This article contains a massive spoiler for "The Rings of Power" season 2. Proceed with caution, and watch the finale first if you don't want The Stranger's identity spoiled!

Well, folks, the cat's out of the bag. After 16 episodes and two full seasons, the fading moments of "The Rings of Power" season 2 finale finally delivered the one word we've been itching to hear for endless hours of Middle-earth viewing: Gandalf. Yes, Daniel Weyman's mysterious and confused Istar is the one and only Grey Wizard. As the finale wraps up its various storylines and sets the stage for a likely third season to come, one of the last things we get is a scene between Tom Bombadil (Rory Kinnear) and The Stranger. As the sequence draws to a close, Bombadil coaxes the utterance of the inevitable from his companion, and the Wizard in training takes a deep breath and says that his name is "Gandalf."

Sorry, Blue Wizard fans (including yours truly). Our hope for a wild Rhûn storyline following a good Blue Wizard is officially dashed (although Ciarán Hinds' Dark Wizard could still be an evil Blue). Nope, this good guy is 100% bonafide Gandalf, even if the source material doesn't have him showing up until the Third Age, and he explicitly states in "The Lord of the Rings" that he doesn't go to the East.

I'll leave the nitpicking for another day, though. The reality is that, by the end of season 2, the evidence was so overwhelming that this guy really was Gandalf that it would have been awkward to pull a bait-and-switch at the last second. And I get it. It makes sense to introduce a character that fair-weather fans can relate to and recognize rather than an even more cryptic character that even "Lord of the Rings" book readers won't recognize. Still, it doesn't change the fact that for endless hours, showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay have been setting this guy up for a fairly obvious Gandalf reveal. How, exactly? Let's count the ways.