Warning: This article contains spoilers for “The Rings of Power” Season 2, Episode 5

“The Rings of Power” has picked up steam during its sophomore season. While it took all of Season 1 to even start forging rings (and even then, they were made out of order), halfway through Season 2, all of the Dwarven Rings of Power are created, and the Nine Rings for Mortal Men doomed to die are clearly coming down the pike. Midway through Episode 5, as Celebrimbor’s smiths labor to craft the rings, aided by Annatar Lord of Gifts, we get a scene where Mirdania (Amelia Kenworthy) accidentally discovers that the ring has made her invisible.

The Elven smith in training looks terrified once the trinket comes off as she explains the experience. “I was in a place like this,” she says, “but shrouded in mist and darkness.” Mirdania adds that she saw fire like the forge and a tall figure with flaming skin come toward her with pitiless and eternal eyes. This “Unseen world” comes right from Tolkien’s lore, and in essence, it is the spiritual dimension.

Shortly after her discovery, Mirdania sits down with Annatar in private to chat about her experience. While most of his dialogue is deception, Annatar does truthfully point out that things appear in the light of that place as they truly are, adding there are “beings of differing shades of light and darkness.” This concept of an “other side” populated by lit-up figures shows up over and over again throughout Tolkien’s texts — in the context of both good and evil. Let’s take a look at a few examples, shall we?

J.R.R. Tolkien was a Bible-believing Christian and a man of faith. As such, it’s no surprise that he infused his creation of Arda (i.e., the world) with a sense of the sacred and the spiritual. This often manifests as an “unseen” space that is “on the other side” of the physical reality most creatures operate within. However, one group that is able to live in both worlds at the same time is the Elves.

For instance, when Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas chase the Uruk-hai and Orcs across Rohan in “The Two Towers,” Tolkien writes that while Aragorn and Gimli are exhausted, “Only Legolas stills stepped as lightly as ever, his feet hardly seeming to press the grass, leaving no footprints as he passed.” He adds that Legolas is able to rest even as he’s running, saying, “he could sleep, if sleep it could be called by Men, resting his mind in the strange paths of Elvish dreams, even as he walked open-eyed in the light of this world.”

In “The Fellowship of the Ring” book, we get a more direct description of this Unseen world of light. When the Nazgûl chase Frodo across the Ford on the way to Rivendell, Frodo is slipping into the unseen realm (thanks to his dagger wound and his possession of the One Ring). The Elf-lord Glorfindel is with them, too. Later, the Ring-bearer shares his experience with Gandalf, saying, “I thought that I saw a white figure that shone and did not grow dim like the others. Was that Glorfindel then?” The Wizard replies, “Yes, you saw him for a moment as he is upon the other side: one of the might of the Firstborn.” Right before this, the Wizard also says of Glorfindel and others in Rivendell, “They do not fear the Ringwraiths, for those who have dwelt in the Blessed Realm live at once in both worlds, and against both the Seen and the Unseen they have great power.”

The Blessed Realm is another name for the Undying Lands over the seas, where the spiritual guardians of the world, the Valar, dwell. These pure spiritual beings exist completely in the Unseen world and have to make a conscious effort to enter the physical. “The Silmarillion” explains, “Now the Valar took to themselves shape and hue [..] and they need it not, save only as we use raimnet and yet we may be naked and suffer no loss of our being. Therefore the Valar may walk, if they will, unclad, and then even the Eldar cannot clearly perceive them.” Wizards like Gandalf are also members of this spiritual race using incarnate bodies.

While there are Elvish and Valar examples of the Unseen world, there are also more unsettling ones that tend to match Mirdania’s experience. “The Silmarillion,” for instance, explains what happens to the Nazgûl as they succumb to their rings, saying, “They could walk, if they would, unseen by all eyes in this world beneath the sun, and they could see things in worlds invisible to mortal men.” It adds, “And they became for ever invisible save to him that wore the Ruling Ring, and they entered into the realm of shadows.”

There are many similar Ring-related experiences. When Sam puts on the One Ring (which also brings you into that wraith-world) in the “Two Towers” book, he sees a dim darkness around him, as if he is in a fog. The book explains, “At once he was aware that hearing was sharpened while sight was dimmed […] All things about him now were not dark but vague […] He did not feel invisible at all, but horribly and uniquely visible; and he knew that somewhere an Eye was searching for him.” The orcs in front of him are described as a “phantom company, grey distorted figures in a mist, only dreams of fear with pale flames in their hands.”

Similarly, when Frodo puts on the Ring on Weathertop as he faces the Ringwraiths in “The Fellowship of the Ring,” Tolkien explains, “Immediately, though everything else remained as before, dim and dark, the shapes became terribly clear. He was able to see beneath their black wrappings. […] In their white faces burned keen and merciless eyes; under their mantles were long grey robes; upon their grey hairs were helms of silver; in their haggard hands were swords of steel. Their eyes fell on him and pierced him.”

While the specifics of the Elven spiritual verses and the Ringwraith or Ring-induced spiritual worlds are never made clear, all of these elements are always bubbling away under the surface of Tolkien’s stories. The Rings of Power provide a particularly interesting case study as they allow mortals to access the Unseen world, and it looks like we’re in for quite a bit more of that kind of thing as “The Rings of Power” series continues to play out.