Gilmore Girls and Returning to Middle-earth

Taking Comfort in and from Our Favorite Worlds

Apr 22, 2025

Hello Tolkien Poppers!

I hope that those of you who celebrated Easter and Passover had an amazing time with family, friends, and food. I come from the Wesleyan-Holiness Christian tradition, so Easter is a yearly thing for me. This year I gave up alcohol for Lent. It felt good to celebrate the resurrection with a little bit of that red and white along with plenty of food—and possibly beer and mimosas. It was all very liturgical and religious, I assure you.

Today’s post is not unrelated to celebration and food. I am going through my first watch of Gilmore Girls and I absolutely love the show—way more than I expected. As I have been going through it, references to The Lord of the Rings are made frequently. In Season 5 Episode 19, Lorelai exclaims as she’s channel-surfing, “Is it me or is Frodo on every channel?” I thought to myself, Tolkien is truly omnipresent in pop culture.

Of course, the ideas for connections began popping up and I thought to myself, “Hey, Gilmore Girls fans are pretty notorious for rewatching the show and Tolkien fans are known for rereading The Lord of the Rings—both on a yearly basis.” I am convinced that part of the reason is the homeliness and coziness fans feel when visiting those fictional places.

I know it isn’t fall, but while the spring weather is still with us, pretend that the coolness from the spring rain is a crisp breeze with the promise of autumn, Middle-earth, and Stars Hollow. Enjoy!

My book Tolkien and Pop Culture: Volume I is now available! This book is a selection of my Substack posts from the past couple of years, cleaned up, and formatted for publication. For the first time, you can get all these essays in print or in your Kindle library. It’ll look great on your shelf and be available for your own Tolkien purposes! Use the QR code, the link, or direct message me to order your copy: https://a.co/d/eBE7jiH

Stars Hollow, The Shire, Rivendell. These names evoke a sense of comfort in me when I hear them. I’m sure I’m not the only one–especially during autumn. During the fall of the year, many fans of both The Lord of the Rings and Gilmore Girls return to the common room at The Prancing Pony or Luke’s Diner to reach for that feeling of comfort in a world that seems to be continuously turned by the metal wheels forced upon it by the domineering ambition of the powerful. Like much pop culture, Gilmore Girls is replete with references to The Lord of the Rings.

As a product of the early 2000s, it only makes sense that with the release of the Peter Jackson films, Gilmore Girls, with all its pop cultural intertextuality, would include them in its dialogue and props. From Rory and Dean seeing The Lord of the Rings at the Black and White and Read Bookstore/Movie Theater, to Lorelai and Sookie planning a LOTR-themed birthday party, to Lorelai exclaiming her desire for a man like Aragorn (get in line, Lorelai!), once the allusions to The Lord of the Rings start, they don’t stop. Its presence throughout the show demonstrates that the connection of homey comfort is not a fluke, but an inherent part of the writing.

The comfort that readers and viewers of both The Lord of the Rings and Gilmore Girls claim to experience as they return to either story reflects what Tolkien says good art does: it helps us recover what we have lost in the hustle and bustle of our daily lives of constant stimulation and distraction and makes us feel refreshed as we emerge from these secondary worlds back into our own. Viewers are continually inspired by the lives of Frodo, Rory, Galadriel, and Lorelai–among countless others. Ultimately, fans escape to Middle-earth and Stars Hollow not for the dominant desire to binge, but to experience characters that they feel have similar struggles (albeit through different circumstances) and see these characters overcome their challenges with self-determination and fellowship. The isolation we sometimes feel from the prison that those in our world have built for us is temporarily alleviated by the warm embrace of Bilbo’s or Emily and Richard Gilmore’s dinner table.

Although recovery and consolation–as Tolkien has used those terms pertaining to fictional secondary worlds–are sought-out experiences by fans of both Gilmore Girls and The Lord of the Rings, the sense of adventure is also pursued. Those of the likes of Bilbo, Frodo, and the other hobbits alongside Lorelai, Rory, and Luke, go on adventures of varying kinds and degrees. These characters begin at home, i.e., The Shire and Stars Hollow and return home from their adventures. However, as Wayne Hammond has said in relation to The Hobbit:

“Bag End, however, is not merely the start and finish line…of Bilbo’s journey…Bag End gives Bilbo purpose: it is, in fact, the true object of his quest. For him it is like a sacred place…”1

This observation can be applied to the main characters of both created worlds. In the midst of their trials and fluctuating emotions about their homes and the community in which they are situated, ultimately, they do what they do for the betterment of their homes.

Where Bilbo and Frodo go on journeys more typically considered “quests,” Lorelai and Rory do their own fair share of questing. For Lorelai (one of the Gilmore girls and main protagonists), these quests are ones that draw her out of her comfort zone. Ironically, Lorelai is content to live in transitory chaos; and what pushes her outside of her comfort zone is, well, comfort.2 These ventures into stability consist of having weekly dinners at her parents’ house in Hartford, attempting to commit to a serious relationship, and running a business of her own–among other things. On the other hand, Rory (the other Gilmore girl, who is daughter to Lorelai, and is the other main protagonist), has prospects that lie outside of Stars Hollow. Her initial catalyst into this outward-facing adventure is her aim to attend Harvard University. As a small town girl, raised by a single mom Rory begins as an underdog–similar to both Bilbo and Frodo. None have much experience outside of their respective communities. Bilbo is thrust into adventure without looking for it, but both Frodo and Rory dream of adventure and are called by it in ways unexpected to them. Frodo: becoming the Ringbearer beyond Rivendell. Rory: going to Yale instead of Harvard. Many can relate to these sets of circumstances and celebrate with these “average Joes” when they accomplish something of the small or large variety that affects both themselves and the world around them.

What the hobbits and the Gilmore girls achieve are of different kinds and degrees. Obviously, there is no scouring of Stars Hollow and the four hobbits of the Fellowship are not 21st century Americans working towards professional success. Despite the different settings and eras, both share in the bounty of their hardships–along with the burden. In my post “Skeleton Crew and the Scouring of the Shire”, I explore how the journeying of the hobbits brings together both ideals and action in their persons, making them whole and empowering them to help others realize the potential for this in themselves in The Scouring of the Shire chapter in Book VI of The Lord of the Rings. The Fellowship hobbits are able to take back their land from Saruman and rebuild better than before alongside their friends and neighbors. Merry and Pippin’s war experiences help them lead the charge against the “ruffians” and prepare Pippin to take up the title of Thain and Merry for the position of Master of Buckland. Additionally, they are both made Counsellors of the North-kingdom of Arnor alongside Sam after Aragorn’s restoration of the kingdom after his coronation as King Elessar. Merry and Pippin are later laid next to Aragorn in death, honoring them among the Kings of Númenórean descent.

As alluded to above, Sam also enjoys the benefits of being a successful adventurer by serving as The Shire’s Mayor for seven 7-year terms and awarded the Star of the Dúnedain by King Elessar in addition to his other honors. Frodo, while experiencing the restoration and ensuring safety of The Shire, is never able to enjoy the peace he has, in part, brought about. Because of his wound from the Morgul-knife and the lingering mental/spiritual damage from the One Ring, Frodo cannot stay in Middle-earth. He is given special passage to the Grey Havens in light of his service to Arda. Although Frodo suffers the pain induced by the effects of his expeditional afflictions, the fate of The Shire, Middle-earth, and Frodo are better for it. Far from evoking martyrdom as a virtue–especially in relation to extracting value from a person with disabilities–Frodo’s sacrifice is one in which he chooses to enact in cooperation with others, including the Divine, to manifest the rehabilitation of his world.

Regarding the New England heroines, Lorelai’s entire journey begins when she gives birth to Rory when she’s sixteen and moves away from her rich parents to live on her own. She is taken in by Mia Bass, the owner of the Independence Inn in Stars Hollow. From there, she raises Rory, buys a house, and rises the ranks at the Inn to the point where she runs it. At the beginning of the show, Rory applies to a local private school called Chilton to help her chances of getting into Harvard. She is accepted and thrilled. However, Lorelai discovers that she cannot afford the tuition. At the cost of facing her parents and the trauma associated with her childhood under their roof, she contacts them to ask for financial help on behalf of Rory and her future. Emily and Richard, Lorelai’s parents, are glad to pay for Rory’s tuition, but Emily places conditions upon the money: Lorelai must bring Rory to dinner at their house every Friday. For Lorelai, this is the depths of Thangorodrim, but instead of Silmarils there is the tuition for Chilton; Morgoth, Emily and Richard Gilmore; and her hair fails to contain the magical qualities of veiling her parents into sleep so she can swipe the tuition. For Rory, though, she is willing to walk the hot coals to help Rory achieve greatness.

Rory, being the smartest kid at Stars Hollow High School, arrives at Chilton after transferring. It is not long before she realizes that the competition is more prevalent and comparable to her own intellectual prowess or better. The social hierarchy is also very different at Chilton. And Rory navigates all this while working out her first romantic relationship with hometown sweetheart Dean. Eventually, Rory graduates Chilton with a 4.2 GPA, gets into all the big name Ivy League schools, builds a close relationship with her grandparents, makes a close friend in Paris at Chilton, and keeps her childhood best friend Lane. She goes to Yale, drops out, becomes a professional journalist, and returns home to become the editor of the Stars Hollow Gazette.

There is much more that both Lorelai and Rory overcome and achieve throughout the series: Lorelai starts the Dragonfly Inn with her best friend and business partner Sookie, marries Luke Danes (after fans being led on for years), mends her relationship with Rory after a serious fallout between the two of them, and attempts to have the closest thing to a cordial relationship that is possible with her parents. Rory goes through a ton of chaotic relationships while maintaining herself and her goals, drops out of Yale when being dismissed as unworthy of being a journalist by a boss, goes back to Yale to finish her degree, and becomes a professional journalist. Both Lorelai and Rory go through radical transformations, I would argue, for the better–even if their internal conflict is consistently messy. But, in the contemporary world, whose isn’t? Not only that, their fickleness is balanced by their love for the people and town that they love and who love them in return.

Throughout Tolkien’s writings, i.e., letters, fiction, and nonfiction, all emphasize the importance of the need for good stories that help us recover what we have lost, namely connection to the world we are a part of. Thorin’s desire for gold severs his commitment to his friends and allies, Gollum’s addiction to the Ring causes him to murder and deteriorate, and both Morgoth’s and Sauron’s desire for power is the very thing that causes their destruction.

In Gilmore Girls, when Emily and Richard attempt to control they lose relational connection between their daughter and granddaughter, Lorelai’s enthrallment to the constant need for spontaneity leads to self-sabotage and the hurting of people she cares about, and Rory’s knack for letting her love interests take center stage in place of her goals and happiness leads to her tripping and sometimes falling.

Regardless, for people like Thorin, Bilbo, Boromir, Lorelai, Luke, and Rory, their hardships are the very catalyst to wholeness that leads to action that recovers or revitalizes what was lost to create something new and good.

Amidst a world that seems to cultivate more ways to make us lonely, witnessing the closeness in which characters from both Middle-earth and Stars Hollow embody calls the desire for fellowship from the very depths of our being. Although having a Kirk, Babette, or Sackville-Baggins randomly show up at my house would be well below what I would want in my daily life, to have an opportunity to know my neighbors more with the idea of mutual support and community-building would be most welcome.

So next time you sit down to your yearly readthrough of The Lord of the Rings or turn on your screened device of choice to watch the movies and/or Gilmore Girls, remember to get off your ass and do what the hobbits and Gilmore girls do. Thorin’s words at the end of The Hobbit come to mind:

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” (Hobbit, 273)

It is up to us to cultivate a safe and homey world, one that’s worth fighting for; one that is happy to have an Elven party tree or a rustic New England inn for all of us to gather and enjoy each other’s merriment.

Hammond, Wayne G. (1987) "All the Comforts: The Image of Home in The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 14: No. 1, Article 6. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol14/iss1/6.

Lorelai is also paradoxically attached to a chaotic way of being while clinging to one place in a small town, which adds to the complexity and intrigue of her character amongst her wit and sarcasm.

I got to spend time with my friends at Systematic Geekology to talk about theodicy, the problem of omnipotence, and Jessica Jones. If you want some awesome and nerdy theological and philosophical takes on pop culture, go check ‘em out!