Main Narrative: All Five Istari Ranked by True Power

Tolkien once wrote that the Istari "must be mighty, peers of Sauron, but must forgo might." That single sentence contains a paradox so sharp it should be impossible. Be as strong as the Dark Lord, but don't use that strength. Take mortal flesh that will dim your wisdom, confuse your knowledge, and burden you with fear. Walk among Elves and Men as an equal, never as a ruler. And do all of this while opposing the most dangerous being in Middle-earth.

That was the mission. Five Maiar accepted it. And today, I want to rank all five of them by what Tolkien called "true power" -- which, as we'll discover, has almost nothing to do with who could win a fight.

I'm your host at Ranger of the Realms, and this one has been a long time coming.

SECTION: The Rules of the Game

Before we rank anyone, we need to understand the rules the Valar laid down, because those rules redefine what "mighty" means for the entire conversation.

In the essay "The Istari" from Unfinished Tales, Tolkien describes the council of the Valar that created the wizard order. The Valar were alarmed by Sauron's rising shadow in Middle-earth, and they resolved to send emissaries -- not armies, not Valar themselves, but Maiar spirits who would guide and inspire the free peoples to resist.

The constraints were severe. The Istari were forbidden from "revealing themselves in forms of majesty, or seeking to rule the wills of Men or Elves by open display of power." They would be clothed in mortal bodies, subject to hunger, pain, weariness, and the possibility of being slain. Their wisdom would be dimmed. Their knowledge would grow confused. The very act of incarnation would imperil them, because mortal flesh carries mortal temptations.

This is a staggering design choice by the Valar. They deliberately weakened their own agents. They took beings of divine origin and wrapped them in limitation, knowing full well that limitation itself could corrupt them. It's as if you sent the world's greatest generals into enemy territory after confiscating their weapons and wiping most of their memory.

Why? Because the mission wasn't to overpower Sauron. The Valar could have done that themselves -- they had done it before, during the War of Wrath at the end of the First Age, and the collateral damage sank an entire continent. The mission was to inspire resistance. To kindle courage in mortal hearts. To prove that evil could be opposed by wisdom, sacrifice, and cooperation rather than by matching force with greater force.

That changes the ranking entirely. If you're measuring the Istari by how faithfully they operated within those constraints -- by how well they did the actual job -- then the official hierarchy of White above Grey above Brown above Blue becomes almost irrelevant. The official hierarchy measured what they were. The true hierarchy measures what they did.

Let's begin at the bottom.

SECTION: Fifth Place -- Pallando, the Loyal Shadow

The honest thing to say about Pallando is that we barely know him.

He appears in Unfinished Tales as the companion of Alatar, one of the two Blue Wizards who passed into the East and never returned to the western lands. His Quenya name, Pallando, may derive from palan-, meaning "far" or "wide" -- the Far One. In the later writings collected in The Peoples of Middle-earth, he receives a second name: Romestamo, "East-helper."

That second name is interesting. "East-helper" suggests a purpose -- someone who went to aid peoples far from the familiar lands of Gondor and the Shire. But Tolkien never elaborated on what that aid looked like. We have no scenes, no dialogue, no described deeds. Pallando is a silhouette at the edge of the legendarium.

What we do know is that he was a Maia of Orome, the great huntsman of the Valar who first discovered the Elves at their awakening. And we know that he was chosen not by the Valar directly but by Alatar, who asked Pallando to accompany him. He went East not on his own initiative but out of loyalty to a companion.

That loyalty is the only individual trait we can attribute to him, and it places him fifth not as a judgment of failure but as an acknowledgment of silence. We simply don't have enough text to rank him higher. He may have been heroic. He may have been magnificent. The record doesn't say.

And in a way, that silence is its own kind of verdict. Pallando represents everything about the Istari story that Tolkien never finished telling -- the vast stretches of Middle-earth's history that lie beyond the western narrative we know.

SECTION: Fourth Place -- Alatar, Darkness-Slayer of the East

Alatar, the first of the Blue Wizards, gives us more to work with -- not because Tolkien wrote extensively about him, but because Tolkien's own view of him changed dramatically over the decades.

In 1958, in a letter to a reader, Tolkien confessed: "I think they went as emissaries to distant regions, East and South, far out of Numenorean range: missionaries to 'enemy-occupied' lands, as it were. What success they had I do not know; but I fear that they failed, as Saruman did, though doubtless in different ways; and I suspect they were founders or beginners of secret cults and 'magic' traditions that outlasted the fall of Sauron."

That's a bleak verdict. Failed missionaries who started mystery cults. For decades, this was the canonical view of the Blue Wizards.

But in Tolkien's very late writings -- texts composed near the end of his life, published posthumously in The Peoples of Middle-earth -- the assessment reversed entirely. In this version, the Blue Wizards arrived not in the Third Age with the other Istari but far earlier, in the Second Age around the year 1600, at the same time as the returned Glorfindel, "when matters became very dangerous." And their work bore fruit: "They must have had very great influence on the history of the Second Age and Third Age in weakening and disarraying the forces of East."

That single sentence reframes the entire War of the Ring. Sauron's eastern armies were enormous -- far larger than what he deployed against Gondor and Rohan. If those armies had marched west at full force, the defense of Minas Tirith would have been hopeless. The fact that they didn't, the fact that the eastern forces were fragmented and delayed, may be the work of two wizards in blue robes whom the western chronicles never recorded.

Alatar's later name, Morinehtar -- "Darkness-slayer" -- is not the name of someone who failed. It's a title of heroic accomplishment.

I place Alatar fourth because his potential contribution is enormous but textually contested. Tolkien never reconciled the two versions. We have a pessimistic reading and an optimistic one, and no definitive answer. But if the late writings reflect Tolkien's mature judgment -- and many scholars believe they do -- then Alatar fought a war we never saw, in lands we never visited, against forces that would have crushed the West without his intervention. That is a form of strength that deserves recognition even through the fog of incomplete records.

SECTION: Third Place -- Radagast, the One Who Went Native

Radagast the Brown is the Istar who breaks the binary.

He didn't fall like Saruman. He didn't remain steadfast like Gandalf. He wandered sideways into a gentler allegiance, and Tolkien himself seemed unable to decide whether that constituted failure.

His Quenya name was Aiwendil -- "Bird-friend" -- and he was a Maia of Yavanna, the Vala who loved all growing things. When the Valar chose their emissaries, Yavanna begged Saruman to take Radagast along, and Saruman agreed, though reluctantly. That reluctance is telling. Saruman, even before his fall, regarded Radagast as beneath him -- a lesser spirit with lesser concerns.

And what happened? Radagast arrived in Middle-earth, settled in a house called Rhosgobel on the borders of Mirkwood, and gradually became "enamoured of the many beasts and birds that dwelt in Middle-earth, and forsook Elves and Men, and spent his days among wild creatures." He did not become proud or domineering, Tolkien tells us. He became "neglectful and easygoing." He simply stopped paying attention to the war.

Gandalf, who never speaks of Radagast with contempt, calls him "a worthy Wizard, a master of shapes and changes of hue; and he has much lore of herbs and beasts, and birds are especially his friends." That's genuine respect. But it comes with an unspoken reservation: Radagast's gifts were real, but he turned them inward.

Here's where it gets genuinely complicated. Christopher Tolkien, editing his father's texts, noticed a tension that the elder Tolkien never resolved. Yavanna specifically commissioned Radagast to protect her creations -- the animals, the forests, the growing things of Middle-earth. If that individual mandate from his Valar patron was legitimate, then Radagast's devotion to nature isn't failure at all. It's obedience to a different set of orders.

The question is whether one Vala's commission supersedes the collective mandate to oppose Sauron. And Tolkien left that question open.

I rank Radagast third because he represents something genuinely rare in the Istari story: goodness without grandeur. He didn't betray his nature. He didn't seek dominion. He loved the world he was sent to protect, and he loved it so much that he forgot there was a war. That's not corruption. It's a kind of intoxication -- the mortal body and its capacity for delight overwhelming the divine purpose that sent it here.

His is the gentlest failure in all of Tolkien's mythology, if failure it is. And Gandalf's quiet respect suggests that even the most faithful Istar understood something redeemable in the Brown Wizard's choices.

SECTION: Second Place -- Saruman, the Maker Who Unmade Himself

Now we arrive at the most painful entry on this list.

Saruman the White. Curumo. Curunir. Man of Skill. He held every advantage the Istari order could confer. He was chosen first. He held the highest rank. He was acknowledged as chief of the order and head of the White Council. For two thousand years, the free peoples of Middle-earth looked to him as their greatest bulwark against the Shadow.

And he became the Shadow.

Understanding Saruman's fall requires understanding his patron. He was a Maia of Aule, the Vala of smithcraft and making. Aule's domain was the shaping of raw material into ordered form -- metal into tools, stone into towers, ore into beauty. It's the noblest of crafts. But it carries a specific temptation that Tolkien identified repeatedly: the maker's impulse to impose order can become the tyrant's impulse to dominate.

Sauron followed the same path. He too was a Maia of Aule. He too loved order and efficiency. He too began with a craftsman's desire to organize the world and ended with a despot's need to control it. Saruman's fall mirrors Sauron's so precisely that it feels genetic -- a flaw in the spiritual DNA of Aule's servants, a vulnerability that comes bundled with extraordinary skill.

You can trace the progression in Saruman's self-chosen titles. He begins as Saruman the White -- a color of purity, of unity, of undivided light. Then he declares himself Saruman of Many Colours, fragmenting that unity into something dazzling but broken, a light refracted into a display of personal virtuosity. And finally he crafts a ring of his own, names himself Saruman Ring-maker, and the parallel to Sauron becomes explicit. The maker has become the master. The servant has become the tyrant.

His Voice -- that supernatural persuasive instrument described so vividly in "The Voice of Saruman" -- operates on the same principle. It doesn't hypnotize. It rearranges your priorities. It makes domination sound reasonable, makes surrender feel like wisdom. It's the ultimate expression of imposing order on another mind.

I rank Saruman second, and I know that sounds strange. Second most powerful? The traitor? But remember the criteria established by the Valar's own rules. Saruman was genuinely mighty. His knowledge was vast, his craft extraordinary, his strategic mind formidable. He built an industrial war machine at Isengard, bred a new race of warriors, and came within striking distance of conquering Rohan.

The reason he ranks second and not first is that he broke the fundamental rule. He grasped for dominion. He used force and deception to bend others to his will. Every gift the Valar gave him, he turned to self-aggrandizement. And in the end, the being who held the highest rank in the Istari order was stabbed to death in the Shire by his own abused servant, and his spirit -- rising like thin smoke from his body -- was refused by the West. A wind from Valinor blew through it and scattered it. Not even death could restore what he had thrown away.

He is the most potent cautionary tale in Tolkien's mythology: proof that capability without faithfulness is worse than useless. It is actively destructive.

SECTION: First Place -- Gandalf, Qualified by Fear

And so we come to the one who remained.

"Indeed of all the Istari, one only remained faithful." That line from Unfinished Tales is the most devastating sentence in the entire Istari corpus, because it condemns four and exalts one in a single breath.

His name was Olorin. The Valaquenta -- the account of the Valar and their servants in The Silmarillion -- calls him, without qualification, "wisest of the Maiar." Not wisest of the Istari. Wisest of all the Maiar. That category includes Sauron himself.

But when Manwe asked Olorin to go to Middle-earth, he didn't leap at the assignment. He confessed that he was too weak for such a task. He admitted that he feared Sauron.

Manwe's response was immediate: that was all the more reason he should go.

That exchange is the key to the entire list. Olorin's fear was not cowardice. It was accurate self-assessment. He understood the scale of evil he would face, and he understood how incarnation would diminish him. Saruman volunteered with confidence. Olorin recoiled with dread. And Manwe, who as Elder King of the Valar saw deeper than anyone except Iluvatar himself, recognized the dread as qualification.

Humility is not the absence of capability. It's the awareness of how capability can go wrong.

Then comes Varda's cryptic intervention. When Olorin was selected as the third Istar, Varda -- the Queen of the Stars, the most revered of the Valier -- said simply: "Not as the third." And Tolkien adds four devastating words: "and Curumo remembered it."

From before the Istari ever set foot in Middle-earth, the two highest-ranking Valar signaled that the official hierarchy was wrong. Olorin's nominal position as third did not reflect his true stature. And Saruman, who would spend the next two thousand years as the acknowledged chief, carried that insult in his heart like a splinter.

Cirdan confirmed it at the Grey Havens. The ancient shipwright, who Tolkien says "saw further and deeper than any other in Middle-earth," took one look at Gandalf and gave him Narya, the Ring of Fire, one of the three Elven Rings. "Take this ring, Master," he said -- and that word, Master, spoken to the nominally third-ranked Istar by the being with the keenest sight in all of Middle-earth, tells you everything.

What followed was two thousand years of wandering. Gandalf never settled, never built a fortress, never claimed a title. He walked among hobbits and kings alike, kindling courage, sharpening wisdom, asking questions that made people find their own answers. He didn't impose. He inspired. He played the role exactly as the Valar designed it.

And when the moment came that demanded everything -- the Bridge of Khazad-dum, the Balrog of Morgoth rising in fire and shadow -- Gandalf stood alone and invoked his true nature: "I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass."

He defeated the Balrog. It cost him his life.

And here the story breaks open into theology. Gandalf died and was sent back. Not by his own will, not by any mechanism he controlled, but by the authority that stood behind the Valar themselves. He returned as Gandalf the White -- the title Saruman had forfeited, now given to the one who earned it through sacrifice rather than rank. He could break Saruman's staff with a word. He could face the Lord of the Nazgul without flinching. The restraints loosened. The veiled strength was permitted to shine closer to its true magnitude.

Gandalf ranks first because he embodied the mission. The Valar asked for beings who would forgo might and serve through wisdom. He did exactly that for two thousand years. When he needed raw strength, he found it, and it killed him, and he was restored because the mission was that important and he was that trusted. The wizard who feared Sauron most was the only wizard Sauron could not corrupt. The Istar who ranked third was, from the very beginning, the greatest of them all.

SECTION: The Theology of the Ranking

Step back from the individual wizards for a moment and look at the structure of what Tolkien built.

Five divine beings accept mortal limitation. The one who holds the highest rank falls the furthest. The one who holds the lowest rank proves the greatest. The one in the middle wanders off to tend gardens. The two who disappear into enemy territory may have quietly saved the world, or may have lost themselves entirely, and the western chronicles will never know for certain.

This is not a story about wizards. It's a story about incarnation -- about what happens when the divine accepts the constraints of flesh and all the temptations that come with it.

The scholar Robert Barry, analyzing the Istari through a Catholic theological lens, argues convincingly that the wizards function as angelic emissaries. Their mission parallels apostolic sending: go into the world, do not rule by force, inspire and guide. Their "magic" is really divine grace operating through mortal vessels. And their varying fates -- faithfulness, corruption, distraction, mystery -- mirror the range of human responses to vocation.

Tolkien was a devout Catholic, and his faith structured his mythology at every level. The Istari story is, at its deepest layer, about the test of embodiment. Saruman fails because he cannot accept limitation -- the craftsman in him needs to make, to control, to order. Radagast fails (or partially succeeds) because incarnation's pleasures overwhelm his purpose -- the natural world is so beautiful that he forgets why he came. The Blue Wizards face the test in enemy territory, far from any support, and the outcome is hidden. Gandalf succeeds because he accepts every constraint, embraces the weakness, and trusts the mission's design.

His death and return carry the deepest resonance of all. A divine being dies in mortal flesh, descends through darkness, and rises again with greater authority. Tolkien would have bristled at a one-to-one allegory -- he famously disliked allegory -- but the structural parallel to resurrection theology is unmistakable and, for a Catholic author, inevitable.

And Saruman's end carries its own theological weight. His spirit rises from his body and looks West, toward Valinor, toward home. A wind comes from the West and blows through it, refusing it passage. He chose dominion over service, and the consequence is permanent exile from the divine source. Not destruction. Worse. Exclusion.

The ranking, in the end, isn't really about who was strongest. It's about who understood the assignment. Five spirits were told: accept limitation, serve others, trust that restraint is its own form of strength. Only one listened. And that one -- the reluctant, the fearful, the grey-cloaked wanderer who never wanted the job -- turned out to be exactly what the world needed.

That's the deepest lesson of the Istari. Official titles deceive. Confidence can corrupt. Fear, rightly understood, is the beginning of wisdom. And the most dangerous power in Middle-earth was never the kind that builds towers or forges rings.

It was the kind that rekindles hearts in a world that grows chill.