10 Times “Good” Characters Gave Being Evil A Try
3. Saruman
When we first meet Saruman, he's dressed all in white and stands as the paragon of virtue and all that is good in the world. As one of the Istari, he was sent to Middle Earth to guard it from evil, but must not have gotten the memo because he turns out to be about as evil as you can get in a Tolkien book. After coming to the conclusion that Sauron's plot to take over all of Middle Earth is impossible to stop, he joins forces with him.
Determined to put the idiom, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” to work, Saruman turns on everyone who trusted him and sets out to create an army in the most destructive way possible.
He lays waste to Fangorn forest, which is something you should never do when there are giant tree monsters lurking about. He uses the land to breed a new form of deadly orc and begins to lay siege upon Middle Earth.
He is finally defeated when the forest fights back and is imprisoned atop his own tower. He never comes back from his foray into evil and is eventually dispatched after an underling of his, Grima, slits his throat.