wait.



wait..



this fucking show isnt over yet?

like about once every 2 weeks i say 'holy shit i never even finished vikings i gotta get on that' because i honestly thought it ended like in summer.

i loved this show without reservation for like 2... maybe 3 seasons but it got soooooooo fuuuuucking baaaaad.

it turned into one of those shows where they basically keep you on the hook with endless 'omg this is going to be amazing' plot pivots that are immediately abandoned because (i assume) actually executing something interesting competently would expose how totally mismanaged the core plot arc is.

at least i have an excuse to blow it off another 8 weeks or whatever so i can just binge it all in an evening, which sounds really indulgent until you realize ill be fast forwarding through 70% of it.

Jokes on you they released all the episodes at once. Something weird between Amazon and History channel. Maybe something to do with the spin-off.

For unknown reasons they also did the split seasons thing for few seasons instead of calling them separate seasons. So the release ended up being season 6b.

I'm on the 2nd episode and yea it's something that runs in the background or gets heavily fast forwarded.

well shit looks like i get to close this chapter of my life sooner than expected.

if there was some material benefit to it i would definitely create a spreadsheet of which writers departed after which series because i bet it would explain a lot.

ok im halfway through the first ep of season 6 and i have two thoughts:

lagarthas wig makes her look like a fucking drag queen.

absolutely everyone overacts in every single scene.

like not to disrespect bjorn ironside or anything but his head looks like a pingpong ball.

Yea acting/writing is pretty bad for the most part. Last 2 episodes are decent, but it doesn't really have too much to do with the writing. It just made it feel like it wasn't a complete waste of time.

Mostly about EP 11-20. I can't really remember too much what happened in the first half of season 6.

yeah i actually was too lazy to fast forward through the recap and was stunned at how much shit happened that i totally spaced on.

like i absolutely 100% forgot rhys meyers had a central role. also i appreciate that the russian prince oleg was a historically important figure but i miss the days when characters werent comic book characters. like can you imagine how out of place ecbert would be, now?

anyway whatever its a soap opera and ill be finishing it soon and 3 cheers for closure i guess.

there is still time for floki to convert to islam so im not willing to yeet this shit into the trash yet.

also minor but irritating; suddenly everyones building hipster log cabins instead of actual viking homes and thats killing me a little every time i see it.

ive got a handful of eps left and the good news is they really all showed up for this last season, and the bad news is some of the most important moments driving the plot arcs are fucking ludicrous.

looking at uhbu and like 30 other people fleeing to boats with no food/water because literally 2 vikings are going berzerker.

ssssoooooooooo ok like

spoilers obv and yes i need to install the spoiler bbcode shit..


this could hve been a much much bigger disaster. honestly it really wasnt much of a disaster at all. there are 2 things that really got under my fucking skin tho, 3 if you count the boat shit.

1) they realllllllly pussied out on floki's arc. they had set up all these absolutely incredible directions for it to move in. his flirtation with islam (brief, albeit), being possibly discovered and saved by the christians who also lived on iceland (that were bizarrely excluded from the show but who 100% had extensive contact with the viking settlement there). these were really remarkable places floki could have gone, and would have been historically accurate, and interesting. but instead hes 'the crazy guy' in oregon. ok... ok whatever.

2) ivar's final resting place was discovered in england (nothing is certain but scholars are pretty enthusiastic about it being his grave). popular opinion is... he died of the fucking flu. im sorry but this is honestly a much more interesting end than 'oh he fell in battle'.

bonus grouse: i feel like ragnar warping ivar into a mass murderer is never really properly explained. ragnar didnt even really want to be earl iirc. bossman schemed on him so things just kinda happened. so its weird that we went from that to ragnar telling his youngest son in the final moments of his life to get out there and do hood shit. "be ruthless." really tho? wheres that coming from exactly?

also the prince oleg shit was retarded and breaking bad already did the turn-the-idiot-against-the-smart-guy trope so honestly meh.

but yeah fuck it i mean, shit had its moments. i especially liked the way it kinda unwound the principle characters. the writers did really good work there.

might fuck around and hate on more shit later but really, this whole ass show has a special place in my heart.

[/spoiler]

Yea it could have been much worse. For me Floki living was enough of a payoff. They obv hinted that for like 5 episodes.

Season 4 was when the decline started. I think if the show was made today they would have wrapped Ragnar arc to 3 seasons and that would have been a really solid series. The way they milked this for 6 seasons had them patching 3 series worth of stuff into one. All with different tone and pacing.

But yea the end was a masterpiece compared to GoT or Westworld. I don't even know if Westworld is over, but it should be.

yeah it 100% stuck the landing and whats so surprising is that i didnt even really feel that way when the credits ran, but having had time to reflect, that show earned my respect many, many times over and i feel like even tho the ending wasnt entirely to my liking, it more than holds its own.

also the fact that so much of the end was somehow burnt into the final hours of season 4 is frankly a bit impressive. they really did tell us; ivar was ragnars favorite son, and he was going to do some mad shit. and i recall not really believing it because ivar was somehow such a fringe character.

you know.. im going to enjoy rewatching this shit someday i think.