This show has stopped making sense. To wit:
1) Lagertha, shield-maiden to the core, suddenly comes down with
pacifism-fever and decides to "retire to the country", instead of staying with
her son in his first kingship, and helping steer her tribe. This is inconsistent with her character. What happened to her? The fact that her short-term squeeze Bishop Heahmund was killed in a battle? How long were they together? This makes no sense. She abandons her sons at a critical time, and worse--she retires "to the countryside", alone, with no one to protect her? A Viking queen left alone in the country? I doubt real Viking sons would even let her do that. And a "shield maiden" turning all pacifist and burying her sword? Nope.
2) Ivar and Oleg: why on Earth is Oleg so smitten by Ivar? Why is Ivar so good with kids all of a sudden? Why is the young princeling not traumatized to see his own father die in front of him, but is playing the lute and enjoying magic tricks that very afternoon? Why are the Kievan Rus Christian already, and wearing Mongol uniforms? How on EARTH could Oleg guess what his brother would ask, or that he would ask, to test Oleg's "seer" power? This whole storyline is so padded out. Basically Oleg is supposed to be a type of Viking (true enough), and so he wants to go back to Scandinavia and "reclaim" what he feels is his, with Ivar as his puppet. OK, INVADE already! No, they're padding it out for some big battle at the end, when Ivar will meet up with Hvitserk or something. Speaking of whom...
3) Why is Hvitserk so traumatized? I thought these were VIKINGS? He lost his woman and children to Ivar---so get angry. Instead he drinks, and even takes hallucinogens to...dream up horrific visions of Ivar...coming after him?? That makes no sense. If anything, IVAR should be having the nightmares, because those visions are ones of hate and revenge; Ivar is evil, but he doesn't have a vendetta against Hvitserk; just the opposite. Worse, they pad out Hvitserk's pathetic condition for many episodes. He finally hallucinates the "seer" who gives him an impossibly cryptic message that even a sober person can't figure out, much less a mush-head like Hvitserk. Thanks a lot!
4) Bjorn: why is he not getting council about what to do about saving Harald?
Estrogen-poisoning? His brothers Hvitserk and Ubbe just shrug their shoulders, saying, essentially, "sucks to be king!" What? So instead, Bjorn gets terrible advice from Lagertha on how to deal with Ivar's former guard, and instead of killing them, brands them as exiles...FOUR of them. And of course these 4 "exiles", who will be "worse than dead", since nobody would want to deal with them...suddenly...
5) gather an ARMY to attack Lagertha in her country home. What? So branding these traitors is not enough to prevent them from gathering loyal soldiers to attack Lothbrok & co? Are you kidding me? This is not explained. We are not shown how the traitor leader bribed a bunch of thieves or anything. He just appears with enough soldiers to try and sack Lagertha's village (now conveniently filled with enough people --women, of course--to put up a fight and actually fight them off). So what happens after they are fought off. They come back for MORE! Wow, branding them in the face as "untouchables" really made no difference! They're like knights, able to recruit fresh soldiers! Well, at least this terrible decision to "let them go" falls back on Lagertha, and that little boy, who's either Bjorn's or Ubbe's, I can't tell which, because neither father seems to know or is mourning him.
6) So Bjorn does the "right" thing and goes to rescue Harald from Olaf. He tries to invade by sneaking in from the water, but lo and behold, Olaf employs "Greek Fire" (first used by Eastern Roman Empire) and wards them off. But then, Olaf gets a parley session with Olaf, and Olaf, who in previous episodes seemed paranoid and mercurial, ready to kill Harald at a moment's notice, for fear of threatening his claim on the throne, suddenly, and inexplicably, turns into some Periclean consul who decides to first, suggest Bjorn should become King of Norway (what's Olaf king of, anyway?), and then, agrees to an actual legitimate "election", which Harald Finehair eventually wins. OK, so Bjorn is...mad? They glare at each other, back and forth, dozens of times. And why would Olaf agree to crown Finehair king, knowing that his own head would be on the chopping block for imprisoning him? Why is Bjorn all sullen? He did not go there to be elected King of Norway; he went there to rescue a comrade who helped him out. The ridiculous back-and-forth cutting from the voting scene to Lagertha's country scene made no sense. Switching scenes like that only makes sense if the scenes are closely related, so that what is happening in real time in one place will affect what happens in another place, without that other place knowing what is going on. Terrible direction.
7) Lagertha's fight with the outcast, where he breaks her shield into a 1/4th its size, and disarms her is in SLOW MOTION. Lagertha receives a crushing blow to the back by the outcast's axe, but she keeps taunting and fighting the man, who finally comes down with the final kill stroke, and Lagertha dies. Oh wait, NOOO...can't have that. She musters her strength and uses the splinters of her wooden shield to stab him in the neck, while disarming him of his sword and slicing his throat. Give ...me...a...break. If she's such a badass shield maiden, then show WHY she is. Don't let her win a battle based on 11th hour luck! Show her training with a new technique, such as perhaps a metal wire, and then she climbs on his back and slices his neck with the metal wire--something original like that. No, she kills him with a broken shield, basically. God awful and totally unconvincing, and manipulative also--to put the entire scene in slow motion.
8) Ivar and the little Russian prince decide to "play a practical joke on Dir" (Oleg's chained up brother). Dir had previously promised Ivar riches if he freed him from the cage. So here's the plan:
-get Dir's wife to agree to get naked, and walk into an armed garrison, and slowly walk around to distract the guards. They won't chase her and seize her; they will simply slowly follow her, mesmerized, while Ivar and the boy free Dir.
Now here's the "magic": Dir's wife manages to escape the armed guards, exits the compound, where she is, fully-clothed, in the company of several armed knights, who then take Dir (from where??) onto the horse, and he escapes.
So what is the "practical joke" on Dir? Why did Ivar really free him, risking his own life by the paranoid, gifted, and brutal Oleg? Perhaps Ivar doesn't want to be a puppet, okay. But what is terrible is: how does Dir's wife make it out of the compound, and how does Dir himself make it out to rendezvous with them? Makes no sense. The viewer is treated like a dummy.
9) What's with the subplot of Bjorn's maid? The first scene where Grunhilde spots her looking at her man, and she tells her that "I'm sorry you feel that way" , but then says, "go on".. Go on? Go on as in "go back to your duties", or "go on and keep courting my husband"? Because she does the latter, shamelessly, and Bjorn inexplicably lays with her, even though he and Grunhilde are not having problems. Stupid, worthless plot going nowhere.
We paid for the show, so we'll watch it. But I just wanted to give my 2 cents to say exactly why this show really sucks. I'm not even talking about the loss of charisma of main characters Ragnar, Rollo, or Ecbert. I'm talking about the show making absolutely no sense, padding out sterile stories that go nowhere and have zero development, and characters acting inconsistently. The dialog
is lazy and uninteresting, the episodes lack all tension, and there are even cringey PC moments (showing Lagertha's all-female "army" working together and later, 2 female Vikings duking it out in a market). Bjorn is a big disappointment, because last season, he seemed, compared to Ubbe, Ivar and Hvitserk, like the only "real adult". But now he seems like a fool. Offa's motivation is completely unclear--giving up power for what? Letting his prisoner become king? And I'm just sick of Ivar--this guy just survives and yet does not have any real charm or wiles to offer Oleg. There are many, many illogical moments with this show (for example, when an "election" is broached to Olaf, and he agrees, the next scene shows dozens of jarls and earls and kings coming to his shores--this would take weeks, but we are not show any passage of time whatsoever). Oh, and Floki--they left him buried in some cave deadfall, but we don't know if he's dead. His entire arc as some disappointed prophet, eventually allowing total carnage on his island (even though he's a badass who could have organized a good defense, and put Flatnose in his place), was disappointing to say the least. The best scene of Floki was when he was glad that Ragnar said he loved him. That's it. I don't even care if Floki appears again. Why?
This show is so done. I'm enjoying "The Last Kingdom", which is much more tightly written, has much better tension, action, humor in every show. Vikings has suffered the fate of many good shows--the writers are afraid to show how its great characters are human (and interesting), so instead they start to show them as semi-deified, enlightened beings. Thus Lagertha talks like she's Queen Elizabeth I, instead of a grizzled Viking mom. Bjorn talks like an indecisive pacifist farmer, instead of a hard-bitten warrior who kills his enemies. This show is just stupid and pathetic.
46 out of 65 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
