Alan Sisto

Instead, he was showing Saruman two things, that he, Gandalf, could see that Saruman desired the rings.

That's symbolized by his hand reaching for the smoke rings.

And then, of course, that this desire would never be met, that it would always be an impossible thing.

That's the rings disappearing.

Yeah.

Why do you think, Matt, Saruman didn't see just that as the message, instead looking for a connection to the Shire or to the Hobbits?

And that's all it is, but he can't even imagine that that's what it is.

He thinks it's a secret message of, I have the knowledge of where the one ring is.

You're totally missing the symbolism here.

The symbolism, yes.

Like you said, he's just dense here.

No, that's the thing.

That would have been extremely out of character.

Yeah.

He would absolutely have played dumb.

He would never mention the ring.

You know, like the last thing he'd want is attention on the concept even.

But Saruman really held on to this moment because here we are in 2851, Gandalf blowing the smoke rings and Saruman trying to read a message.

Bilbo and Frodo get involved with all this.

So now we're talking about 3018.