That’s interesting. I have yet to do my rewatch but isn’t her first born Jarl Borg’s? She didn’t lose the baby, did she? I know she’s older than Ubbe but she might have been only 14 or 15 when she first got married off. I’m not sure if they ever mentioned just how old she was.

 

She had a son with Jarl Borg. You are right, she could have been 15 or so when she was married to Borg. Their son was killed in battle in season 5 I think?

 

I can’t remember myself. I thought Torvi must have been very young cause often girls at that time were married off as soon as they could bear children.

 

Wow, I completely forgot all of that.

 

I am deep into season 3 of my re-watch and I'm still amazed at some of the story line I had forgotten! I'm glad I am doing this now, that way come the 30th it will all tie up nicely (I hope!).

 

Ok I’m finished my rewatch and simply refuse to believe that Ivar killed Bjorn. Bring on Wednesday.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Binged it all. What did y’all think? I was fairly satisfied with each characters story ending. If you want to discuss it in detail we can put it under spoiler tags for those who will be waiting to see it on the History Channel.

 

I watched two episodes last night - will finish the rest tonight I hope! I'll admit I was disappointed with the outcome in episode one. I am curious about Prince Oleg's end game though!

 

Happy New Year!!!

Well I finished. Wasn’t what I expected.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Happy New Year to you!

I can’t say it wasn’t what I expected because I had no ideas about how they were going to tie up all the loose ends *shrugs shoulders* but I did raise an eyebrow over the majority of the characters coming to the end that they did.

 

I wasn’t sure what to expect but that wasn’t it!

 

I haven't started yet. Finished the final season of Handmaid's Tale and then started "To the Lake" on Netflix. Seeing the lackluster comments here doesn't make me extremely motivated to watch, but I'll begin it this week. Don't think I'll get through it as quickly as both of you though. I'll be back when I've seen the first episode or two.

 

I've watched the first 3 episodes so far. My initial thoughts are that it's fair, better than I anticipated really. But what doomed the show in recent seasons, the overemphasis on Ivar, is my biggest problem with this season.

This is probably better to binge than watch week by week. If I had watched the first 3 over 3 weeks I'd probably be more annoyed. Planning on watching 3 or 4 in a row, and then the last 3 or 4 at another point.

 

Four more down, for a total of seven episodes. Still have the final three to go.

Ivar, Ivar, Ivar

Hirst's obsession with the character ruined the show. Harald would never accept him back in. That's just a ridiculous case of twisting a character around to meet your plot.

All the good characters are dead, or marginalized (Ubbe) and we're left with the refuse that remains. It feels like Game of Thrones if Joffrey and Ramsey were the only ones standing at the end.

The way things ended in Russia was just, weird. It's like they figured let's save money on a big battle and do this ...whatever that was.

With that said the show isn't really bad, on a Game of Thrones final season level. I'm just annoyed with the path it's taken.

If the Ubbe/Torvi story ends well enough then I'll mitigate some of my criticism.

If Alfred kills Ivar in the end then that's additional bonus points.

Kattegat though feels like a lost cause. I have no hope of things working out well there.

 

Just finished this series and am glad there are people here discussing it. I originally discovered this series not long after it started (believe only the first season was out on dvd at that point) and while it seemed cool I didn't want to start up another show where I would have to wait a whole year inbetween seasons so decided to wait until more seasons came out. Then I just forgot about it for several years until I heard it was finishing up so decided to start watching it then.

I really, really enjoyed the first four to five seasons. I think it really dropped off quite a bit in the last season and a half or so but overall the series was still pretty good. I thought it was cool that it was a political type of show like Game of Thrones but without all the fantasy elements that Thrones had and it dealt with many characters that were real historical figures.

For me this show was at its best when it stayed at least loosely tied to real history. Of course since this was supposed to take place in the 800's there would still be lots of things that we would never know and they would have to make many things up but I think the show was at its best when it was depicting locations getting raided that we know really got raided at that point in time. And we know that the Great Heathen Army really did invade England during the 800's and the first three to four seasons depicted the process of that invasion.

But then during seasons 5 and 6 when they showed Ivar going to Russia and Ubbe heading on his way to eventually getting to North America the show really lost focus. For starters the whole idea of one of Ragnar's 'supposed' sons going to America was just silly as we know the Vikings didn't go to America until well after Ragnar's sons would have lived. We know that Ivar the Boneless focused pretty much all his campaigns around Ireland and England and there is no proof whatsoever that he went anywhere near Russia. Of all the Vikings characters in the show Ivar is probably the one that they have the most evidence for as being a real person and nothing at all says that he went anywhere but Ireland and England. It almost seemed like they ended up getting more seasons than they were planning for so they had to come up with a couple plot points out of left field in order to fill up the episode count. THe final couple episodes did get a little bit better as they went back to basing it loosely on real history as we know that Alfred really did have to go into hiding and the big battle he had with the Vikings did take place at the location the show said it did. Ivar of course didn't have anything to do with that battle but since they had him be the big bad of the series they would have needed him to lead that battle against Alfred.

 

I'm the last one to finish. I saw the final three episode. Although I didn't like the path taken in the last couple of seasons, I did like the final few episodes. I thought they tied things up pretty well. It's pretty unbelievable that they'd find Floki, in what I assume was New Foundland, but I still enjoyed that part. And to fade out with the two on the beach was a good final scene.

Harald's death was done well. And while I had previous reservations about the ending in Kattegat I think they pulled off the feeling that the world was moving on and evolving. So it made sense that the lesser characters were left in control of it there, being dinosaurs in a new world.

I wish we had seen more of Alfred than the whole Russian diversion. Maybe have Ivar working with Alfred's rivals and then losing that way. It'd make more sense. Also I really like his character and the show would've been stronger with more Wessex. Afterall that was so key to Ragnar early on.

Hvitserk's ending felt perfect.

This show could've been a lot more if it had stayed more focused on the primary characters and not gone off on the Russian tangent. But I was left feeling good about the series as it ended, as imperfect as it was, and sometimes that's all you can ask from a show that has been long running.

 

And actually his ending is actually based on real history as well. It wasn't Hvitserk but in real life the leader of the Heathen Army that battled Alfred was Guthrum and after he surrendered Alfred did convert him to Christianity and he did change his name to Aethelstan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guthrum

Really not sure why the show decided to go do the Russia and New World thing only to go back to what it had been doing for the first few seasons in the last couple of episodes. My guess would simply be that they had more episodes than they originally had story for as the series did up the episode count halfway through (which is why the first few seasons only had 10 episode seasons but the last few had 20 episode seasons).

 

The thing is though they could've expanded on Bjorn's story, or Ubbe's. We didn't need the whole Russian diversion. Then suddenly the whole Oleg thing ends with a whimper. It was building up to some big battle, and then nothing. The whole Ivar romance was weird too, with the illusion that she was his wife.

There was material for them to use. They could've even checked in on Rollo since it was the end of the series.

 

Interesting that you should mention Rollo since his descendants, the Normans, went on to conquer England in the 11th century from the Anglo-Saxons. Funny how things turned out. Floki was right when he told Bjorn that day they returned Rollo to Francia that he feared Rollo’s fame (through his line) would be greater than all of theirs.

 

It felt like something was left unfinished with Rollo. He was such a central character in the show. His story ended weirdly too with his return to Kattegat backing Ivar.