The highs and lows of The Hobbit trilogy were farther apart than in The Lord of the Rings, making for a more uneven movie experience, but any time that Sylvester McCoy was on screen as Radagast the Brown was a high. Between McCoy’s acting choices and the scripting of Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens, a character who merited only one mention in the book became the best addition to the cinematic legendarium. The Hobbit films gave Radagast more to say and do than in any of J.R.R. Tolkien’s writing, but they didn’t explain where he came from – or why he was nowhere to be seen in The Lord of the Rings. For the curious, here are the answers.
Radagast, and all the wizards of Middle-earth, is incarnated Ainu (singular of Ainur), angelic spirits. In Tolkien’s cosmology, the Elves named two orders of the Ainur: the Valar, roughly analogous to archangels, and the Maiar, lesser powers often attached in service to a particular Vala (singular of Valar). Many of the Ainur came to dwell within the world upon its creation, eventually settling in the Blessed Realm of Valinor. When the Vala Melkor fell and became Morgoth, the root of evil in Middle-earth, the Ainur of Valinor became embroiled in various conflicts with him and his servants, eventually intervening directly in a war between Morgoth and the Children of Ilúvatar (Elves and Men) at the end of the First Age. Morgoth was defeated, but at ruinous cost, and during the Second Age, Valinor passed beyond the reach of Men.
When the power of Sauron, Morgoth’s chief lieutenant, persisted into the Third Age, the Ainur determined to send aid to the free peoples of Middle-earth. Rather than become directly involved in challenging Sauron and risk another destructive toll on the world, the Valar chose to send emissaries to aid and inspire those who resisted evil. The emissaries would be Maiar, clothed in the bodies of Men advanced in age but possessed of great physical and mental power. So embodied, they would lose a great deal of their natural power — they were not meant to exercise force nor to coerce anyone to act. They would also be subject to weariness, hunger, injury, and the risk of death. Possessed of free will, they could also be tempted away from their task.
In Unfinished Tales, a collection of essays and story fragments Tolkien left behind, it was the Maia (singular for Maiar) Aiwendil who became incarnated as Radagast. He had (according to the recently published The Nature of Middle-Earth) been involved with guarding Elves as far back as the First Age, but Aiwendil was not appointed an emissary. The Vala queen, Yavanna, queen of earth, sent him. Responsible for all growing things, including pleas to Eru Ilúvatar (God) that lead to the birth the Ents, Yavanna wanted someone to tend to the plants and animals of Middle-earth while Sauron endured, and she bid Curumo, later Saruman, the first Maia chosen, to bring Aiwendil with him (despite this, Unfinished Tales records one considered timeline where Curumo arrived first and alone to the shores of Middle-earth, with Aiwendil following at the same time as Olórin – later Gandalf).
The incarnated Maiar were known as wizards by Men and as the Istari, “Wise Ones,” by the Elves. The name Radagast was originally intended to mean “tender of beasts,” but had no set meaning at the end of Tolkien’s life as he reconceived which language the name was meant to hail from. Described by Gandalf as “never a traveler, unless driven by great need,” Radagast settled in Rhosgobel, near the forest of Mirkwood.
There he practiced herblore, tended to birds and beasts, and employed them as scouts and spies against the forces of Sauron. Perhaps because he was obliged to bring him along, Saruman came to scorn Radagast, dismissing him as a simple fool. But Gandalf held the brown wizard in high esteem, naming him honest, worthy, and “master of shapes and changes of hue.” In The Hobbit (not yet part of Tolkien’s legendarium when first written), he even names Radagast his “cousin” to Beorn the Skin-changer, who lives near enough to Rhosgobel to have some grudging friendship with his neighborhood wizard.
That mention by Gandalf is the closest Radagast comes to appearing in The Hobbit book, made shortly before Gandalf is called away from the story on urgent business. The end of the book, and the Appendix to The Lord of the Rings, reveal that this business concerned the White Council, the loose collection of the Wise headed by Saruman to “unite and direct the forces of the West” against Sauron (as described in The Peoples of Middle-earth).
Thanks to Gandalf’s efforts, the Council came to learn that the Necromancer of Mirkwood was in fact Sauron, and they attacked the fortress of Dol Guldur to expel him. Radagast is never explicitly stated to be a member of the White Council, but Jackson and company rewrote the circumstances surrounding the discovery of Sauron at Dol Guldur so that it is Radagast who first discovers something amiss in the ruined fortress, and later brings the Council to Gandalf’s rescue. The changes made to get to that point don’t always add up if you stop to think about them. How are these Council members getting around so fast? And why would Galadriel reveal the power of her Ring before Sauron? But, they gave McCoy plenty to play with.
This expanded role for Radagast in the films may lead a casual fan to wonder why he isn’t in The Lord of the Rings. Ironically, The Fellowship of the Ring gave Radagast his only actual appearance in the novels. Saruman, having fallen to evil and desirous of the One Ring himself, manipulated Radagast into summoning Gandalf to Orthanc in Isengard. Innocent of Saruman’s treachery, Radagast did as he was bid, inadvertently leading to Gandalf’s imprisonment. Before setting out for Orthanc, however, Gandalf urged Radagast to send any news there by bird, and the brown wizard remained unaware of any reason not to do so. It was he who sent Gwaihir of the Great Eagles to Orthanc, enabling Gandalf’s escape. The film replaced Radagast in these scenes with Gandalf’s own agency, he sends word to the Eagles through a moth.
Radagast’s final fate was never settled by Tolkien in his lifetime. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Elrond sent out scouts across Middle-earth, and some came to Rhosgobel, but they found no trace of the brown wizard. In Unfinished Tales, Tolkien claimed that all the Istari failed in their task, save Gandalf. Radagast, in this telling, “became enamored of the many beasts and birds…and forsook Elves and Men.” In a private letter, Tolkien wrote that Radagast “remained of good will (though he had not much courage)” and that “he did not become proud and domineering, but neglectful and easygoing, and he had very little to do with Elves or Men although obviously, resistance to Sauron had to be sought chiefly in their cooperation.”
As an emissary of Yavanna, tasked with caring for the birds and beasts of Middle-earth, Radagast’s becoming too attached to them may not have been so complete a fall as Saruman’s. But as a spirit sent to work against Sauron, his task was ended when the One Ring was destroyed, no matter how he met or failed it. And whether Radagast ever returned to Valinor, or dwindled into a shamanic tender of nature, Tolkien never left word.
