The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne tease season 2’s introduction of a new Middle-earth desert. After premiering in 2022, the hit Prime Video fantasy series created by McKay and J.D. Payne is now gearing up to continue the story of Sauron’s (Charlie Vickers) rise during the Second Age. Various locations across Middle-earth are featured in season 1, but the Rings of Power season 2 trailer teased that The Stranger (Daniel Weyman) and Nori (Markella Kavenagh) will find themselves in a new desert location.

In a recent interview with Collider, McKay teases what’s to come from the desert location in The Rings of Power season 2, which he confirms is the land of Rhûn from J.R.R. Tolkien’s source material. This desert backdrop will mark the first time a Middle-earth desert has ever been shown on screen, and the showrunners tease a particularly special adventure for The Stranger and Nori there. Check out the comments from McKay and Payne below:

Patrick McKay: “We’re really excited about that. We’ve never seen deserts on screen in Middle-earth, and we’re really excited to go there. We think deserts are beautiful and awesome and we’re doing our own Tolkienien Lawrence of Arabia.

“One of the things that’s been fun about that is Rhûn is really a blank canvas. There are little hints. There’s talk about magic cults, and talk about the stars being strange, and rumors of wizards having adventures in Rhûn that may or may not have gone well. We’re drawing on all of those seeds to hopefully continue to tell a story that feels worthy of the other canonical stories in here.

“It’s been really fun trying to imagine that world, what the people in it are like, what the architecture is like, what kind of a desert. We just spent five weeks shooting in a far-flung overseas location for spectacular vistas, and it’s really cool.”

J.D. Payne: “There’s something I find very magical as a viewer when I see Nori and The Stranger together. Putting them on a journey where they’re very far from home felt really delicious and exciting. Hopefully everybody agrees.”

Why Rhûn Is So Exciting In The Rings Of Power Season 2

What It Could Mean For The Stranger

Although The Rings of Power‘s version of the world of Middle-earth is slightly different from Peter Jackson’s in his The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the two on-screen renditions feature many visual similarities. Elven and Dwarf architecture styles, for example, are very similar between the two properties, and the Harfoots live in lush green areas similar to the Hobbits of the Shire. The Rings of Power season 1 was also shot in New Zealand, the same country where Jackson filmed his trilogy.

By introducing the land of Rhûn, which is also sometimes called the Eastlands, The Rings of Power has an opportunity to present something that’s visually very different from what audiences have seen in the franchise before. This could help to further set the series apart from previous takes on The Lord of the Rings. Exploring the land of Rhûn also helps the show fulfill an assumed promise to viewers, which is that it will use the elongated storytelling form that TV provides to more fully explore aspects of Tolkien’s source material.

While Tolkien himself doesn’t focus on Rhûn with great depth, he does reveal that wizards Saruman, Pallando, and Alatar visit the location during the Third Age. It has been widely theorized that The Stranger is Gandalf, but it’s entirely possible that he is actually Saruman or one of these other wizards instead. The fact that The Stranger is visiting Rhûn could end up being very telling in terms of his real identity. Whatever is to come, the world of Middle-earth will evidently be expanding in The Rings of Power season 2.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2 premieres on Prime Video on August 29, 2024.