{AHS} Vikings’ Series Finale Review: The Last Three Sons Of Ragnar Lothbrok!

When Vikings is at its best, the show is more like poetry than prose. There’s a certain strange beauty about it that few other TV shows capture. In the final three episodes of the series, Michael Hirst and his team offer up some of the most beautiful moments we’ve ever seen in Vikings.

This is especially true of the New World—Ubbe’s “Golden Land” where he and Torvi and the rest of the refugees from Greenland strike out to explore. Majestic aerial shots of slow, wide rivers and endless forest play out over lush strings, the music and the visuals weaving together, vast and breathtaking.

On the other hand, I can’t help but think that Vikings wasted an awful lot of time getting here. I’ve been most unhappy with this show since the death of Ragnar, not because Vikings needed Ragnar to tell a quality story, but because it spent so much time not going anywhere for the past . . . . 40 episodes? Ragnar died in Season 4, Episode 15 but it was really even before his death that Vikings started to flounder.

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Maybe it was Paris. When Ragnar inexplicably just gave up on the English settlements and then started doing drugs and acting ridiculous. By the time he went back to England he could barely raise an army, so tarnished was his legacy. And while that might have been an interesting thing to explore, it felt like the show was simply writing him off to make room for all his sons—all grown up after a jarring (but 

The constant fighting and warring between brothers following Ragnar’s death were exhausting. Season 5’s two 10-episode halves were dominated by this, and much of Season 6. Diversions like the ridiculous bishop or the weird Rus storyline felt exactly like that: diversions from a meatier, more interesting story.

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I have so many questions. Why rush the Great Army storyline and then spend so much time on battles between brothers in Norway? I understand not wanting to tell the same Vikings-invade-England storyline that’s so predominant in this mythos, but I also think the show was at its best when Ragnar and King Ecbert and Athelstan were all around.

Ragnar Ecbert Vikings

Ragnar and Ecbert CREDIT: AMAZON / MGM

So many strange choices over the past 40 or so episodes. Bjorn’s voyage to the East was weirdly truncated and ultimately pointless. Lagertha’s romance with Bishop Heahmund was just . . . weird. Hvitserk’s constant battle with addiction and madness was compelling at times, but it felt like something that was never truly examined in interesting ways. 

Story threads just drop off. Far too many new characters were introduced only to be killed off right away. It became hard to keep track of all the different minor characters. Like so many shows, even with plenty of death, the cast felt bloated by the end.

Then there were the battles.

These have been consistently terrible since the early days of Vikings when war was much smaller scale than it’s become, maybe simply due to budget limitations. Maybe because the show’s creators thought battles were cool and what audiences wanted to see. We all love some the ultra-violence, sure, but we also want the fighting to make sense.

A shield wall and a small, brutal clash of arms are more interesting than these massive charges. Over and over again two huge forces rush toward one another across a field. No shield walls. No strategy (except the odd brilliant plan from Ivar) and very little seafaring combat, raids, and so forth. Norsemen spoofs this type of battle scene rather perfectly:

Norsemen is an absolutely brilliant, hilarious take on this genre. Watch it if you haven’t yet. Beyond the “I can’t hear you” gag in the above video, the way they’ve staged the battle on a huge, perfectly rectangular field surrounded by forest is on point.

Anyways.

In Vikings, the melee always devolves into pockets of fighting where we see the prowess of our heroes shine. Behold King Alfred, despite his constant illness which has been on bleak display even one episode earlier, is now a sword master, cleaving through his foes. I’ll admit that I’ve really enjoyed watching Hvitserk fight in these last few episodes. He’s a mad demon on the battlefield now, plunging from one foe to the next with joyful abandon.

But mostly these battles are tiresome affairs. I’m sure they cost a lot to film but they’re not particularly creative and once you’ve seen one grand charge between Vikings and Saxons, or Vikings and Rus, or Vikings and Vikings, you’ve seen them all. Shield walls may not be as dramatic, but they’re far more sensible. Abandoning shield walls for mad charges strikes me as arrogant and sloppy.