Saving the Dark Wizard, not defeating him, is the task Gandalf receives when he encounters the Secret Fire in The Rings of Power season three, episode three. This speaking flame is Middle-earth’s creator, Eru Ilúvatar, taking the form of the part of himself with the sole power to create life.
“I am that which burns within all things yet still remains unseen. I built the heavens and stars, and all of Middle-earth is cradled within my flame,” the Secret Fire tells Gandalf. Rather than meeting merely a magical guide, Gandalf is addressing the supreme God of Middle-earth.
Ilúvatar shows Gandalf the cosmos of his own creation before explaining that the wizard has misunderstood his mission. “You were not sent to Middle-earth to defeat him, you were sent to save him,” says the Secret Fire. “Only together can you prevent the armies of Rhûn from joining Sauron. Only together can you save Middle-earth.” Gandalf is then summoned to rise as a “Servant of the Secret Fire.”
To see why the Dark Wizard can be saved, it helps to look at the flame and its ability to give life, a power that stayed beyond Morgoth’s grasp.
The life-giving Secret Fire is not something to seize
Also called the Flame Imperishable, the Secret Fire gives life to everything in Tolkien’s universe, Eä, and the world of Middle-earth, Arda. It is present even in the rabbit that bursts into the flame. No one but its possessor can understand it, however. For all others it is unknowable, and without it nothing can live.
What happened with the dwarves illustrates this distinction. Although Aulë made them, true life came only when Ilúvatar bestowed the Flame Imperishable upon them. Middle-earth’s creation mythology separates the act of making a being from the power to bring it to life.
That power to create life was what Morgoth sought. The Dark Lord of the First Age belonged to the Valar, Eä’s gods who answer only to Ilúvatar, but he pursued the Secret Fire without grasping why possessing it was impossible. The fire cannot be removed from Ilúvatar as though it were a separate object. It is an inherent part of him, existing within him, and this has been and will remain true forever. Gandalf describes the fire in The Rings of Power as “endless.”
His inability to make independent life led Morgoth into shadow, which he carried throughout the world. During the Second Age, Sauron, his most faithful servant, continues spreading that darkness.
Pallando’s salvation and what Gandalf later tells the Balrog
Help from Ilúvatar arrived well before Sauron ever contemplated creating the Rings of Power. To protect Middle-earth and its inhabitants, Ilúvatar sent five of the Maiar, the gods beneath the Valar. They became known as the Istari, or wizards.
One was Pallando, the Blue Wizard who turned into the Dark Wizard. Seeking more power, he killed his fellow Istar. The men of Rhûn pledged themselves to him, though his unspeakably evil deed is said to have “laid to waste” their land. Gandalf had understood his task to be defeating this wizard.
Whether Gandalf can instead save him is still unknown. As Nerdist points out, J.R.R. Tolkien provided little detail about the Blue Wizards. He thought they likely failed, as Saruman did during the Third Age. That belief, though, does not establish their failure as certain.
There may be an opening for Gandalf in Pallando’s changed situation. With the Gaudrim now loyal to Sauron, Pallando is also no longer set to receive the Ring of Power with which he wanted to return Rhûn to greatness. Those reversals, Nerdist suggests, might make him receptive to what Gandalf has to say.
The Dark Wizard’s fate won’t change Gandalf’s lasting commitment to the Secret Fire. Millennia after their meeting, Gandalf confronts a Balrog, one of Morgoth’s beasts, on a bridge in The Lord of the Rings. He bars its passage and announces, “I am a servant of the Secret Fire.”
Gandalf may think back on his meeting with Eru Ilúvatar when he says that line, though that link between the scenes is speculation.
Like every living thing in Middle-earth, the Balrog itself carries the Secret Fire within. Nerdist interprets this common source of life as the reason the Flame Imperishable also holds the key to Sauron’s defeat. It isn’t because the flame gave Gandalf his task. It’s because Gandalf has to remind his fellow Istar, the Dark Wizard, that the fire lives inside him too.
