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I'm not a hundred percent sure but I tend to think that they probably had their rough patches through the ages that they were around in the east, but somehow came through in the end, at least they didn't end up as total pawns of Sauron, if not as the saviours of the east as Tolkien thought in his late years.

I had to make up my mind about this two years ago because I drew an image of the blue wizards and had to decide what they were up to. (click here for Alatar and Pallando watercolour 🙂 ) It was just a picture I drew for fun on vacation but it led me down quite a rabbithole of research/speculation.

At the moment my mental image of them is them being a lot less committed to a purpose as the other wizards. Gandalf wanders but he's mostly attached to a certain area and its peoples in Middle Earth, and he's kinda the Anti-Sauron. Saruman is first focused on his leadership and position as lore-master, then is corrupted and uses both of those things for evil.

Radagast is mostly concerned with the flora and fauna of Middle Earth. But the blue wizards strike me as less "settled down", I think they roam the whole eastern continent and if they get involved I feel like they would be very independent.

While Sauron has had a loong time of working on the peoples of the eastern continent it's absurd to think of them all as just a couple of kingdoms he has to corrupt, in my mind there would have been long periods of political turmoil in the east, partly caused by Mordor's meddling.

In the end, as Tolkien writes, not all of the East follows Sauron's lead, or their numbers would have been so big as to totally dominate the War of the Rings. So I think, while the Blue Wizards may have had times where their actions were more dubious, in the end they would probably have assisted the peoples in the East who fought for their independence from Mordor.

Wow sorry that was way too long a rant for this comment function, I'm gonna get flagged for spam 😀. But I am very interested in the blue wizards for how little they actually are mentioned in the books. (or even the later material.)

Thanks for your thoughts! I’m concerned though about how Tolkien later in life revised his ideas and wrote that the two blue wizards came to Middle-earth long before Saruman, Gandalf and Radagast - he said they came already in the Second Age, perhaps along with Glorfindel, and were instrumental in weakening Sauron in the East not only during the Last Alliance but during the War of the Ring.

Hmm, from the viewpoint of adaptation, it might be cool to have wizards around in the 2nd Age - gives another storyline to play with in the very long but only lightly sketched period of Numenor and the Rings. But there's also value to sending the wizards all at the same time, so Saruman with the 2 blue wizards, and then Radagast and Gandalf in the follow-up, all during the 3rd Age.