The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is officially back for season 2… and bringing the Middle-earth map energy. With cartography baked right into the filmmaking, the Amazon series is true mapcore, the plot jumping back and forth between everywhere from the elven realm of Lindon to the newly formed Mordor. As it should be.
J.R.R. Tolkien didn’t just love maps — he ascribed the entire world-building success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to his cartographical exercises. And it’s no surprise that The Rings of Power honors Tolkien’s achievement in rendering Middle-earth in map form, both as a stylish technique and as a way of building stakes around the plot. Mordor is being built from the ground up. The Stranger is questing to the mysterious eastern land of Rhûn. Unlike the hand-wavy travel in Game of Thrones, the Lord of the Rings show’s directors often cut to map illustrations as a segue. It’s Tolkien-brained.
In a 1954 letter to his friend and fellow author Naomi Mitchison, Tolkien wrote, “I wisely started [The Lord of the Rings] with a map, and made the story fit (generally with meticulous care for distances).” In his mind, reverse-engineering a fantasy world “lands one in confusions and impossibilities,” and that charting every square inch of Middle-earth was essential to wrapping his mind around the intricacies of the story. In the same breath, he also apologized to Mitchison for sending the books along without the drawings.
“I am sorry about the Geography,” he wrote. “It must have been dreadfully difficult without a map or maps.”
Tolkien’s work was map-worthy, and the tradition of kicking off or capping a fantasy book with a map remains standard operating procedure for genre publishers. But the illustrated works rarely carry over to adaptations, even Peter Jackson’s undeniably masteful trilogy. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is an exception to a point in season 1 and 2, often setting the stage for a new scene using the same illustrations Tolkien used to piece together the Fellowship’s story. It’s such a thrill to see the dang map on screen that I am constantly left wanting to see the full thing for reference. So here it is.
The prime locations have shifted from season 1 to 2. Early on in Rings of Power, we were dropped in Forodwaith, where Galadriel is hunting down clues of an lingering evil; Rhovanion, home to the hobbit-like harfoots; and the Eregion region, where one can find the dwarven kingdom of Khazad-dûm tucked away underneath a mountain range. In Rings of Power season 2, we see Celebrimbor revving up his ring project in Eregion, and The Stranger and Nori preparing the cross a vast desert (presumably west of the Sea of Rhûn, which they have yet to encounter). At times, the camera swoops over sections of this map like an Indiana Jones movie might. But the full picture gives viewers a greater sense of distance — just as Tolkien intended.
Fans of the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy might be a bit mystified by how the map of the Second Age lines up with more familiar locations like The Shire, the Mines of Moria, and Mordor. So here’s another map for cross-reference, courtesy of The LOTR Project.
Lifted from J.R.R. Tolkien’s sketches (and Christopher Tolkien’s more mathematically proficient graph-paper drafts), LOTR Project’s maps connect the landform dots between Middle-earth’s past and distant past. An interactive version of the above, as you can imagine, is an absolute delight.
Rings of Power’s map has been a source of hints about where the drama is going, and is well-worth a deep read. In the fantasy series’ first episode, Galadriel discovers a symbol pertaining to a lingering evil in Middle-earth. She’s recognizes it instantly, burned into the icy cave stone of Forodwaith. In episode 3, the elf finds herself Númenor’s Hall of Law, where she finds the account of a spy retrieved from an enemy dungeon. “He drew this to record the tower’s location,” Elendil, her confidante on Númenor, explains. The sigil, it turns out, is a map, recognizable to anyone who has studied the above graphics.
Image: Prime Video
Galadriel recognizes this area on the map as the Southlands. Anyone who was cross-checking with the Lord of the Rings-era map would recognize it as Mordor. Spoilers!
A map is a story, inherently created through vision and conveyed to anyone who may take it on their journey. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power gets that more than most fantasy adaptations, building it right into the visuals. But of course, on TV, the resource can only go so far. So take these maps and venture forth. Tolkien knew his brilliant pal Naomi needed them, and so would you.