20 Facts About Radagast

Radagast the Brown is a fictional character in JR R Tolkien's legendarium.

Radagast played a more significant role in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit film series, where he was portrayed by Sylvester McCoy.

Radagast is a character in role-playing video games based on Tolkien's writings.

Radagast was friends with the skin-changer Beorn, something that Gandalf relied upon to get his party of Dwarves and a Hobbit accepted by a sceptical Beorn.

Radagast lived at Rhosgobel on the western eaves of Mirkwood, its name deriving from Sindarin rhosc gobel meaning "brown village".

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Radagast was unwittingly used by Saruman to lure Gandalf to his tower of Orthanc, where Gandalf was captured.

Fortuitously, Radagast helped rescue him by sending Gwaihir the eagle to Orthanc with news of the movements of Sauron's forces.

Silmarillion briefly summarizes the same events in Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age, stating that Radagast was "the friend of all birds and beasts", and noting that he innocently helped Saruman to assemble "a great host of spies" including many birds.

In-fiction etymology, according to the essay "The Istari" in Unfinished Tales, is that the name Radagast means "tender of beasts" in Adunaic, another of Tolkien's fictional languages.

Radagast appears so briefly that he has been described as a plot device for Saruman's treachery, rather than a genuine character.

Radagast has been described as "one of the most interesting enigmas in Tolkien's writings"; given the treason of Saruman, he and Gandalf are the only two wizards available to counter Sauron, but Radagast fails to answer Elrond's call.

Radagast added that he did not believe that Radagast's failure was as great as Saruman's.

In Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Radagast is played by Sylvester McCoy, and is expanded far beyond his brief role in the book.

McCoy added that while Radagast was rather absent-minded, he comes out as "a bumbling hero".

Radagast discovers that a Necromancer has taken residence in the ruined fortress.

Radagast's means of transportation is a sled pulled by enormous rabbits, a concept entirely original to the movie.

Radagast meets Gandalf, Bilbo Baggins, and the Dwarves en route to Erebor, and tells them of his discovery in Dol Guldur.

The writer Brian Sibley comments that the fact that Tolkien said little about Radagast gave Jackson's screenwriters freedom to make of the character what they liked.

Gandalf bids Radagast to go and tell Galadriel of all they find, and that the White Council must make a pre-emptive move on Dol Guldur.

Radagast plays an expanded role in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game The Lord of the Rings Online, which makes him a leader in a part of Middle-earth, allowing players to interact with him.