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With Gandalf besting the Balrog in The Lord of the Rings, he definitely could’ve taken out Smaug in The Hobbit. So why didn’t he?
In one of the most humorous exchanges in The Lord of the Rings franchise, Bilbo Baggins greeted Gandalf with a “Good Morning” at the beginning of The Hobbit, but when doing so, the respectable hobbit had no idea what he was getting himself into. A year later, he returned to Bag End after experiencing an adventure that involved all kinds of things that were outlandish to a hobbit’s purview. He saw Dwarves, Elves, Eagles and Orcs, and his adventure was crucial to Middle-earth’s history.
The Dwarves in his party successfully retook Erebor, and that meant that the dragon Smaug had been dispelled from his gold-filled abode. More importantly, he was not only ousted; he was killed by Bard the Bowman. In fact, Smaug’s death was Gandalf’s most prominent goal because he knew that Sauron was preparing for war, and the Dark Lord could have used a dragon to terrible effect. However, if Gandalf really just wanted Smaug dead, then the question is: why didn’t the wizard kill him? After all, it would have made things so much simpler.
Gandalf absolutely could have killed Smaug in a one-on-one fight. The grey wizard fought and defeated the Balrog of Moria, and a dragon was a lesser evil than that. As proof, Morgoth — the original Dark Lord of Middle-earth — created and bred dragons to his evil purpose in the First Age. However, the Balrogs were Maiar that Morgoth corrupted to his service. As such, dragons were powerful, but because of the Balrogs’ preeminence, they commanded evils that the dragons only hoped to imitate.
Being as Gandalf could have thrown down Smaug, there are good reasons that Gandalf chose to take the roundabout way to the dragon’s destruction. First off, it simply wasn’t his job and doing so would have bordered on breaking the mandate of the Istari. He — along with the other wizards — was sent from Valinor to oppose Sauron by stirring up resistance amongst the free peoples of Middle-earth. They were forbidden from matching Sauron’s power because that would only have led to more destruction. For example, the Earth’s shape was changed when the Valar fought Morgoth during the War of Wrath.
Of course, Smaug wasn’t Sauron. So, fighting the dragon wouldn’t have been directly against his mandate, but the same principle applied. If Gandalf brought his full strength to bear, it’s likely that Erebor, Lake-town and much of Mirkwood would have collateral damage in the firey battle.
Building off of that point, Gandalf needed Lake-town and Erebor to be future bastions against the evils that Sauron was bound to bring in his coming war. Simply ridding Erebor of Smaug would have created a power vacuum between Men, Elves and Dwarves, and Sauron would have used such a scenario to his benefit.
With that said, Gandalf needed to find a better way of involving others in his quest to rid Sauron of a future ally. First, he considered an assault on the mountain. When the dwarves suggested such a course of action, he had already decided against it: “‘That would be no good,’ said the wizard, ‘not without a mighty Warrior, even a Hero. I tried to find one; but warriors are busy fighting one another in distant lands.’” Since Gandalf couldn’t find a warrior that suited his fancy, he settled on burglary. The covert operation was far from a perfect plan, but if it worked, it would be the best way to ensure the death of Smaug while also bringing the dwarves and other people together in the battle against the dragon. Of course, Gandalf got more than he bargained for at the Battle of the Five Armies in The Hobbit, but it all ended up working out for the best.
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