural and economic connections since the bronze age. I think your historical analogies, or evocations as you have put it, are apocryphal at best
@@shekel2356 I'm not saying they are my personal views, I do agree that western civilization was just as autocratic/despotic as the east. Maybe even more so in some regards. But Tolkiens Arnor and Gondor were based around an idealised West, largely devoid of the bad parts (but not entirely). Yet I do think Tolkiens views of the blue wizards were of that nature i mentioned before, as it's possible/likely that Tolkien shared in the 'orientalism' view of the east. Bearing in mind he himself was the product of his society and time when such views were common place among western intellectuals. But to be more specific, there is also reference to letters of Tolkien in his histories of middle earth compilation of books which i think his son put together. Though there is very little extra information, there is a part he mentions the possibility of cults and organized religions being organised around them (the blue wizards). Which is something only a despotic ruler would permit. And you never hear of empires east of Sauron going on the war path either, not even to the aid of Gondor and the west. Which reinforces to me that they became insular realms.
I think the blue wizards are genuinely my favorite mystery in the lotr universe even compared to tom bombadil. i think the lotr show ay have introduced them as the two guys who scare off the half foots in episode 1 and if so i dont like their design at all. i wish there was a show that depicts them in the oriental style from the drawing in the video :)
I think it should be noted that the Blue Wizards (Alatar specifically) were sent by Orome, The Huntsman, to hunt evil. Perhaps much like Elrond's sons, they enjoyed hunting evil a bit too much and lost their way not unlike Radagast did with the plants and animals.
For some reason I never considered the Blue Wizards returned to Valinor after the second age, that makes a lot of sense and ties the two stories of there arrival at different times together
The Blue Wizards formed an alt-rock band and are still touring to this day.
Blue oyster cult?
They updated their image...the Blue Man Group
Possible Names: Wizards With Attitude. Rocking Out The Blues. Galadriel na- ur!
Pretty sure it was Ska
Lmao they are just awful too
The lack of information regarding The Blue Wizards makes the whole world feel more real. Tolkien could have easily given them a complete back story. Instead he keeps up pretense that we're reading a history of a real world and sometimes things get lost to time and become legend.
He was clearly debating on setting up the new threat story arc... had he actually bothered to focus on secretly writing the new threat, it would seem those two Blue Wizards would have been pivotal to the story and how the remaining races would deal with them given that most of the elves are gone.
Is it not real?😢
The blue wizards left "middle earth" into the east. It's a story of middle earth when they don't return to the region they don't return to the story.
What Saruman did in the east isn't in the store.
My thoughts.
Exactly, the fact not every character (even powerful ones) get fleshed out completely does make it feel more real, like a world. We live in an era of fiction (movie/tv franchises especially) getting, frankly, explained to death. Star Wars especially. They'll take the most inconsequential background character and announce a whole streaming series about him. And not because it’s good for the the imaginativeness, but money. Money they're happy to take and money some fans are happy to pay, whilst not respecting the value of restraint, and not petting their puppy to death.
Tolkien certainly built his story like a real legendary tale, with threads like this. There’s no other work I can think of that feels like something that came about as stories for an old history in a different world, as told by people passing down legendary tales of the past. It just feels like a real kind of world with stuff like this. I love it.
Great video as usual, Robert. The major problem is that the Professor didn't live to be 200! So much left to write! I'm so grateful for what he DID leave.
What an amazing thought if he lived another 100 years or so, we would have so much more lore information!
Indeed. I'd like to see a video of why or how the Istari became associated with their colours. White it seems always intended for the most powerful. Perhaps in opposition to the dark, perhaps to suggest purity, and light, although that didn't seem to fit Saruman at all, even in the beginning. Grey is more ambiguous, perhaps purposefully so in a story perspective, but in terms of Middle Earth as if real, then why? Is it one down from White on the paint chart? Supposedly less noticable, but not to be underestimated? And brown, well yes, nature is brown, sort of, although I'd suggest green would have been more apt a representation for Radagast. And the blue are the most curious colours of all. Blue to suggest the sea? The sky? And I know they both came to Middle Earth as friends/brothers of sorts, but surely there are enough colours in the rainbow to distinguish them.
Great video. I never thought of what you speculated about the Blue Wizards in the sequel Tolkien briefly started. I like it. Tolkien is so visionary. I don’t doubt he omitted the Blue Wizards purposely for future tales.
I think in this context Saruman’s obsession with the One Ring makes total sense. He consulted with the Blue Wizards and realized, with their help, that defeating Sauron was pointless unless the One Ring was also destroyed.
Or maybe they succeeded in finding Sauron or the One Ring and were destroyed, either through carelessness or hubris.
Perhaps even the behavior of all three wizards we DO know reflect their own reactions to the failure of the Blue Wizards.
Radegast distrusted his own power and opted to ignore the ring and Sauron, attempting to avoid the conflict altogether by focusing on treating its symptoms. Saruman trusted his own power and believed he wouldn’t fail the same way as the Blue Wizards, but his search to destroy the ring turned into an obsessive desire to possess it for himself. Gandalf, meanwhile, learned the humility necessary to act indirectly (like Eru Iluvitar, notably) and entrust the act to a worthy proxy, refusing to even TOUCH the ring himself.
interesting take, I can see it tbh. I think Saruman didn't wanna discuss the blue wizards at all because they were effectively spies behind enemy line, making them known could tip off sauron's goons to search for them and finally destroy them.
Just to check, wasn't Gandalf's reluctance to touch the Ring made up for the movie? I'm pretty sure he handled it when he took it out of the fire in Bag End…
@@PhilBoswell Yeah, gandalf touches the ring alright xD In the book at least
@@Pikktryne yes but in the end the point still stands. Radagast was to afraid of the corruption of his power to get involved while Saruman was so confident in his power that he fell to that corruption. Gandalf walked the line between those 2 using his power to help but making it so that someone more suited for the task were to destroy the ring.
@@ChBrahm i do agree with his take completely just confirmed that the reluctance to just touch the ring is movie stuff since i happened to read that passage of the book a day or so before writing the comment :)
They found Saruman's secret stash of Old Toby and were never heard of again.
Love a bit of old toby
Black tar Old Toby. Before they knew it they were doing magic tricks on the streets.
And pinned it on Gandalf
They set up shop in the east. 🌿👽
You forget the Tolkien has said that old Toby, or leafweed was just tobacco. He actually wrote that. It was not marijuana. That was the stupid movie that totally screwed things from the book.
This is the best explanation of the blue wizards and their fate that I have seen to date.
I first read "The Hobbit" and "LOTR" in 1969. 😊
I like to think the phrase "fell to evil" means that they were defeated / killed / otherwise overcome by evil, not that they became evil and servants of Sauron. Maybe the reason why Saruman came back was because HE betrayed THEM. Or ran off when they needed his help.
I think this is just as plausible as the other speculations.
Perhaps both, perhaps one turned evil and then captured the other to prevent any challenges. 1 good one and one evil one. That could make for a good tale.
I've always thought that Saruman killed them or something.
This would honestly be in line with the way they hampered Sauron's mustering of the Easterlings. They started cults which in a way made complete domination of their masses by Sauron more difficult, like fighting fire with fire. Sauron or his agents must have had to deal with them, but by the time of the War of the Ring, the damage to their cause was already too deep
Ah, but the quote seems to be "fell *into* evil", which is less ambiguous. I'd assume that Tolkien knew very well how to use or avoid that ambiguity.
Nooooooooooooooooooo I can't believe it!
Side note: this type of throwaway line is my favorite kind of world building. It implies a thing that is knowledge to others but has little to do with the current narrative.
Classic example is the throw away line about the "clone wars." That had nerds and geeks speculating for years.
I like to think they're chilling with the Avari, watching the starlight reflect on Lake Cuiviénen.
Naahh.....the lands have changes and to Cuivienen there is no returning.
cuivienen is gone my friend. tolkien said that the changes of the land as the ages progressed caused it to disappear :(
I was always suspicious that the Blue Wizards were eventually betrayed by Saruman in some manner. I suspect Saruman learned all he could from them, then betrayed them in a manner, where he was anonymous to Sauron and his Easterling minions, but the Blue Wizards never suspected he had set them up. These were just two powerful men agitating insurrection against Sauron or the local kings in the region and they were betrayed in a manner where they were caught unaware and quickly killed, while Saruman was away on some errand they had sent him on. I think if they had fallen into Sauron's hands alive to be twisted to his service, Saruman would not have been trusted as much as a servant of Sauron as Sauron would have figured out the reason he had the Blue Wizards fall in his lap was Saruman's treachery and therefore he couldn't be trusted at all as an ally and was clearly after Sauron's ring for himself.
After all, they managed to do some kind of mission in the East for over a thousand years with Saruman along for the ride, so it wouldn't seem like they were stumbling and bumbling their way through the East for that long only to be suddenly capture due to their own mistakes, yet Saruman wasn't with them when they finally got caught? Yeah, I think there is a strong case of betrayal by Saruman in some manner.
I always imagined they stayed the course for a time then did the Ratigaste thing.
That's just where my head went.
I have long suspected that Saruman was responsible for the downfall of the "Blue Two". 😮
@@mr.campwell3655 I can see that too. Maybe they were having little if any success and had abandoned their mission and that is why Saruman left as they were already fading, or after Saruman left they grew discouraged and faded. Or maybe they grew bitter at the Valar sending them on a thankless task with no backup and just gave up or switched sides as Sauron made them a better offer of a cushy retirement or comfy position administering his allies in the East.
@@raydavison4288 Would explain why he had so little to say about them when he returned from the East despite spending over a thousand years with them and seemingly mentioning little of what he did in the East either. Of course, if I was reading this novel for the first time back in the 50's, 60's or 70's I probably wouldn't have such suspicions as the novel hardly mentions them. It is only later works drawn from Tolkien's notes that shed even a slight bit more light on who the Blue Wizards were. With the passing of years we all overanalyze what info there is as a kind of parlor room chat exercise trying to fill in an information vacuum.
i agree with your call. Saruman probably began his change towards a power monger during that 1000 years time frame you mentioned.
You actually got it all wrong this time, Maestro. Tolkien says that they failed in 1958, but the note of their success and early coming to the Middle-earth was written much later. And nowhere in that note it is said that they went back to Valinor the first time around.
It's just another case of the Professor changing his mind and re-writing his initial tale of their failure. If we stick to Tolkien's late writings the story goes like this: they arrived early, helped a lot but did not return to Valinor with Gandalf. Why? We do not know, of course. Maybe there still was some job to be done in the East, who knows...
If I had to guess, they probably developed some strong connections to the peoples' they encountered, much like Gandolf did in the Shire. One or both of them perhaps felt obligated to stick around after the Second Age in an attempt to right some of the deeper wrongs in Middle Earth.
It's one thing to defeat a dark lord, it's an entirely different matter to wipe away cult practices and beliefs that made some of these groups predisposed to autocrats like Sauron. In this, I feel they had only mixed success. Perhaps these efforts even led to actions that caused men to form new cults around the wizards themselves.
@@Uncle_Fredthis makes a lot of sense to me. But I’m bias as I think it’s the more interesting outcome.
Yeah this video is basically mixing up older and newer narratives on the Blue Wizards and trying to make story of them, when in fact its obvious that the later narrative is what Tolkien intended to be their story,
I had hoped they found a good calling in place of their original one. Might go against what was planned for them but I never liked to think they became evil, rather traveled wide and saw problems to quash and people to help.
Personally, I like to reconcile the two stories by having one of the Two fall to the Shadow, and the other remaining true to their mission, with the two brothers slaying each other in a greek style tragedy.
Pure Fanon on my part, but it makes for fun contemplation.
I've tried to learn about the blue wizards, but the information is minimal. This video covers all the lore we have, and I learned new things about them too. Great video Robert, I always love watching your Middle Earth videos!
Was Sauron powerful enough to currupt them to that extent? Even Saruman was never really on Sauron's side and only wanted the power of the ring for himself.
White wizard is stronger than Blue ones according to lore.
@@gustawek If it came down to pure power that is true but I don't think that is as big of a factor. Gandalf despite being less powerful than Saruman was able to resist taking the ring because he was far wiser than Saruman. I don't think there are many examples in Tolkiens writing where true power comes from actual power.
@@MaxWithTheSax
Gandalf was not less powerful, he just didn't want the job of leader.
@@tabularasa0606 Tolkien states that Saruman was the most powerful of the maia who were sent to middle earth. So Gandalf was definitely less powerful, instead his strength comes from his wisdom.
@@tabularasa0606until his reincarnation he was less powerful
Gandalf was a Maiar of Manwe and like him focused on the big picture. Saruman was a Maiar of Aule and like him focused on crafts (ring lore). Radagast was a Maiar of Yavanna and like her focused on growing things. The blue wizards were Maiar of Orome, the hunter of all evil creatures. Tolkien says that Radagast strayed from or failed 'the mission'. But did he really? He was sent by Yavanna and focused on her interests. Perhaps the blue wizards 'failed' in a similar way, focusing on hunting any and all evil creatures as the Vala who sent them would, and not necessarily hunting Sauron specifically.
I like this idea very much.
Yes Radagast failed the mission. People often say that he was there for Yavanna's purpose, but why would Yavanna's purpose supercede all the Valar's? They were sent to rally the people of middle earth and be the enemy of Sauron, not to be distracted by their own hobbies. In my opinion Radagast was short sighted and let his own interests consume him and largely ignored or procrastinated on the actual charge given to him.
It's a good thing they got lucky with the ring, because if Sauron emerged victorious from the war, all the forests and animals would have been at the mercy of his destructive touch. And Radagst in that confrontation would not have lasted long at all.
@@jeji000 But 'the Valar' didn't send Radagast. Yavanna had to ask Saruman specifically to bring him along. So whose mission was he on really?
@@garicb9271 Of course the Valar sent Radagast, they made him a member of the Istari, the Order specifically made to be Sauron's enemy. He's not just some random git that got to tag along with the others, he is counted among them. So the Order's purpose is also his purpose.
Yavanna may have vouched for him because she thought he had a good chance of succeeding, just like how Manwe thought about it of Gandalf. I don't think she's this nature obsessed hippy that cares more about grass than the people of middle earth. She had already made assurance long ago that the forests cannot be abused freely, and that is in the form of giant angry walking talking Ents.
@@jeji000 I cant recall but is the term Istari ever used in Valinor? That seems more like a Middle Earth construct referring to all the wizards (regardless of mission). And the way I read the forming of that group, Gandalf, Saurman and 1 of the blue wizards were 'the picks', and yavanna asked saruman to bring radagast (she didnt ask the council of Valar, or do it during that meeting), and the other blue wizard went along 'as a friend'. So I dont think the association with the group 'istari' = being on the same mission. Honestly it read more like they needed to hitch a ride on their boat. I guess trips TO middle earth were hard to come by.
Can we talk about how Radagast took the biggest L though? From the vast countries that were Middle-Earth, he only had to watch _one_ forest. And it just so happened to be the forest Sauron was hiding in. And he totally missed that. It's almost impressively incompetent 😄
Ahh....but his task was NOT to watch Mirkwood. He simply chose that place as an effective hideout against his true calling. He was not searching from Sauron, he was effectively HIDING from him. That is why he didn't discover anything.
OMG, I never realized that! Good point! 🤣🤣🤣
Yeah, I've always wondered how the wizards missed that one. Who or what exactly did they think this "Necromancer" was? Are dark magical figures just a dime a dozen in Middle Earth to the point where Gandalf, Radaghast, and Saruman just can't tell which magician in some woods might be the dark lord himself. Ok, we know such entities particularly by the 3rd age aren't in any way common, which is why it's a bit of a headscratcher for me. I mean, "The Mirkwood" even though it used to be "Greenwood the Great" suddenly goes all dark and nobody is like "hmm, I wonder if there's something evil hiding in them trees somewhere? Maybe even at Dol Guldur?". Even if they considered it could be one of the Nazgul perhaps, that would still warrant investigation.
I guess the question is, what were the Istari doing for most of their time in the 3rd Age?
the halfling leaf (and his love for mushrooms) has clearly slowed his mind
Hippie wizards, man. They creep me out.
Interesting. I never connected them to the discarded sequel. I also thought it was competing ideas that Tolkien never settled on if they were secretly aiding the resistance to Sauron in the east, or fallen and founding secret cults, never thought the intention could be both combined. But ultimately I don’t think they were the villains of the New Shadow - Tolkien also wrote that Sauron’s defeat was the last time there was an evil really centered on and embodied by one supernatural figure, and how the new story was about Men (I’d presume Black Numenoreans and/or the Mouth of Sauron were behind the New Shadow).
I've seen other videos on the Blue Wizards but this was by far the most detailed and insightful.
I like the idea of them being the next big bad, but I also understand why Tolkien decided not to continue his final story. The age of man is too dark, because we are so easily corruptible.
They were hanging out with the Entwives! 😉
Didn’t Tolkien change his mind about the blue wizards later on though? I swear in every discussion on them I’ve heard it mentioned that Tolkien’s last conception of the blue wizards was that they did fulfill their mission and didn’t fall, and eventually returned to valinor.
Makes sense. He was constantly looking for ways to re-write in order to match the amorphous, changeable story in his head. The best example is how the original publication of The Hobbit had Gollum willingly give the ring to Bilbo. But it's all through his work - some of the writing compiled but his son feature the older versions of whatever story, then the most recent version (I won't say final version because I'm convinced Tolkien was never finished). It's really neat because you can see both the way his writing style changed through different eras of his life, as well as getting a snapshot of his processes in crafting a story. I HIGHLY recommend Beren and Luthien for this.
@@LevacqueGollum willingly gave the ring to Bilbo? There is a first edition of The Hobbit where this happened? A copy of that would be worth a bit.
@@DavidOfWhitehills yeah, it was the published version for decades actually. And then Tolkien wrote it into the narrative of the later series - Bilbo had two versions of his story: the manuscript in the Red Book, which was the truth where he finds it and runs away from Gollum, and the one he told everybody in which Gollum gives it away. Tolkien made new decisions about the One Trying when writing LotR and he had enough influence to go back to the publisher and change the text they'd use in future Hobbit printings. This is what I mean, he really enjoyed giving his story room to grow and change over the decades he spent developing it.
@@DavidOfWhitehills Yup, Tolkien released the revised addition just before publication of fellowship. It was brilliantly woven into the lore, as the other comment describes. It was especially effective with readers of the first edition, because they had a whole other version in their head, and then had Gandalf reveal it to be a lie. A plot twist decades in the making 😄
I haven’t looked, but I’d bet that first edition versions of the hobbit are pricey, but I’d also love to read it
it was not ever definitively decided what happened to them tolkien himself only used speculative language
Honestly I love this conclusion because it fits very well with Tolkien's works and the themes of the Lord of the Rings. I can imagine that he wouldn't write a return of Sauron but I can imagine him writing a story about a cult lead by the Blue Wizards that tries to bring back Melkor. Maybe even for supposed good reasons. We know of the idea that the world will be remade one day. Maybe the Blue Wizards tried to free Morgoth so that the Ainur would fight him and restart the world, this time without discord and therefore evil.
I love that idea, it's very similar to how Tolkien writes his characters who fall to evil. They're not evil for the sake of evil. They're essentially (corrupted) utilitarianists.
You’ve been churning out tons of stuff on all the fictional worlds you cover and just wanted to say it’s appreciated
I like to think they did their tasks well enough in the other lands that it wasn't a full on invasion from the Lords of those lands but seemingly smaller armies of marauders who joined Sauron.
i think they were busy pounding elf poon
@@Hugh.G.Rectionxthis is my headcanon
@@Hugh.G.Rectionx both can be true at the same time ;)
I like the way you stitch this together and it makes a lot of sense. Its hard to say if it's what Tolkien intended but it's more satisfying than "we don't know. He was all over the place with them"
This is all fine and well but you're forgetting one important thing, Tolkien changed his mind a lot. Sure at one point he wrote that the Blue Wizards failed, but his last writings on them completely changed their story, having them arrive in the Second Age, and being crucial to the defeat of Sauron in the War of the Last Alliance and the War of the Ring. It doesn't make any sense to try and tie in their older narrative as its clear that was discarded by Tolkien.
Tolkien was a big procrastinator and he even said that without the constant encouragement and badgering of his friend, C.S. Lewis, he never would have completed the Lord of the Rings. By the time he started writing the Sequel, the Inklings were no longer meeting to read to each other and his friendship with Lewis had waned because of the affairs of life: Lewis was further away from Oxford, working in Cambridge as Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature, and Lewis had met Joy Davidman who eventually became his wife.
Another important reason the sequel was never created Was that he felt it was simply too dark and pessimistic And he just couldn't really figure out a good way to introduce a reason for the story to exist
with both dark lords gone there's really no one who can reach that level of power even say a blue wizard is not going to be threatening the entirety of middle Earth
And as he wrote it he just plain as I said didn't like the dark tone and was turned off by its growing cultish feel
...another insightful research - much more than I ever hoped to find out about them - thanks so much. To me this piece of history somehow indirectly magnifies even more the importance of Tom Bombadil, although he kept quite away from the troubles of the third age - but he was at ease dealing with the barrow wights and kept the evilness of the trees at bay, the ring had no power over him, and he had many a talk with Farmer Maggot, and Gandalf spent 2 years with him at the end of that age - what could they have talked so excessively about? ...certainly about the upcoming fourth age and the dominion of men... would love to hear anything more about what they talked of, and also: what did Tom (and Goldberry) do in the fourth age, except for what they always did...?! Tom fascinates me at no end - he was like a counterpart to the desperate war of the ring... was he just to hold up and maintain the spiritual presence of Eru? - alas, I stop here for now...
This makes me want to make a D&D or RPG campaign set in such a world. Either between the wars or after the fall of Sauron, with the Blue Wizards as the bad guys.
There are D&D source books for 5ed and some of the others that are set after the hobbit, up in dale. I'm sure you could adapt the setting to a later time and roll from there. They're called "Adventures in Middle-Earth"
@@alloran0987 could be fun to make happen. =)
Never stop with the Tolkien lore. I'm here for it!
Thank you for all you do Robert your content is amazing in so many ways. I've been watching most of your asoiaf videos and it's funny listening to you say any day now on wow lol
2025, 2027 or never
How have I not encountered this channel sooner??? I love this stuff! You talk about a lot of stuff I haven’t seen anyone talk about before.
Legend has it they taught the Easterlings their sick guy liner skills.
What do you mean
Guyliner is a portmanteau of guy and eyeliner. It refers to eye makeup worn by men.
I assume the easterlings in the movies have eye makeup.
As a man from a culture that has guyliner, let me tell you, we use it to protect the edges of our eyelids from being burnt up by the severe UV rays that shine on our lands.
The Blue Wizards had a love for oysters and thus changed their names to the "Blue Oyster Cult" with their best selling song: Don't fear the Sauron..
Not a bad post but needs more cowbell
And Smaug-Zilla
@@JamesD92763there goes Tokyo!!
🥶🧙♂️
This was such a cool video. I loved the part about the blue wizards forming weird magic traditions, etc. and being the big bags in the sequels. i wish books were like movies and someone could just write it. like a great writer would just take it upon themselves to write the sequel, maybe patrick rothfuss or george rr martin.
I dont think anyone could write another mans imaginary universe. Its in your head. Everything someone else writes isnt it.
Please, not George R. R. Martin. His value system is totally different.
@@martavdz4972yeah that is a good point. he does love the books though. he could probably change his style. i only have two his books. i have all the tolkien books just about
There is a second letter that Geek has missed, because Tolkien changed his mind constantly, In it he states that like their first sojourn in the west they did what they had been sent to do, cripple the Easterlings ability to send reinforcements to aid Sauron.
I'm quite sure Gandalf met at least one of them. I have an idea that he procured his hat from one of them, since it's blue - not grey like the rest of his garments.
Or he assisted them against a powerful foe and at least one of them fell thus the blue garment
Gandalf was truly a great dude, out of 5 angels come to earth he was the only one who saw it through. That makes me wonder about rhadaghast tho, where was he during the final battle? Was he fighting the good fight in the north?
Yeah, a lot of fans and the video on this channel think he did. Also, Radagast sent the eagle that rescued Gandalf from Orthank, which was one of the things crucial to success - he came to Weathertop in time to fight the Nazgul and weaken them, otherwise they might have finished Frodo off. Radagast could also have sent the eagles that rescued Frodo and Sam from the exploding Orodruin. And as his birds gathered intelligence for Gandalf at the beginning of the war, it´s possible that they continued to do so for the Mirkwood and the Dale.
1:50 Alatar and Palando: the Ithrin Luin, clad in 'sea blue'--the Blue Wizards
2:39 to 3:17
7:10 to 7:17
10:29 to 10:35
10:44
I ran a Middle Earth role playing campaign long ago that was set in the Fourth Age. It involved a group of heroes, under orders from King Eldarion, travelling into the far east of Middle Earth to investigate news of a new empire that preached a cult of Morgoth and was breeding orcs, enslaving men, and putting to the sword the last remnants of the Avari. Upon reaching this distant empire the heroes discovered that it was ruled by the two blue wizards, who had indeed fallen under Sauron's sway and were now twisted and evil. Sauron, before his defeat, had convinced the blue wizards that Iluvatar had betrayed and tricked his first-born children, the Ainur, by tempting them out of the void and into Arda on the promise that they would do great and wonderous things in this new world, only for them to discover that Iluvatar's true plan was that Arda and the Ainur's power would fade, with Arda ultimately destined to be a world for Iluvatar's weakest, and most inferior children; men. Sauron had tried to prevent this destined Age of Men by mastering and wielding what powers still remained in Arda. Ultimately Sauron's plan had failed, but the blue wizards had come up with a plan of their own. In the utter east they had discovered the ruined foundations of the Gates of Morning, still left in the world from when Arda had been made round, and with their empire of slaves, the blue wizards had begun a grand project to rebuild the Gates, tapping into what magical power still remained in the ancient foundations. They believed that completing this project would trigger an alternate Dagor Dagorath, by allowing Morgoth to return from the void here and now, through the Gates of Morning instead of through the Door of Night, at the end of time, as originally prophesied. And further they believed that this utter subversion of Iluvatar's planned timeline for the world would bring his music to a crashing halt, and that Iluvatar would have no choice but to come-to-the-table, so to speak, and negotiate with his first-born children for a new destiny for Arda. Obviously upon discovering what the blue wizards had planned, the heroes had to set about stopping it.
Well did they?
@@triandfit1 Of course. :-)
Do you have a spare seat at your gaming table? This sounds like a great campaign!
Is there any media recording from this campaign?
It would give us the power of inspiration! How we would drive a host of campaigns!
Give it to us!
I'm playing currently in a Lord of the Rings 5e online campaign.
Even a short video like this takes loads of research when it comes to Tolkien! Great work
The Blue Wizards got WOLOLO'd and became the Red Wizards.
At 5:30 you talk about the Blue Wizards returning to Valinor and then making a trip back to Middle-earth. What is your source on this? Because I have never seen nor can I find a reference to their return to Valinor at any point. You also ignore that in his last writings about them is when he gives them the names Morinehtar and Rómestámo and states that they helped reduce his forces from the east.
I think this dude actually communes with Tolkien. Only explanation for his knowledge.
He says presumably. So it's a presumption.
@@CosmicOdeum there's no presumption. Tolkien says the only Istari to return to Valinor is Gandalf. Tolkien didn't say that only was after the defeat of Sauron, at no point did any Istari go back to Valinor.
@@John_Locke_108 🤣
@@ComicalHealing Sounds like it was a presumption then, since it turned out not to be true after all.
To think of it, you don’t get a name like “Darkness-slayer” by simply plotting in the dark. Sauron didn’t put much thought on Gandalf, let alone Radagast, but he sure gave more attention to Saruman... and he probably wasn’t even the boldest among the 5 wizards. If Sauron focused on strength alone, he would’ve surely prioritised two enemies of darkness with seemingly supernatural powers. As always, he was crazy but he wasn’t stupid...
Some wonderfully robust speculations in this - glorious in fact. Well done. I do recall reading somewhere once that an abandoned idea for the Blue pair was they were murdered by Saruman in the wild lands of the far East, but I can't recall where I saw it. It doesn't matter. I enjoyed this video more than some of your other excellent work.
The Blue Wizards were always very intriguing for me. 🧙♂️ 🧙♂️ I like that Tolkien purposefuly made some bits of the legendarium mysterious & obscure. I hope they did help the good to win in the end. Blue is also a nice color. 💙
If yhe new shadow notes is anything to go by they might have fallen.
With Tolkien, you never know whether he purposefully made something mysterious, or had been planning to write something about it but died before he could. All the same, I totally agree that fantasy is at its best when some things are left to imagination. In my language, "fantazie" means "imagination", so I grew up thinking the whole genre was about making you think and invent your own stories 🙂
@@thekittenfreakifyBlue Wizards as the hidden enemies and Radaghast fighting against them would've been cool.
Interesting. I was always curious about the Blue Wizards. Thanks for doing the research and explaining your thoughts. I kind of wish Tolkien did the sequel. It would’ve been fascinating.
11:25 ish
That's not "exactly" what we were told they were doing based on the quote you had just cited. Outlasting Sauron doesn't mean they kept Sauron's name alive, just that the magical cults he supposes they might have created (within or outside of their instructions seems unclear) would have continued on.
Great video though, brought up some info I hadn't ever heard before and excellent production in general.
Your channel is such a boon to the literature of Tolkien. You do a great service, sir.
The Blueses have always been a point of interest to me, much like the magicians in Pharaoh's court who used magic to try to beat Moses. What happened to all these random magicians? You'd think they would've stood out a little more. Thanks for the video.
Excellent job Mellon! Well met. I feel like Saruman betrayed them...they were lost to the enemy...
I thought I knew all this stuff and I still learn things. Amazing work rob.
Brilliant! I’ve only read The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, but I read them thoroughly, and I came up with exactly this kind of continuation of The Lord of the Rings. I didn’t realize until now that I was thinking just like Tolkien!
8:20 he’s also the elf with the gift of mogging
Great coverage of the blue wizards! I wrote a poem about them and Harad not too long ago.
"The Blue Wizards got really into the 60s and were never heard from again."
What movie is that from? That's so familiar sounding to me.
@@DavidVerbout Sandlot, the fates of one of the kids "He got really into the 60s and we never heard from him again."
I like more optimistic interpretations of their actions. The idea that they had an unseen and uncelebrated role in Sauron's defeat is much more interesting and inspiring than them just failing and becoming cult leaders. I know some characters' failures are part of teaching lessons, but in a world dominated by dark evils, why not have two more good dudes who did good with no reward or honor for their actions.
Also I generally just don't like how the entire vast eastern regions just get written off as easily falling to Sauron and being generally corrupted. It feels to simplistic sometimes even if it just wasn't Tolkien's focus.
Agreed. It is certain that not all Easterlings were loyal to Sauron. That’s just not plausible. We know that Bór’s sons were killed, but they may have had sons of their own, or Bór might have also had daughters. There’s still a good chance that he had surviving descendants who shared his faithfulness to the Eldar, and were thus able to be inspired by the Blue Wizards to reject Sauron. Also, if you look at the history of the Easterlings, there are several gaps of hundreds of years in the timespans between their attacks on Gondor. Why did it take so long for them to resume attacking? If there was a civil war within Harad, with a resistance opposing the Men of Darkness led by the Blue Wizards, this would be quite explanatory.
@@12classics39 Yeah those are good points. Maybe Tolkien thought about expanding on the East but just never had the time for it. Would have been interesting to see but again I understand why he never got around to it.
Not gonna lie you combined the 2 viewpoints Tolkien had for them masterfully although I must say this theory makes it sound a bit weird that Saruman is the head of the order when Blue Wizards were the ones that arrived earlier and had much more experience and had actually done things before unlike Saruman.
I love, how Tolkien theorizes about their fate. Of course, how is he to know?
Short answer: we will never know.
Short answers boring
0:35 audio glitch: part of VO is missing!
I think they were just mad Saruman was put in charge after they did all the work. They were going on strike until they got a promotion
Did he take down his video for the sequel to lord the rings? Just playing catch up on some of his older videos and I can't seem to find it after hearing this.
Thank you! I had always wondered their story.
Wow. Such a great video. Keep up the good work!
The moment The Hobbit and LOTR become public domain, you should record an audiobook version of them. You have a very pleasant voice and it suits the genre very well.
I don't believe they became servants of Sauron. They may have fallen to evil but if they served Sauron I believe we'd know for sure because he would have used them.
Nah. The best spies are those you never hear about.
is this a re up?
Perhaps we can say that Gandalf did his job so well b/c he didn't want to be there to begin with. Yes, that is a bit contrary, but we can look to the quote about "those who wish to rule are the least qualified to do so".
1:52 just me or some visual bugs showing up here?
I had the same thing happen just now so almost definitely the file
I am glad for this video for solving that mystery :-) Thank you
This is what Amazons show should have been about. They wouldn't be constrained by the books and in fear of messing things up. I would have hired Peter and Fran to show run. 🧙🧙
An interesting later conception of the Blue Wizards from Tolkien that I wasn't aware of.. last time I read "the lore" they simply arrived in the Third Age and vanished in the East, which is the story I prefer. For one thing, this version leaves two powerful Istari in the East after the fall of Sauron, and where were they during the War of the Ring? Istari are far more powerful than Nazgul. And if it were up to me I'd leave the Wizards out of the Second Age story entirely (although I'm sure the hack fan-fic writers at Amazon have already slotted them in), since it blunts the story of the Last Alliance, where the combined power of Elves and Men still in their prime were *just enough* to defeat Sauron.
Thank you for taking all the time to answer a question like this, and not just with a hair-brained opinion, parading around as fact.
You know what. I give in. I love this channel. And I accept being a total geek. I'll Subscribe and come to turns and live geeky for the rest of my days.
Blue Wizards, immediately after the fall of Sauron:
"Hey, guys, what's up? Let's kick some Sauron ass, are we ready? What's that? He's dead? How? Ring? What Ring? Are you kidding me right now? Okay, well. Guess that's that. Big feast, right? We know how to make something called pastries. You'll love them. Party time!"
I remember Gandalf telling BIlbo there were two blue wizards but he couldn't remember their names. I've wondered since then if they would ever play any part in the story.
it's sad that he died before fully finishing the world, things like that sound like he had somethings in mind for some characters, but never realized them
Wow...amazing info here. Thanks!
Bravo as usual, Geek.
If the estate can sign off on and help produce whatever the hell was just on prime, then they can and should sign off on somebody exploring either the blues or Aragorns adventures pre-lotr. THAT fans would love. THAT isn’t twisting and changing already existing source material.
In the shadows or mordor video games they mention the blue wizards briefly as allies of the Eastern kingdoms of men.
My theory is that saruman played them against each other. Probably assigning them missions in regions that are politically opposed, with the claim that it is to make peace between them, but knowing that they would each empathize with the group they were assigned and find themselves at odds with each other. I like the idea of one of them going to Rhun and the other to South Harad, both intending to secure peace but ultimately meeting each other in battle, both believing their side to be the righteous one. I also think that while it would be humans of different nations doing most of the fighting, the seed of the conflict would be much older, the result of ancient wars between the avari elves and the eastern dwarves (orchestrated by the dark lord, obviously). While their tale would be tragic with lots of danger & betrayal, I'm sure that there would be an ending with hope & forgiveness, and they would return to Valinor together, reminescing on all the things they saw & pondering what the Avari will sing about Arda in the reshaping of the new world. Tolkien never got to write his sequel to lord of the rings, but if he did I think it would have been something like that.
I find the line of reasoning here, as expressed in its entirety, unsatisfactory. Of course, very little is known at all of the activity of the Blue Wizards, even in the periods when it’s pretty well established that they were in Middle Earth. As for what ultimately became of them, “In Deep Geek” reports correctly that Tolkien wrote (in a somewhat informal essay that Christopher Tolkien later referred to as the “Essay on the Istari"), that “Their fate was unknown. But some held that they fell into evil and became servants of Sauron” (7:10). IDG, in fact, admits that any statements about those wizards’ fates are necessarily speculative, and that people simply don’t know what happened to them.
But then, for the last four or five minutes of the video, IDG just goes ahead and makes the leap to the conclusion that that •is• what happened: that the Blue Wizards definitely succumbed to the temptations of Sauron, or at least some evil that was much akin to Sauron. I simply cannot fathom that shift to certainty, where the source texts firmly state that •uncertainty• is the fundamental state of our knowledge here. Is it just a case of intellectual laziness, or sloppiness?
I’d have no problem if IDG said,
“Tolkien hints that the Blue Wizards may have fallen to the allure of evil, although the truth of such rumors is not known. But let’s examine the implications, were those rumors actually to prove true . . . .”
That would be a respectable way to work through those hypotheses. But I just do not get the approach here, which seems to be, “Tolkien says that something •might• have happened . . . yeah, so that means Case Closed; it’s a done deal, and for sure that’s how it •actually• went down. Absolutely.”
I just see no compelling reason to transform Tolkien’s ambivalent hints into canonical certainty.
You are correct. Especially because Tolkien completely abandoned several of his ideas. He scrapped “The New Shadow” and never finished it. I highly doubt he even wanted the few pages he did write to be made public at all. Thus we cannot assume that anything written in the unfinished “New Shadow” actually happened in Middle-earth. But beyond that, he clearly changed his mind about the fate of the Blue Wizards. In his later writings, he rescinded his earlier rumor that they fell to Sauron and affirmed that they did remain true and prevented loyalty to Sauron from spreading through 100% of the Easterling population. He seemed to imply that they led a rebellion/civil war against the majority of the Easterlings who were loyal to Sauron, and thus prevented even more destruction that Sauron’s Easterlings could’ve caused.
I really like those arts depicting those blue wizards in middle eastern or oriental costumes.
In some of the pictures, one is Indian and one Chinese or Vietnamese or thereabouts. In some others, their clothes are reminiscent of Central-Western Asian traditional female clothes, from Afghanistan, Iran or Tajikistan.
There is also one thing: when Gandalf was going to Shire from Gondor after reading about the One Ring, he met Radagast who told him to go to Saruman, Orthanc, where he was captive later. Gandalf said that he didn't guessed Saruman's thoughts because it was sent Radagast, from his order, and not others. But who are the others? The Blue Wizards? So Gandalf didn't trust too much the Blue Wizards? Also, they could be traveling to Orthanc.
Also, another thing: why blue? Why not red? What could be meaning of the colours in Tolkien's work? White is the supreme color, meaning the highest and pure form of energy. Black is for the bad. Red is fire. Multicolour is worse ( see bad Saruman). But blue? Any connection with the blue sky or blue water?
The symbolism isn´t always perfect, as the honourable guards of Minas Tirith wear black, and yet obviously aren´t associated with evil. Tolkien is surprisingly vague about the symbolic meaning of blue. Gandalf wears a blue mantle at the end of LOTR and it seems to have no meaning, other than creating the effect of white light coming from under blue clouds. But he seems to usually connect blue with the sky, so I´d say the sky.
@@martavdz4972 The black robe colours of Gondor and blue robe of Gandalf are mentioned also in the books?
This is the absolute best video I have ever seen on the subject.
Except the entirely speculative bit about them becoming corrupted by Sauron. The only thing we know is that they failed to find his hiding place, that is the only failure Tolkien himself applies to them. We also know the reason, they were looking in the wrong place, but that is where they were charged to go because they were sent to raise rebellion against Sauron's rule. We know that they most likely ended up becoming the founders of secret cults and magical traditions, but that does not mean that they became servants of Sauron, it only means that they may have done something similar to Saruman, by using their powers to create large organizations. We don't know anything else about what they did, because Tolkien himself specifically said that these characters don't directly come into the story he was telling, and therefore he knows very little about them.
If they, like Radagast with animals, had become enamored of the peoples of Middle Earth, they may have stayed and attempted to guide them after the fall of Sauron, which was not explicitly their job. That does not mean they fell, nor were they corrupted, it is much more similar to the brown wizard putting aside his charge in order to do what Yavanna wanted. Radagast also did not go to Valinor, not because he was evil, or did not have permission, as far as we can tell, but because the things he was most interested in were still in Middle Earth. The same could be said for the blue wizards, their job was to raise rebellion against unjust rule, the idea that they became attached to the people they were helping rebel is perfectly natural.
No corruption needed, nor intended as far as I can tell.
Also, not for nothing, there were two of them.
Even if the sequel had followed the plan you outlined here, that does not necessarily mean they both fell. It would certainly follow the pattern set out by the events of the previous ages for both the Great Enemy, and the Great Helper, to be Ainur. One who tries to rule directly, and one who counters him through advice and inspiration.
Its interesting that he suggests that they started cults of magic, when magic in Tolkien's world isn’t really all that much. Other than influence, there isn’t like magic schools or entire archives of spells to study like in harry potter. Even when the wizards do use "magic" its not a whole lot.
Very good video once again. Thank you!
Minor audio clip at 0:33. Great content as usual though!
It's times like this that I'm glad I bookmark every video I watch.
I would love to see a cinematic depiction of the Blue Wizards’ travels through the east. It obviously would not be strictly canon because of the gap, but I wouldn’t mind as long as it weaves back into the canon.
This is a fascinating analysis. I wonder if it might have been something like a Frankish/Holy Roman Empire (Numenoreans/Gondorians) in comparison to a Byzantine Empire or Ottoman (Easterlings/Haradrim)? The Blue Wizards being active to sow insurrection in a land where Sauron may have been seen as a god-king, like the Old Persian kings were viewed. They would have had the cards stacked against them, more than likely. And, I imagine the human kingdoms in the East were probably less civilized compared to idealized Numenorean kingdoms - e.g. slavery and suchlike, but probably not anarchic and evil in and of themselves, and such as it was, the domination of Sauron over their kings and kingdoms may have even created some sort of order, and it's understandable that they had conquering armies and would have gotten that Sauron propaganda that the West were their hereditary enemies.
I've always seen Gondor more as the equivalent to the east roman empire while Arnor was more akin to the western empire and perhaps the franks/holy roman empire to a certain extent. Constantinople and Minas Tirith faced similar challenges over their history and the general look of Gondorean civilians and even the architecture evoke the byzantine empire to me.
As for the blue wizards, I think it was implied in some writings that over time they lost connection to their original mission, 'went native' for lack of a better word. I could see them as Istari not falling to the level of Saruman perhaps, but perhaps opting to become god kings/emperors of the people of the east. Perhaps initially with benevolent and altruistic intentions but ultimately haughty and self serving. And in the same way that Gondor and the west of middle earth can be evocative of the ancient west of our world, the Istari who eventually ruled over the east (the theory i subscribe to) helped form cultures that were evocative of the ancient India and Chinese civilizations. Realms that were strong in their own territory and free from the dark influence of Sauron. But insular and not ideal either due to becoming despotic.
@@BVargas78I'm not sure I understand in what sense the eastern nations would be described as insular and despotic, in your analysis, but the western nations of middle earth wouldn't be? Tolkien is a product of colonial Europe, despotism was brought to them in the form of colonial nations, they were no more or less despotic in the middle ages than European nations. Equally, they were no more insular, medieval eastern cultures had vast amounts of trading between them and the west, they have done since Alexander the Great, they've had meaningful cultural and economic connections since the bronze age. I think your historical analogies, or evocations as you have put it, are apocryphal at best
@@shekel2356 I'm not saying they are my personal views, I do agree that western civilization was just as autocratic/despotic as the east. Maybe even more so in some regards. But Tolkiens Arnor and Gondor were based around an idealised West, largely devoid of the bad parts (but not entirely). Yet I do think Tolkiens views of the blue wizards were of that nature i mentioned before, as it's possible/likely that Tolkien shared in the 'orientalism' view of the east. Bearing in mind he himself was the product of his society and time when such views were common place among western intellectuals.
But to be more specific, there is also reference to letters of Tolkien in his histories of middle earth compilation of books which i think his son put together. Though there is very little extra information, there is a part he mentions the possibility of cults and organized religions being organised around them (the blue wizards). Which is something only a despotic ruler would permit. And you never hear of empires east of Sauron going on the war path either, not even to the aid of Gondor and the west. Which reinforces to me that they became insular realms.
@@BVargas78 Thank you very much for such a rapid and detailed response! I agree and understand better where you're coming from now
The idea of the Blue Wizards being villains of the sequel is a great one, and now I'm disappointed.
The best spies are the ones you don’t hear about
Was the LOTR sequel video removed or privated because I couldn't find it?
I think the blue wizards are genuinely my favorite mystery in the lotr universe even compared to tom bombadil. i think the lotr show ay have introduced them as the two guys who scare off the half foots in episode 1 and if so i dont like their design at all. i wish there was a show that depicts them in the oriental style from the drawing in the video :)
I think it should be noted that the Blue Wizards (Alatar specifically) were sent by Orome, The Huntsman, to hunt evil. Perhaps much like Elrond's sons, they enjoyed hunting evil a bit too much and lost their way not unlike Radagast did with the plants and animals.
I can't find "The Sequel to Lord of the Rings" video. May I ask for the link?
Would be interesting to see your view on What Happened to Radagast
For some reason I never considered the Blue Wizards returned to Valinor after the second age, that makes a lot of sense and ties the two stories of there arrival at different times together
phenomenal video