Let’s be real. There likely would be no Harry Potter without The Lord of the Rings. J. R. R. Tolkien’s first book in the series, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, debuted in 1954 and changed the fantasy genre as the world knew it. From the colorful hillsides of The Shire to the fiery, blackened mountainsides of Mount Doom, no one delivers intricate worldbuilding with sprawling history and invented languages quite like Tolkien. Flash forward 43 years later, and J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone takes the world by storm in a similar way. Both remain two of the biggest fantasy franchises out there—and the similarities between them have sparked no shortage of fan theories.
However, one, in particular, aims to answer one of The Lord of the Rings’ biggest secrets: What happened to the Blue Wizards? Well, according to a compelling theory (largely popularized by a now-deleted Reddit user), they’re roaming the halls of Hogwarts and the seedy underbelly of the Wizarding World as Dumbledore and Grindelwald.
A LOTR Theory Connects The Blue Wizards To Harry Potter
Anyone needing a quick refresher on the Blue Wizards must turn to the Third Age. To combat Sauron, the Valar (angelic beings working beneath the god Eru Ilúvata) sent five other angelic beings called Maiar to Middle-earth. Later, they took the form of Wizards and the names Gandalf, Saruman, Radagast, Alatar, and Pallando. Those familiar with Pete Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy (or Tolkien’s text) know the first two well, while Radagast got his time to shine in The Hobbit movies. However, Alatar and Pallando never got their shot on the big screen because they essentially disappeared in the books.
All that’s known about the two Blue Wizards is that they wandered East, never to be seen again. However, Wizards are immortal unless killed. This fact suggests that LOTR’s most mysterious characters could have lived into the modern age, and given that Middle-earth is an imaginary history of Earth, that puts Harry Potter in the same mythological timeline, just much later down the road. It’s also worth noting that the Maiar can change their physical forms when desired (Sauron, also a Maiar, does this frequently), which could explain Grindelwald’s shapeshifting ability, despite LOTR and Harry Potter's differing magic systems.
Dumbledore And Grindelwald Are The Blue Wizards
Come Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, we get a whole lot of Dumbledore. For the next five movies (and books), he makes protecting Hogwarts and its students from Voldemort his top priority. While the villain has changed, the mission hasn’t: protecting the free peoples of Middle-earth from the ultimate evil—and yeah, like Sauron, Voldemort is pretty evil. Just like Gandalf couldn’t one-on-one with Sauron, Dumbledor was never meant to take down Voldemort alone. Instead, his involvement was supposed to be indirect by teaching the Hogwarts student body, and especially Harry, how to defeat him.
With his mission complete with his death in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the Wizard leaves his Earthly body, returning to the Valar and perhaps earning a promotion. After all, the next time Harry sees Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, he is surrounded by ethereal light and decked out in grayish white, similar to Gandalf after his Balrog resurrection and promotion in The Two Towers.
In the opposite corner is Grindelwald, whose story really only gets the spotlight in the Fantastic Beasts film series. Sent to Middle-earth with the same mission as Dumbledore, Grindelwald takes a different path. Much like Saruman, he believes that power—even dark and evil—can be used for the “greater good.” In this case, Grindelwald just happens to feel that the greater good involves ruling over Muggles (humans). Dumbledor puts a stop to it in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore before the bigger, badder evil of Voldemort takes him out completely (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 depicts the scene, slightly altered from the book). This, of course, would mean that Saruman wasn’t the only Maiar to fail the Valar. One of the Blue Wizards, aka Grindelwald, did, too—at least according to this theory.
However, the theory also makes the Valar’s interventions more successful. As it stands, Gandalf was the only Maiar to truly complete his mission: Sauron turned, Radagast fell to the wayside, and the Blue Wizards dipped out. However, if one of the Blue Wizards was actually Dumbledor, then he also succeeded in the fight against evil, just at a very different point in history. Grindelwald might have fallen, but good ultimately prevailed in the end.
Is Lord of the Rings Actually Connected to Harry Potter?
The short answer is no. There is no confirmation from Rowling that the Harry Potter Universe shares space with The Lord of the Rings, and Tolkien passed away decades before Harry Potter hit shelves.
Plus, both Dumbledore and Grindelwald have families, which throws a wrench in the whole idea that they dropped down onto Middle-earth in the Third Age, naked and alone. Still, it’s a fun idea that certainly works to explain what happened to the Blue Wizards since not even Tolkien had an explanation for their disappearance.
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