Lord Of The Rings: 10 Persistent Plot Holes FINALLY Debunked

The Claim: In Return of the King, the Witch-king is shown as being powerful enough to break Gandalf’s staff and throw him to the ground. But isn’t Gandalf supposed to be far more powerful?

After all, the Witch-king was a mere man; Gandalf defeated a Balrog.

The short answer is that this is another bizarre movie inclusion, one that, with all the confusion it created, was demonstrably a bad move.

In the books, Gandalf was never defeated by the Witch-king. In fact, they never come to blows. Instead the Witch-king enters Minas Tirith and is confronted by Gandalf, but their confrontation is interrupted by the arrival of the Rohirrim, forcing the Witch-king to break off to deal with the new threat. In the movie, this would have worked just fine.

All right, but for interest's sake, who would win?

That is a question with an unexpected answer. The Witch-king was under some form of doom, not unlike the Doom of Mandos, which stated that no man would defeat him. This is why Eowyn was able to kill him with an ordinary sword (and no, the text says nothing about Merry’s barrow-blade rendering the Witch-king vulnerable).

And so, fate had already decided the outcome, ultimately rendering any fight between the Witch-king and Gandalf a draw and the question irrelevant.