10/16/2026
Season 5 is worse than I remembered
So, I just started re-watching the whole show from the beginning since it's been years and with the intent of finally watching Seven Kings Must Die once I'm all caught up. Until season 3 the series was as good as I remembered if not even better. I watched season 4 and was amazed at how many things made no sense toward the end with the siege of Wi******er and all.
The Danes just taking over the most fortified city of Wessex in 5 minutes or something, king Edward charging the gate with his cavalry, having some sort of meltdown when that doesn't work(I cringed a bit at the scene with him screaming, NGL). The whole plan of "Let's take Wi******er and see how it goes from there" that still somehow worked for Sigtryggr. Not the end of the world of course but kind of silly writing there if you ask me. Oh yeah Haesten is also still around at that point for..some reason. Anyways.
Enter season 5. My rant begins here, so if you continue reading this, you have been warned.
Apparently it's been what, 25-30 years since the start of the show? Half the characters look almost the same. Still, no biggie for me, I can live with that. Toward the end of the first episode the show pulls its favorite "trick", the "army arrives out of nowhere and takes over a city in under 10 minutes", and it's Brida of course, still here because the show has ran out of big, bad Dane villains at this point apparently. Also, the whole Icelandic vikings/cultist uruk-hai wannabe followers of her with the furs and the white paint was somewhat off-putting to me, I just told myself at that point that this is Hollywood and vikings should always be fur-wearing paint-faced barbarians. Moving on.
So Brida has this huge grudge against Uhtred for..letting her be taken as a slave instead of killing her(and her unborn child at the time btw who she now loves). Also because, you know, death to all Saxons and all that. She also hates Sigtryggr, literally the man who saved her from slavery, because he dared not make ALL her wishes come true in the previous season, how dare he?! So she takes over his city, kills some, imprisons some, the works. She lets him live of course, maybe as an act of mercy, maybe to torture him..who knows. She tells him "Bring me Uhtred", like he wouldn't come anyway just to save his daughter, right? It's not like Brida knows how Uhtred thinks at all, they barely know each other. You know how it is.
Still, so far I was feeling a bit out of my waters but alright.
The second major plot so far is Aethelflaed dying but of course won't tell Uhtred because it will make him worry, better have him think that the love of his life doesn't give two s**ts about him instead as he's off to another battle. What could go wrong? Also, you know, because at this point the characters need to make bad, out of character decisions for the plot to move forward I'm assuming.
Back to Brida, she somehow knows that Stiorra is hidden and watching from..somewhere(?) so she's executing women left and right to draw her out, screaming Stiorra's name like some cartoon villain from the 90's. We're also shown some things happening in Wi******er and the side-plot with Aelfwynn being a teenager..eh, whatever.
So Stiorra finally comes out to save the women that Brida hasn't killed yet and as she does so there's this guy, Sigtryggr's second in command or whatever, who keeps screaming at her "Stiorra, don't cross her!" and "Stiorra, don't fight her!". Dude, she just came out of hiding, shut the F up, what are you talking about? At this point she's dead anyways, a duel is literally her only chance to survive this. That, or of course remaining hidden, but so much for that one. Remember, bad choices to move the plot forward once again.
Duel starts, Stiorra is losing, good guys of course arrive in perfect timing to let out the captives as the baddies are distracted watching the duel. The captives charge at the baddies while totally unarmed, of course they win with minimal casualties a few moments later. The fight sequences are alright I guess, for a Netflix show.
Moving on, in one scene Uhtred is fighting Brida, in the very next scene Brida is away talking to her daughter..I guess Uhtred went to grab a coffee or something, it's been a hard day going through ancient Roman pipes or whatever. Brida tells her daughter to hide and 30 seconds later she has somehow climbed atop a church, cause she couldn't find another place to hide I guess? Then calls for her mother to save her(so much for hiding) and Brida tell her to JUMP CAUSE SHE WILL CATCH HER. Jesus! Little girl jumps and, huge surprise, dies. Brida loses the battle and carries her daughter's body as her men retreat.
And that's when I stopped watching, after asking my own screen about 10 times while 8 minutes into the third episode the same question: "WHY?"
I swear, half the things I'm watching in this season are making no sense. It feels like the characters are doing random things left and right just so something happens. There's a bunch of minor things I didn't mention, like how the black priest owes money to Edward's father in law out of pure coincidence, or how the burhs refused to offer Uhtred help in retaking Eoferwic because some random guy told them that the king ordered it. Couldn't father Pyrlig just go and talk to them as the king's representative? Come on.
I don't know if I will finish season 5, for the life of me I didn't remember it getting this bad.
End of rant. I hope some of that made sense. It's not GOT season 8 bad, but it's still far from acceptable for me.
P.S There's also the black priest and the deaf girl just appearing out of nowhere and doing..well, not much at all, they're just around it's a Netflix show after all. It was the least of my concerns.
