Quote:
Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin
But Radagast certainly never became a villain and didn't earn "spirit of malice gnawing itself forever in the dark" status, so we would have to assume that Radagast simply defaulted to base-Maia status, an incorporeal being with the ability to don or doff physical forms at will.
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I do not think that it matters if he became a villain or not. Gandalf the Grey certainly did not become a villain, but he still was not able to reembody or reincarnate himself (after the death of his body) without outside help (from Eru). The Istari were fully incarnate. If they were slain or would die of "natural causes" (after millennia), they would not be powerful enough to rehouse themselves. Tolkien clearly wrote that the destruction of the form of a clothed Ainu had a negative effect, that such a destruction diminished the power of the Ainu, and that that effect was even more pronounced if the being was not merely clothed but fully incarnated.