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Mead posted...

The first thing that makes me say this is Gandalf not realizing that Bilbo's ring might be crazy important despite the rings of power playing a huge part of the history of their world

The appendix to RotK and/or the part of the Silmarillion that talks about the Third Age explicitly says that Gandalf was suspicious about Bilbo's ring almost immediately, but he wasn't sure if it was one of the Rings (ie, there are magical rings in the world other than just the 20 that Sauron and Celebrimbor forged), let along THE Ring. But those suspicions are what prompted him to go research the ring in Gondor's archives in the first place, which in turn is why he showed up to warn Frodo about it.

And part of the problem is that Saruman kept repeatedly telling the White Council that he was absolutely sure that the One Ring had washed out to sea and Sauron would never, ever be able to find it (which was the blatant lie he was telling them so they'd stop looking while he kept looking for it himself), which sort of made Gandalf more confused about precisely which ring Bilbo had found.

It wasn't so much that he didn't realize Bilbo's ring might be trouble, as much as the problem seemed to be that there were always more important things going on that needed to be dealt with, and the ring didn't seem to be doing much to Bilbo in a negative sense, so he felt like he could put it off and deal with it later. Especially since Gandalf always seems to have a bit of fatalism to his personality.



Mead posted...

Then later Saruman cuts down a big chunk of that forest for his army and siege weapons, but he was the white wizard and known for being super wise so he had to know the ents were there and that they could wreck his shit. Like he had no contingency plan against the ents at all.

That's more a case of the arrogance and ego of the Master Wizard not believing the Ents could possibly be a threat to Isengard, and even if they could, assuming they could never be roused into direct action anyway. That's villain hubris, not wizard ineptitude.

It's also part and parcel with the monomania that was turning him from a capable wizard into an obsessed power-mad lunatic (which may have been at least partly influenced by multiple Palantir contacts with Sauron himself, which canonically subverted Saruman's will to at least some extent). As events progressed, Saruman starts developing tunnel vision, to the point where the only thing that really matters is the Ring, and everything else is mere distraction.

Even the gods can make mistakes or misinterpret things in Tolkien's world - the minor angels (which is what the wizards basically are) certainly aren't immune to either foolishness or corruption.



Mead posted...

What a couple of idiots

You're forgetting the hippy who threw away all of his responsibility to go hang out in the woods and the two wizards who traveled east into Asia and were apparently murdered at some point.

At no point were the wizards ever supposed to be infallible or all-knowing. And as Gandalf points out at one point, even the Valar can't see all ends.


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