Gandalf, and his famous fireworks, are held in high renown across several realms of Middle Earth. The audience is first introduced to these beautiful creations of the Grey wizard as he enters into The Shire with Frodo in his cart, to attend Bilbo’s 111th birthday party. The hobbit children, excitedly anticipating a fizzling display, are disappointed in the books when he doesn’t set any off, but in the 2001 film adaptation, the children, and the audience, get to see a tiny hint of what is to come.
Throughout all of the races and realms of Middle Earth, the people are known to be great crafters and makers of things, from the simple art of brewing beer and cultivating pipe-weed bydifferent types of hobbitsin The Shire, to the beautiful weapons forged in many of the kingdoms of elves including Rivendell, Lothlorien and Mirkwood, to the toys and treasures manufactured by the Dwarves in Dale and Erebor. There is something relatable and distinctly human in the creation of beautiful things, and it’s something that ties the races together, as well as making them more relatable to the audience. But of all the things to design and produce, why did Gandalf choose fireworks? There are several possible answers.
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The first of which may have to do with his relationship to the aforementioned Dwarves. DuringThe Hobbitfilms, we learn that Gandalf has a particular fondness and admiration for the stubborn race. Having many Dwarven friends after helping them reclaim their homeland the Lonely Mountain from the clutches of Smaug the dragon, it is known that Gandalf went often to visit his companions and share in their joys and celebrations.
Dwarves are known as Miners, who like to dig deep into the earth in order to discover rare and precious jewels, metals, and artifacts. This habit is both their biggest blessing, which can be seen by their creation of the beautiful but incredibly resilient mithril armor, but also their biggest downfall, which can be seen in the Mines of Moria, in whichtheir greed drew a band of skittering orcsand awoke a dangerous Balrog. As for Gandalf fireworks though, it is believed by many to be an art that he developed alongside the Dwarves, using a combination of their metals and minerals like copper and zinc and titanium to produce the beautiful pigmented colors of his famous sizzlers.
An alternative theory involves Saruman the White, the highest member of theOrder of the wizards, and his shared knowledge of explosives. During theTwo Towers, the people of Edoras have retreated to the defensive keep of Helms Deep.Theoden, who is king of Rohanis up on the parapets, keeping watch over the encroaching army of Orcs with Legolas Gimli and Aragorn, whilst the women and children, protected byEowyn the shield-maiden, are in the bunker below. And although the fortress is deemed almost impenetrable, the enemy manages to exploit the one weak spot that exists, by blowing up the drain beneath the main wall.
It seems that the wizards have a shared knowledge of explosives, which they may have gleaned from their days as Maia before Middle Earth, or much later, but the importance of this powerful knowledge is the difference in what they do with it. Saruman uses it for evil and death, to cause harm to his enemy, whereas Gandalf, who of course has much nobler intentions, uses it to spark joy and fun across the lands.
And the third theory is that Gandalf’s particular penchant for pyrotechnics comes from the power of theDwarven ring on his fingerknown as Narya. Narya is known as the ring of fire, and the magical powers it possesses are that of heat and light. During another scene inThe Hobbitfilms, Gandalf is able to set fire to a hoard of pinecones for the dwarves, who are stuck in a tree, to throw at the orcs who surround them. He obviously has a talent for flames, and he is often shown throughout the trilogy to be able to shine a beacon of white illumination out of his staff, such as when he wards off the flying Fell-beasts outside of Minas Tirith. It follows that his abilities with infernos and luminescence would in part come from the ring of power he wears, and in part from his own internal magic as a wizard.
However the fireworks are made, they are revered by all, from Merry and Pippin,the youngest members of the fellowshipwho steal them and cause mischief, right down to Tolkien himself, who offered a beautifully descriptive passage all about them in the first chapter of theFellowship of the Ring, in which he compares them to ‘a flight of scintillating birds,’ to trees whose ‘leaves opened like a whole spring unfolding in a moment,’ and lights that rose up and turned into ‘eagles or sailing ships, or a phalanx of flying swans.’ Then of course, there is the dragon, a personal joke between Gandalf and Bilbo, his very dear friend.
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