THIS Scene Reveals Gandalf's Greatest Fear (And they cut the idea completely)

Gandalf, Smaug, and Sauron — why did the wizard really send Bilbo to the Lonely Mountain? This Lord of the Rings deep dive tracks Gandalf's hidden strategy behind The Hobbit, straight out of Tolkien's own later writings in Unfinished Tales. We walk through the answer The Hobbit never gave: The Quest of Erebor, where Tolkien finally has Gandalf explain, in his own voice, what he was afraid of. A desolate hole in the North where Dale and Erebor used to stand. Sauron in Dol Guldur, rebuilding. The Dwarves of the Iron Hills as the only power positioned to block a push toward the old lands of Angmar. And the nightmare underneath all of it — that Sauron might one day persuade Smaug to choose a side, and use the greatest fire-breathing dragon of the Third Age, in Tolkien's own phrase, "to terrible effect." Plus the deleted Peter Jackson scene that visualised the exact fear: Gandalf finding a palantír (almost certainly the captured Ithil-stone) in the hand of a statue at Dol Guldur and seeing Smaug flying for Sauron. Cut from the theatrical release. Cut from the Extended Edition. And the statue is still standing in the finished film, orb in hand, holding the reason for the whole story. Sources: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings Appendix A and B, and Unfinished Tales ("The Quest of Erebor"). Should Peter Jackson have kept the palantír vision in? Let me know in the comments. 🔔 Subscribe for more deep dives into Tolkien's legendarium: https://youtube.com/@YourTolkienGuy?si=uxWw-V7wt0TdJ1fB 📜 Watch next: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8Ffig0ZKeGBUOVhaav45Yq9j3pOII9aa ───────────────────────────── FAIR USE All content falls under fair use: any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and "transformative" purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner. ARTWORK & ARTIST CREDITS This channel is built on the work of incredibly talented Middle-earth artists, and I want every one of them credited. Tracking down the original creator of a piece is often genuinely hard — art gets reposted, renamed, and separated from its source all across the internet. If your work appears in this video and you'd like a credit added, corrected, or your piece removed, just email me and I'll take care of it right away. Your wishes always come first. 📧 Contact / credit & removal requests: [email protected] Art credits (in order of appearance): Contact for credits here! #LordOfTheRings #Tolkien #Gandalf #Smaug #DolGuldur #Sauron