Gandalf: The Worst Wizard Ever?

Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings is, without a doubt, one of the most iconic wizards off all time.  So iconic, in fact, that few people ever stop to question whether or not he’s actually a good wizard.  The truth is he’s not.  In fact, not only is Gandalf a shitty wizard, he’s also a fucking dick.

p.s. unless explicitly stated, I’m going with the movies over the books, because all of you remember those way better.

“And let’s face it.  Nobody actually missed Tom fucking Bombadil.”

First, let’s start off with his reckless endangerment of pacifistic little-people (because someone has to look out for the midgets!).

The majority of the plot of The Lord of the Rings revolves around Gandalf convincing a three foot tall hobbit named Frodo to carry around an evil ring.  Frodo then constantly endangers his life in order to save the world while Gandalf generally fucks off to do “important wizard shit”.  Despite the fact that Gandalf attempts to make it perfectly clear that Frodo is the ideal choice to transport The Ring, he does so by ignoring several key issues.

First of all, let’s take a look at how Frodo got The Ring in the first place.  The movies make it clear that he got it from his Uncle Bilbo, but how did Bilbo get it?  For those of you who haven’t read The Hobbit, I’ll tell you:

Gandalf invites thirteen dwarves over to Bilbo’s home without asking, convinces Bilbo to leave his home (to help steal a dragon’s treasure), and then abandons Bilbo.  After being captured by goblins, Bilbo escapes (without Gandalf’s help) and ends up finding a magic ring.

Now why on earth would Gandalf hire out Bilbo Baggins to a band of dwarven warriors?  Other than the fact that Bilbo is three feet tall, Bilbo has absolutely no skills that would help Bilbo as a burglar.  Also, including the fact that Bilbo is three feet tall, there are like a hundred reasons why there is no excuse for Gandalf to be abandoning Bilbo ever.

“Yeah, this guy looks like he can handle his shit.  I’ll be back in a week.  What could go wrong?”

But of course, it turns out that hobbits are the only creatures who are able to resist The Ring’s evil lure, so this makes everything Gandalf did okay (if you ignore the fact that Gandalf had no way of knowing that Bilbo would find The Ring when he sent Bilbo on a quest that would have certainly led to Bilbo’s death had Bilbo not been able to save himself on several occasions, using The Ring that Gandalf had no idea that Bilbo would find).

I apologize for the lack of pronouns up to this point, by the way.  I just really like typing “Bilbo”.  Bilbo, Bilbo, Bilbo.

But anyways, back to Gandalf being an asshole.

Gandalf eventually realises that The Ring might just be the evil ring that The Dark Lord is looking for so, as any good friend would do, he doesn’t tell Frodo anything and fucks off to do “important wizard shit” instead.  Eventually, he comes up back, and tells Frodo he has to take The Ring to Bree, and threatens his gardener, Sam, into going along.  Then, instead of accompanying the two helpless hobbits, he fucks off to do “important wizard shit” again, because it’s not like The Ring is important or anything.

Now, Gandalf says that he can’t take The Ring, so apparently he has to give it to a hobbit.  He chooses Frodo, but really, why Frodo?  The logic is that most hobbits aren’t too adventurous, so Frodo is the ideal choice, but this just isn’t true.  If you take a look at the five most prominent hobbits in the series (Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, and BILBO!), Frodo is clearly the shittiest one!  Clearly, Gandalf only picked Frodo because it was convenient.  The lazy bastard!

Bilbo?  Despite his blatant unsuitability for adventure, Bilbo found The Ring in the first place and ultimately outsmarted a dragon (amongst other things).  Sam?  He may be a gardener, but he’s pretty fucking tough for a midget, and also prevents The Ring from falling into enemy hands the only time it ever becomes an issue.  And Pippin?  Well, um.  He’s kind of clever and stuff.

“Okay, so maybe I wouldn’t have given The Ring to Pippin...”

But what about Merry?  He tends to be the hobbit people are most likely not to remember, and yet he’s clearly the best one.  Let’s take a look at the first three scenes Merry appears in:

Bilbo’s Party: Merry and Pippin are seen at the party, stealing Gandalf’s fireworks.  Despite the fact that they are for entertainment purposes, this doesn’t change the fact that these two hobbits are stealing an explosive device that is roughly their own size.  They then proceed to ignite it indoors, proving that they have more balls than the rest of The Shire combined.

Farmer Maggot’s Field: Merry and Pippin are seen fleeing from an enraged farmer, chasing them with a scythe.  While this makes it seem like they got caught, let’s get real here for a second; it was definitely Pippin who got caught.  Really, the fact that Merry manages to pull off any of these schemes with Pippin as his sidekick is proof that he is no less than a criminal mastermind.

Fleeing From The Ringwraiths: Finally, shit has hit the fan!  The hobbits have been desperately fleeing from horrifying death knight-things all day, and all of them look like they’re on the verge of breaking down.  Everyone except Merry.  While the other hobbits are busy being little girls, Merry keeps his cool and takes them to Buckleberry Ferry, making him literally the only reason that Frodo makes it to Bree alive.  (Also, notice how when they get to Bree, Gandalf isn’t there?  I’m not saying, Gandalf.  I’m just saying.)

Merry: 1, Gandalf: 0

In fact, the next time you watch The Lord of the Rings, pay close attention to Merry and you’ll quickly realise that everything he says and does is completely balls-first.  Who is the first hobbit to order a pint at The Prancing Pony?  Merry.  Who is the only one to even bother questioning whether Aragorn (whom they have never met) might be evil?  Merry.  Who convinces Pippin to help him risk his life to distract the Uruk-hai so Frodo can escape?  Merry.  Who yells at a giant tree monster, trying to convince it to invade Isengard?  Merry.  Who joins the fucking Rohan army?  Merry.  Who rides to The Battle of the Pelannor Fields despite specifically being ordered not to?  Merry.  Who saves the princess of Rohan’s life by stabbing the Witch-King in the back of the leg, destroying his force field of immortality and allowing him to be killed?  Fucking Merry.

“Then again, this guy only lands like three blows in the entire trilogy, loses a fight to Aragorn despite outnumbering him 5:1, and doesn’t even actually kill anybody.  “No man can kill me!”  Really, bud?  That seems unlikely.  Way to make your dragon-thing do all the fucking work.”

Seriously, watch this video from 9:03 to 9:20: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B17aov3HMb0 (or don’t watch it, that’s cool).  My favourite part is when the orc tries to pick Merry up, so he slashes at its throat and stabs it in the gut multiple times.  Not only that, Merry has 7 onscreen kills in The Return of the King.  To put that into perspective, that’s the same number of kills as the other three hobbits combined.  It’s also more than Eomer, Faramir, Gimli and Theoden, and only 4 less than fucking Legolas (although to be fair, RotK is Legolas’s slowest of the three films).

“Seriously, at the rate this elf kills people, the orcs ought to have gone extinct decades ago...”

 

Literally, the only disadvantage to having Merry take The Ring to Mordor would have been the fact that no one would have been around to ruin Saruman and the Witch-King’s days.

If Merry had taken the ring to Mordor, he probably would’ve put Gollum in his place, told Faramir and his men to fuck off, killed Shelob himself, made it to Mount Doom by morning, destroyed The Ring, and then waved his balls in front of Sauron’s Eye for absolutely no reason other than to prove what a boss he was.

So seriously, Gandalf really fucked up when he was hiring for the position of ringbearer, because if you consider that Merry’s only three feet tall, he makes every other character in these movies look like a total pussy.

“Okay, well maybe not every character.”

And it doesn’t end there!  Remember when I pointed out that Gandalf pretty much tells Frodo nothing when he begins to become concerned about the ring?  Yeah, that’s pretty much Gandalf’s defining trait.  Gandalf has huge amounts of knowledge at his disposal and yet, if you pay close attention, you’ll notice that he’s actually the least helpful dude ever.

Frodo: Where are you going?

Gandalf: There are some things that I must see to (such as the fact that The Ring Bilbo left to you might actually be the most prized possession of the most evil being in the entire world).

Frodo: What things?

Gandalf: Questions.  Questions that need answering.  (Like whether or not your life is already in mortal peril.)

Frodo: But you’ve only just arrived!  I don’t understand.

Gandalf: Neither do I (despite the fact that I just saw the eye of fucking Sauron when I touched The Ring, which probably indicates that this is his ring.  I would tell you all this, but unfortunately, I’d rather be a mysterious asshole).

Or what about in Fanghorn Forest?  Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli think they have just stumbled upon Saruman, so instead of saying “By the way, dudes.  I’m not Saruman” he decides to disarm them with magic spells.  He even disguises himself with blinding light, just to make himself look more like Saruman.  In this scene, not only does it look like he’s withholding important information, he’s flat out misleading them on purpose.

Even worse is when Pippin finds Saruman’s Palantir.  Sure Gandalf tells Pippin not to touch it and takes it away from him, but there’s no way he could’ve thought that would actually work.  We’re just a bunch of non-wizard civilians who’ve been watching Pippin for only a few hours and we already know he’s going to investigate it.  Did Gandalf really not see that coming?  Literally, all he had to do was say “Don’t touch it, Pippin.  If you do, Sauron might see you, and your life will be in danger.”  How fucking hard is that?  Two sentences, Gandalf!  Two fucking sentences!

“Well I’m sorry for not listening to the guy who’s always a dick to me and never tells me anything!  Fucking wizard asshole...”

But nothing can top the scene in the first movie where the Fellowship is deciding which way to take the ring.  Absolutely nothing!  They have three choices: The Gap of Rohan, The Pass of Caradhras, or The Mines of Moria.  After discovering that Saruman is watching The Gap of Rohan, they try The Pass of Caradhras, but quickly find that the snow is a bit of a problem.  Boromir suggests they go back to the original plan of going through The Gap of Rohan, while Gimli suggests they go through The Mines of Moria because that’s where his cousin Balin lives.

Gandalf enjoys a lengthy “important wizard thinking sequence” which reveals that the reason that Gandalf doesn’t want to go through the mines is that he knows that the dwarves have accidentally awoken a massive flaming hell-demon known as a Balrog (Saruman: You *KNOW* what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dum).  So naturally, Gandalf suggests that Frodo should decide which route they should take, while neglecting to mention the flaming hell-demon to anyone!

I mean, look at it from Frodo’s perspective!

Option A: Freeze my balls off on this mountain and likely be killed by an avalanche.

Option B: Listen to the guy who has made it blatantly clear that he intends to take The Ring from me.

Option C: Go through Gimli’s cousin’s mine and get drunk with a bunch of dwarves.

Gandalf acts all bitter and disappointed when Frodo goes with Option C, but what the hell did he expect?  No one else in the Fellowship knows that the dwarves are dead and that there’s a flaming hell-demon except for him!  What does he think they are?  Fucking mind readers?

“You should always just assume there’ll be a fucking Balrog!  It’s just common sense.”

Later, even when they hear the Balrog coming and Boromir asks Gandalf what’s going on, Gandalf takes fucking forever to simply tell them something he clearly should’ve mentioned beforehand (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDx0YLOOhJw this video cuts out just before Gandalf responds...after 15 full seconds of silence).  Not only that, what kind of an asshole would think that the best way for Gimli to learn that his cousin had died, would be for him to discover his tomb?  Seriously, Gandalf, you’re a fucking dick.

I mean, look at Legolas!  He may be Captain Obvious most of the time, but at least he has the decency to tell people what the fuck’s going on.  Because no matter how obvious or how pointless something is, communication is the key to good teamwork.

“Shit, for real?  Well it sure is a good thing we brought this guy along!”

Honestly, I would go on to point out other pieces of evidence such as Gandalf’s frequent forgetfulness, his questionable priorities, or the fact that he didn’t realise that a guy played by Christopher Lee was going to turn out to be evil, but what if I told you that the majority of Gandalf’s flaws can actually be explained by one large, likely overlooked superflaw?

What if Gandalf is actually just really high all the time?

“This one time, me and Bilbo got so ripped, I just fucking blew a smoke ring shaped like a boat!  That high.”

C’mon Gandalf!  The fate of the world is at stake and you’re smoking pipeweed?  I mean, I’m not usually one to tell a man not to party, but there is a time and a place, my friend!  A time and a fucking place!

I mean sure Tolkien may have never specified whether pipeweed had psychoactive properties or not, but doesn’t it seem a bit suspicious that hobbits, the largest producers of pipeweed, live lives based entirely on eating, loafting, and growing things?

So seriously, Gandalf, when Saruman said “Your love of the halfling’s leaf has clearly slowed your mind”, he may have had a point.