Vikings season 6 renewal official at History, weeks after evidence hit web

Today, we bring you the official Vikings season 6 renewal news that was actually first brought you at CarterMatt many weeks ago. The only difference is that it’s now 100% official, and we know the episode order to go along with it. Just like with seasons 4 and 5, the sixth season of the show is going to run for a whopping 20 episodes! We don’t know how showrunner Michael Hirst gets any sleep and still has any creative juice left in the tank after doing that many stories a year, but we are thrilled by it since this is easily one of our favorite shows on television. This is an ambitious, and time-consuming show, but somehow the folks involved continue to find a way to pull it off.

Today, History did confirm the news of the show’s renewal in a new statement, one in which they of course had nothing but super-positive things to say about both the series itself and some of the people in it. Here is what History’s president off programming Eli Lehrer had to say on that subject:

“[Creator] Michael Hirst has only scratched the surface of his epic saga … We look forward to continuing our partnership with one of the greatest writers in this era of Peak TV and entertaining our viewers with 40 new episodes over the next two seasons.”

The idea of a Vikings season 6 renewal isn’t all that strange or unexpected when you think about the show’s performance. This is consistently one of the strongest scripted programs on basic cable, and it routinely performs well both in terms of total viewers and also adults 18-49. One of the things that is actually even more impressive than anything is its ability to maintain some of these numbers when you consider all of the different changes behind the scenes. There have been many additions and departures, including original series star Travis Fimmel last season, and somehow this show just keeps rolling. It didn’t really suffer any ratings loss at all after Fimmel left the scene, and hopefully this is a trend that continues when the sixth season finally premieres a little bit later this fall.

The big question right now is whether or not the fifth season (kicking off November. 29) is going to take another extended break midway through the season similar to how the fourth season did. It’s an interesting concept to consider, especially when you stop and think for a moment about just when that could make the sixth season come out. The earliest we could see it is in 2018, though with their current airing timeline we wouldn’t be altogether shocked if the show doesn’t air this season until 2019. As for whether or not it is the final season, there’s no talk of that at this point and we secretly hope this show will never end.

What do you think about the official Vikings season 6 renewal and episode count? Let us know in the CarterMatt comments section below! (Photo: History)