How Are The Rings of Power Season 1’s Mystics Connected to Season 2’s Dark Wizard?

Warning: The following article contains spoilers for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2, Episode 2, “Where the Stars are Strange.”

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 confirms what many fans no doubt suspected: there’s a link between Ciarán Hinds’ Dark Wizard and Season 1’s Mystics. Find out more about how these malevolent magic users are connected below!

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How The Rings of Power Season 2’s Dark Wizard Is Connected to the Mystics

Of all of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 1’s antagonists, the Mystics are easily the most enigmatic (and that’s saying something). But one thing is clear from the jump: they’re servants of Sauron. We later discover that the Mystics possess formidable magic powers, albeit nothing in the same league as a Wizard. We also find out that they’re from Rhûn, the equally mysterious region to the east of Middle-earth. Oh, and Season 1’s credits supplies names for the Mystics: The Dweller, the Ascetic, and the Nomad. But before we can tease out any more details about the Mystics, they’re banished by the Stranger in a flurry of chalk-colored butterflies.

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Fortunately, The Rings of Power Season 2, brings with it a little more Mystic-related intel. For one thing, we may not have to keep calling them “the Mystics.” Apparently, the sinister trio is known as the White Wings (unless this was the Dark Wizard throwing shade at the nature of their demise). We also know that they report (or rather, “reported”) to the Dark Wizard, who is the leader of their wider cult. He was the one who sent them after Sauron in Season 1; he’s also responsible for resurrecting the Dweller in Season 2. What’s the Dark Wizard’s wider goal in Season 2? Tracking down the Stranger, before he fully unlocks his Wizard abilities.

Are The Dark Wizard and the Mystics in the Books?

Not exactly. Certainly, The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien didn’t create the Mystics; they’re an invention of The Rings of Power showrunners J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay. So, all the stuff about them and the Stranger? Not part of Tolkien’s vision for the Second Age. Tolkien did, however, leave the door open for all sorts of quasi-occult goings on in Rhûn. So, even though the Mystics aren’t culled directly from established Middle-earth lore, they’re still broadly in line with it.

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Then there’s the Dark Wizard. In Tolkien’s OG canon, there are only five Wizards: Saruman, Gandalf, Radagast, and the two Blue Wizards (different sources cite different names for them). Of these, only the Blue Wizards definitely ventured in Rhûn’s direction (although Saruman might’ve gone there too). Tolkien didn’t really commit to what became of them after they arrived, although he toyed with the idea that they each started a cult. How this backstory applies to The Rings of Power‘s decidedly non-blue Dark Wizard (if at all) remains to be seen!

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 is currently streaming on Prime Video, with new episodes dropping Thursdays.