Vikings season 5 premiere review: Lagertha’s mistake with King Harald
Lagertha’s mistake
When we last saw Lagertha, she was ruling over Kattegut, but there are numerous snakes that are slithering around looking for the right time to usurp her – including King Harald who is planing to return to Kattegat and push his agenda to be the king of Norway. When Harald shows up in Kattegat he delivers the news that Bjorn avenged the death of Ragnar and that they have land for future settlement. She confronts him about his attempts so usurp her and he freely admits it leaving her with a few different choices on how to deal with him. She decides to imprison him to find out why he did what he did and he tells Lagertha about the woman he loved, his mission to become king to marry her, her betrayal by marrying someone else and no he no longer wants to be king of Norway. He offers her an alliance and protection in exchange for marriage… and for some reason she decides to have sex with him before leaving him chained up. It was a very strange scene and while we get what they were going for with this (her power over him in every way), it didn’t seem like something she would choose to do. Her decisions (like not killing Harald) are making some of her shield maidens start to question her decision making – unrest is brewing.
Later Harald is freed by his men, capture Astrid and flees. What’s his end game? He still plans to become king of all Norway and he offers Astrid the chance to be Queen of Norway. Is she really going to betray Lagertha? We have seen her sleep with Bjorn (which was super weird), so it’s possible that she will take this deal. It’s mostly interesting that Harald has proposed marriage to like 20 women and no one is willing to be his wife, not even if he’s the king of Norway.
Ragnar’s sons
Ivar in in some deep you-know-what with his brothers after he let his temper get the best of him and put an ax into his brother Sigurd for relentlessly teasing him in front of everyone. We’ve been very curious to see how his brothers are going to deal with this situation since in one way they understand Ivar being completely over Sigurd’s sharp tongue, but on the other hand he not only killed their brother, but it showed that the brothers are not united in front of their army. Ivar explains that he didn’t mean to kill him (maybe just injure him) and apologizes in a way that only Ivar would – by saying sorry, but putting the blame on Sigurd for getting himself into this situation in the first place.
Bjorn is still planning on heading out to the Mediterranean and suggests not letting Ivar be in charge of their army, but if not Ivar than who? These brothers are divided! Ubbe and Hvitserk are a bit afraid of Ivar, so when he has a plan to take over another town, they agree. After seeing what a brilliant strategist he is, listening to Ivar isn’t the worst plan in the world, but watching them kill everyone in the church was shockingly violent – even for a show like Vikings. It really showed us how different the killing and pillaging is with Ivar in charge… it’s brutal, ruthless and will likely give us nightmares tonight. Also, watching Ivar find a way to walk was pretty amazing and makes him a lot scarier in our opinion.
How Bishop Heahmund fits in
First off we want to say how extremely excited we have been to have Jonathan Rhys Meyers on this show. If you haven’t seen his performance on the Tudors you should definitely check that out. No one plays a deeply conflicted character quite like Meyers and Bishop Heahmund is more conflicted than most. He’s a deeply religious man, who can’t control his earthly desires, but wants to do right by God – there’s going to be a lot to unpack with him. He’s been brought in to help gain control of the chaos that the vikings have caused and rebuild what has been destroyed, but his first mission was to find King Ecbert’s body and give him a proper funeral. He later learns that Aethelwulf is king and that the grant of land to the vikings that Ecbert had written up before he died is worthless – unbeknownst to Ragnar’s sons.
Ragnar’s sons may have taken the town (and are building reinforcements), they don’t realize that Heahmund is getting ready to take the town back and Aethelwulf (and what’s left of his army) is joining him on this mission.
Are we losing Floki?
After everything that has happened, he’s decided to build a one man boat and sail off into the unknown, but Ivar feels that his brothers are too soft and that without Floki they will lose this war. Really, Ivar just doesn’t feel that he has anyone on his side except Floki and his heart is broken that he’s losing him – and our heart is broken watching them say goodbye. Kicked us right in the gut. So far his journey seems to be leading him towards death as he loses the wind for many days and is later caught in a storm. Eventually his boat washes ashore, and he sets up camp, but where is he? After resting and regaining a bit of his strength he sets out to see where he is, but with all the visions he’s having we are worried about him making it out of this alive.
Is Floki gone for good from the show or will we continue to see his adventures? We know from his IMDB page that Gustaf Skarsgard has a role coming up on the next season of Westworld, but we feel that he’s still going to have an important role on this season. We can’t see Vikings taking away Ragnar and then making us lose Floki so soon after – it’s just too cruel!
CarterMatt’s over all thoughts
After such an intense season 4 finale, we expected the Vikings season 5 premiere to focus on the aftermath and give us a map of where all the different parties are at this point – and that’s exactly what we got tonight. Not only did we get the set up of all our characters and what their next step is, but we were introduced to some new players as well. Of course this wouldn’t be an episode of Vikings if there wasn’t even a small battle scene and the one we got was pretty intense. This premiere was well worth the wait!
What did you think of the Vikings season 5 premiere and what do you want to see happen this season? Leave us a comment in the box below and share your thoughts. If you want more scoop on what’s coming up on Vikings, just head on over to the link here to check out a preview for episode 2.
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