Let’s be honest: some places aren’t truly discovered with a guidebook—they come alive first on screen. For years, I thought of New Zealand as mysterious and impossibly green, until I watched the sweeping vistas of The Lord of the Rings unspool across my childhood television. Suddenly, those valleys and snow-capped peaks weren’t just pixels. They were calling. And like millions now swept by the current of “set-jetting,” I understood the pull to step into a world crafted from someone else’s imagination.

The term set-jetting feels recent, but the impulse is ancient. We’ve always been drawn to places imbued with the magic of stories, wanting to brush reality against the gossamer edges of fiction. Today, as streaming shows and blockbuster movies stitch global audiences closer than ever, their filming locations rocket to the top of travel bucket lists. But what’s behind the allure?

From Screen to Reality: Chasing the Echoes of Fiction

Just last spring, I wandered Dubrovnik’s marble lanes, the city thrumming with the memory of dragons and dynasties thanks to Game of Thrones. Groups drifted beneath the blood-orange rooftops, heads tilted upward, searching for the ramparts where Lannisters once plotted. What struck me wasn’t just their enthusiasm but a kindred sense of wonder: a collective pilgrimage, eager to inhabit a narrative universe for a fleeting afternoon.

“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.”
— Anaïs Nin

Set-jetting is more than fandom. It’s a bridging of inner and outer worlds. I’ve seen this in Iceland, where Game of Thrones and Star Wars brought crowds to the alien solitude of black beaches and glacier tongues, their eyes reflecting awe—and sometimes even tears. In these moments, travelers aren’t just tourists with selfie sticks. They’re adventurers chasing the residue of story, hunting for the overlap of their own imagination with the living world.

Cinema’s Ripple Effect on Destinations

The numbers are wild: each time a show or film goes viral, local tourism surges. After Crazy Rich Asians, Singapore’s food markets and sky-high infinity pools brimmed with couples reenacting on-screen romance. Northern Ireland’s Dark Hedges became an Instagram beacon. Even lesser-known locations—like the moody Scottish highlands revived by Outlander, or tiny villages in South Korea thanks to K-dramas—find themselves orbited by global devotees, eager to breathe in the same air as their favorite characters.

For locals, this spotlight is double-edged. There’s pride in sharing a place curated by cinema, but challenges too—overcrowding, eroded paths, transformed daily rhythms. Still, in most places I’ve visited, there’s a palpable sense of celebration: the surreal joy of seeing your humble street or wild coastline transformed into a legend, woven into the wider tapestry of pop culture.

Immersive Magic: When a Set Becomes a Memory

Zipping through the roads outside Albuquerque, the desert heat shimmering in Breaking Bad blue, I realized how set-jetting isn’t just about the photo ops. It’s about walking the thin line between fiction and reality, letting the magic of another’s vision infuse your own story. On Skellig Michael, off Ireland’s coast, the wind thrashed the sea—and there I stood, half-expecting a hooded Jedi to emerge among the ruins as seen in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The secret? The thrill is never just in the seeing. It’s in feeling your world grow larger, your senses stretched by the brush with the cinematic and surreal.

How to Set-Jet Meaningfully

Wander with intention, I always say. Use the show or film as a compass, but let yourself detour into the unknown. In the Scottish Highlands, I chased Outlander to its dramatic outcrops, but found true magic among mist-laden lochs with no TV credit. In Paris, following the footsteps of Emily in Paris, I stumbled into an alley where old men played pétanque and the air smelled like roasted chestnuts—an unscripted scene better than any streaming hit.

Set-jetting isn’t escapism; it’s expansion. It’s transforming the passive act of watching and turning it into movement, curiosity, connection—with the world, with yourself, and with the millions who’ve been touched by the same stories. As the credits roll and the screen fades to black, the real adventure begins—somewhere, out there, waiting for us to step inside the frame.

Marco Santiago — Writing from lands both real and imagined.