The Rings of Power on a Map: Seasons 1 and 2, and Where Everyone Stands Before Season 3

Sixteen Episodes, One Map

When Season 2 of The Rings of Power ends, its characters are spread over some 1,600 miles of Middle-earth, from Gil-galad's court in Lindon to a Stoor canyon in the deserts of Rhûn, and the show almost never says how far apart anyone is. Season 3 began on Prime Video on 11 November 2026; this map is the recap of the first sixteen episodes, with every journey on one ink map, the distances between them and where everyone stands when the new season starts.

Every company, army and fleet is a token that slides along its route from scene to scene with a fading trail; ships turn into little sailing boats at sea. The realms are a pale wash that changes as the Southlands become Mordor, Pharazôn takes Númenor and Eregion falls. The dates on the time bar are a stand-in (Season 1 is drawn as the year 1600, Season 2 as 1601), so follow the episode codes in the captions: S1E6 is Season 1, episode 6.

Season 1: Galadriel, Halbrand and the Making of Mordor

Season 1 opens in the frozen Forodwaith, where Galadriel finds Sauron's mark in an abandoned fortress, some 700 miles north-east of Lindon. Gil-galad sends her home over the sea; at the edge of the Sundering Seas she leaps overboard and swims back, finds Halbrand on a raft and, a sea-worm and a storm later, is taken to Númenor by Elendil. A palantír vision changes Queen Regent Míriel's mind, and in episode 5 a fleet sails for Middle-earth. In the Southlands the people of Tirharad, under Adar's orcs, split between Bronwyn and the orc-friend Waldreg. In episode 6 the Númenóreans ride in, win the Battle of Tirharad and capture Adar, but Waldreg slips away with the sword hilt Adar wanted and opens the dam. The water floods the tunnels under Orodruin, the mountain erupts, and the Southlands become Mordor.

In the north Elrond asks his friend Prince Durin to help Celebrimbor build a forge in Eregion, and learns of mithril. In Rhovanion the Harfoots take in a man who fell from the sky, the Stranger, until three Mystics come hunting for him. At the end of the season Halbrand helps Celebrimbor in Eregion and is unmasked as Sauron; the Three Rings are forged, Sauron walks into Mordor, and Nori leaves with the Stranger for Rhûn.

Season 2: Annatar and the Fall of Eregion

Season 2 opens with Adar ruling Mordor and Sauron, still as Halbrand, giving himself up in Adar's camp, being let go and walking west to Eregion, where he becomes Annatar and works on Celebrimbor's pride: the Seven Rings are forged for the Dwarf-lords, then the Nine. Durin III puts on his ring and digs deeper. Elrond leads a small company from Lindon towards Eregion; they fight barrow-wights in Tyrn Gorthad (the later Barrow-downs), run into Adar's vanguard, and Galadriel is captured. In the south Isildur, alive after all, reaches Pelargir with Estrid and Arondir, and in Númenor the great eagle chooses Pharazôn as king. Far to the east the Stranger, Nori and Poppy are scattered by a sandstorm in Rhûn: he finds Tom Bombadil, they find a canyon village of Stoors.

Adar's host, with the hill-troll Damrod, besieges Ost-in-Edhil from episode 6, and in episode 7 a rockslide dams the river and the walls come down. Episode 8 is the frame to pause on. Within a few screens of each other Durin III dies under the mountain fighting the Balrog, Celebrimbor dies in his forge and Adar is stabbed by his own orcs on the hill above the city, and the survivors go three ways: Sauron stays in the ruins with the Nine, the dwarves of Khazad-dûm fall back to their mountain, and the Elves go north to the valley that will become Imladris.

What the Map Shows That the Show Does Not

Distances first, measured on the map's basemap (its units are close to Tolkien's miles). Ost-in-Edhil and the West-gate of Khazad-dûm are neighbours, about 100 miles (155 km) apart, which is why Elves and Dwarves keep riding back and forth between them. Lindon is far away: about 530 miles (860 km) in a straight line from Gil-galad's court to Ost-in-Edhil, and about 600 miles (960 km) by the road the host of Lindon marches in episodes 6 and 7. Tirharad in the Southlands is about 1,000 miles from Lindon, Pelargir about 155 miles (250 km) from Tirharad, and the Stoors' canyon in Rhûn about 1,100 miles (1,760 km) east of Eregion.

Then time. Sauron walks the road from Tirharad to Ost-in-Edhil, about 550 miles (890 km) by way of the Anduin and Calenardhon, inside a single episode, S2E1. Adar's host takes the same road from episode 3 to episode 5. Elrond's company covers about 480 miles (770 km) from the Grey Havens to the place in southern Eregion where Galadriel is captured, all in episode 4. The calendar is a stand-in, so the map cannot say how many days any of this took, but it shows which journeys the show treats as instant. And simultaneity: in episode 8 alone, Eregion falls, Míriel is arrested in Armenelos, the Dark Wizard brings down the Stoors' canyon, Kemen takes Pelargir and the Stranger becomes Gandalf, on screens that the show cuts between but that the map can show at once.

Where Everyone Stands Before Season 3

Sauron is master of Eregion with the Nine Rings and the orcs who murdered Adar for him; Celebrimbor and Adar are dead. Gil-galad, Elrond, Galadriel (with Nenya) and Arondir have led the surviving Elves about 200 miles (320 km) north to the hidden valley that becomes Imladris. In Khazad-dûm Durin III is dead, the Balrog is buried again under the collapsed cavern, and Durin IV is king, with Disa beside him and a rival in Thrain. In Númenor Ar-Pharazôn has seen in the palantír that Halbrand was Sauron and used it to outlaw the Faithful: Míriel is arrested, Elendil has escaped west to Andustar with Narsil, and Eärien sides with Pharazôn. In Pelargir Kemen has made the town a Númenórean outpost and ordered Isildur home, and Theo has stayed in Pelargir. In Rhûn the Stranger has his staff and his name, Gandalf, while Nori and Poppy have left with the Stoors to look for a new home and the Dark Wizard has fallen back to his stronghold.

The Show and the Books

The map follows the show, not Tolkien, and four differences are visible on it. The Three Rings appear first, at the end of Season 1, before the Seven and the Nine; in Tolkien Celebrimbor made the Three last, alone. Mordor appears in Season 1 episode 7, made by a flood and an eruption; in Tolkien it was Sauron's land long before. A wizard walks the deserts of Rhûn on the eastern edge of the map; Tolkien's wizards came only in the Third Age, around TA 1000. And the Númenor of Míriel, Pharazôn and Elendil shares a season with the fall of Eregion, although Tolkien puts the fall of Eregion in SA 1697 and Pharazôn's reign after SA 3255. In all the show compresses nearly 1,800 years into a few.

How to Read the Map

Each token is a person or a group: gold is Galadriel, red is Halbrand and Annatar, blue tokens are the Elves of Lindon, navy and bright blue the Númenóreans, brick red the dwarves, dark brown Adar's orcs, purple the Dark Wizard and his followers. When groups travel together their tokens merge, and when they part they split again. Major events are pins that pause the playback and open a short description; smaller ones are dots you can tap or hover. The coloured wash shows who holds Lindon, Eregion, Khazad-dûm, the Southlands, Pelargir and Númenor at each moment.

How the Map Was Made

The routes and events come from the episodes, checked against the episode pages of Tolkien Gateway, the LOTR Fandom wiki and Wikipedia's season pages. Travel between scenes that happens off screen is reconstructed along roads, rivers and coasts, and places the show does not pin down are estimated. Each episode gets an equal window of about five weeks on the stand-in calendar, so the order of events follows the show but the dates mean nothing. Captions use Second Age names (Calenardhon, not Rohan; Tyrn Gorthad, not the Barrow-downs), and in November 2026 every caption was checked and most were rewritten to say what happens in that frame. Season 3, announced with a jump of several years, is not on the map. The basemap is the ME-GIS map of Middle-earth by the ME-DEM project, drawn in an ink style, used with permission. Númenor is not on it, so the island is drawn by hand, small and much closer to Middle-earth than it lies, which is why no distance to it is given here.

Episode Timeline

• S1E1 — Galadriel finds Sauron's mark in the Forodwaith; she leaps into the Sundering Seas; the Stranger falls from the sky
• S1E2 — Galadriel meets Halbrand on a raft; Tirharad flees to Ostirith; Elrond and Celebrimbor plan the forge
• S1E3 — Galadriel arrives in Númenor; Adar appears in the orc trenches
• S1E4 — The palantír and the great wave; Durin shows Elrond mithril
• S1E5 — Waldreg's Southlanders join Adar; the Númenórean fleet sails
• S1E6 — Battles of Ostirith and Tirharad; Adar captured; Waldreg opens the dam; Orodruin erupts
• S1E7 — The Southlands become Mordor; the Balrog stirs in Khazad-dûm
• S1E8 — The Mystics destroyed; Halbrand revealed as Sauron; the Three Rings forged
• S2E1–E2 — Halbrand leaves Adar's camp for Eregion and becomes Annatar; Nori and Poppy lost in a sandstorm
• S2E3 — Isildur found alive; Pharazôn chosen king; Adar's host marches; the Seven Rings forged
• S2E4–E5 — Galadriel captured by Adar; the Stoors' canyon; Durin III puts on his ring
• S2E6 — Míriel's trial by the sea; the siege of Ost-in-Edhil begins
• S2E7 — The Nine forged; the walls of Ost-in-Edhil fall
• S2E8 — Durin III, Celebrimbor and Adar die; Sauron takes the Nine; Eregion falls; Kemen takes Pelargir; the Stranger becomes Gandalf