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I only just round to finishing off season 6. I used to watch the episodes asap. The show has descended into the characters doing dumb things to create tension.

King Olaf occupies Harald's kingdom and holds him captive. Bjorn goes to rescue Harald but is beaten. Olaf is now all powerful but decides to hold an election for who is to be king. Harald wins so now Olaf is Harald's prisoner. And Harald now wants to kill Bjorn. Someone should have given Michael Hirst a slap when he came up with this garbage.

Bjorn - instead of giving Hvitserk a slow painful death for murdering his mother he banished him. This is totally unrealistic, especially after how it worked out when he did the same with White Hair a short time ago. I mean, he's stupid but not this stupid.

You lose the care factor for the characters when the plot is this dodgy.
 
Oct 23, 2014
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He made this show until Hirst wrote one of the clumsiest declines for a lead character. Since he left the show has never recovered.
Yeah it feels like it jumped the shark a bit. I didn't understand why he handed himself over if he was going to be executed.
 
Oct 9, 2006
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I only just round to finishing off season 6. I used to watch the episodes asap. The show has descended into the characters doing dumb things to create tension.

King Olaf occupies Harald's kingdom and holds him captive. Bjorn goes to rescue Harald but is beaten. Olaf is now all powerful but decides to hold an election for who is to be king. Harald wins so now Olaf is Harald's prisoner. And Harald now wants to kill Bjorn. Someone should have given Michael Hirst a slap when he came up with this garbage.

Bjorn - instead of giving Hvitserk a slow painful death for murdering his mother he banished him. This is totally unrealistic, especially after how it worked out when he did the same with White Hair a short time ago. I mean, he's stupid but not this stupid.

You lose the care factor for the characters when the plot is this dodgy.
The producers of this series tried to get as close as they could to historical truth, but they said themselves it was very difficult, Ragnar Lodbrook may or may not have been historical but, he was someone or a mix of other Vikings with big reputations , but they made sagas about him so he was somebody , Bjorn, Hvitserk, Ubbe, Ivar and others connected to them were historical, but the Rus never invaded Scandinavia, but Vikings or Viking Rus began Russia and mixed together over centuries with Slavic people they helped create Belarus, Ukraine some of Russia.
Strange how you learn things when hunting info about Vikings where most of the time you see them in your head as raiders of British Isles and down the western coast of Europe and all the way into the Mediterranean. As well as some of the east and north Africa, .

But I got to say , Russia always a curiosity and appears to have been settled and developed by different raider from Scandinavia joining with Slacic tribes of the region. My interest is always heightened when history is involved. The Viking series tried and gave a pretty good look at how things happened in those times, but no one can be dead set sure about all of it. Only that Normans in France were descendants of Vikings.
But the end of Vikings was a bit dissappointing? Bjorn dead I guess? Harald Finehair dead? Beach-head established by Rus, not really close historically. I had read in the past that Bjorn Ironside was King of Norway, Ivar ruled for a time somewhere in north Britain or Ireland?
But you need to delve into the best info you can get to find the closest and most reliable stuff about the Vikings.
Great sailors, deadly fighters, good farmers. Built fast boats, and operated through different river systems in Europe trading as well as pillaging up those rivers.
Much bigger influence the Scandinavian countries on our Western History.

Even the Russians are Westerners! hah.
 
I only just got around to catching up on the last season of this, only to find that there will be ten more. I don't think I can do it. Not a single thing made sense over the course of that season. I have no idea why anyone does anything.
 
Oct 14, 2005
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I only just got around to catching up on the last season of this, only to find that there will be ten more. I don't think I can do it. Not a single thing made sense over the course of that season. I have no idea why anyone does anything.
You're not the only one giving up after that pointless mess.
 
Will watch the end just to see it.

The Last Kingdom is better.
I might just read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia, like I've done with the Walking Dead. Or rather, like I meant to do with the Walking Dead, but never got around to.

The Last Kingdom got a bit wobbly in the last season too though, people doing stupid things purely to move the plot along, but for all that it's vastly better then what Vikings has become.
 
Oct 9, 2006
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I only just round to finishing off season 6. I used to watch the episodes asap. The show has descended into the characters doing dumb things to create tension.

King Olaf occupies Harald's kingdom and holds him captive. Bjorn goes to rescue Harald but is beaten. Olaf is now all powerful but decides to hold an election for who is to be king. Harald wins so now Olaf is Harald's prisoner. And Harald now wants to kill Bjorn. Someone should have given Michael Hirst a slap when he came up with this garbage.

Bjorn - instead of giving Hvitserk a slow painful death for murdering his mother he banished him. This is totally unrealistic, especially after how it worked out when he did the same with White Hair a short time ago. I mean, he's stupid but not this stupid.

You lose the care factor for the characters when the plot is this dodgy.
I think the last season went into panic mode because the rest was brilliant, but the King Harald and Norway, the historical Bjorn I read, was supposed to have eventually become King of Norway, after many viking travels into the Mediterranean, although these TV shows try to make the history as close as possible , they really failed in this last one? But the first lot were excellent.

It appears that from what I saw of Bjorn and Ivar on the beach at the end, that Ivar killed Bjorn, or the prophecy was being dreamt about, it never really gave any ending to the Rus going back to Scandinavia or back to Russia, Harald Finehair I thought came into the show a few seasons back as the King of Norway???

I wonder if they ran out of ideas or had to rush the finish or lack of money, like the UK show Mad Dogs which I watched religiously but the ending was so bloody empty, and confusing.
Perhaps they need to stop this thing of leaving viewers high and dry like Alfred Hitchcock could do in the past, but maybe go back to actually giving some satisfaction of a result so to speak. At least Pschyco explained itself in the end!

The Sopranos? Some say was the only way it could end, well maybe ?

I still question it, and I really think leaving it up to your audience is like when the star rock singer tells everyone in the crowd to sing along, that is of great annoyance to me.

The Sopranos still rings empty from that last bit, and I have no idea what happened maybe all are dead, who knows, maybe they thought they may resurrect it down the track, that show was the best thing I think I've ever watched, brilliant performances, but the black screen nearly had me throw a brick through the TV set, ha ha !

Vikings last season, bad stuff up folks.
 
Oct 14, 2005
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Why? Amazon Prime is amazing value and then you get excellent video streaming thrown in.
Because every other season has been shown on SBS, and people were rightly expecting the same of the final season?

Maybe SBS thought that the last season was unmitigated garbage, and very few (if any) of their viewers would care to see how it ends. Can't blame them if that's the case. I, for one, have watched every season to now - but have zero interest in the final season.
 
Because every other season has been shown on SBS, and people were rightly expecting the same of the final season?

Maybe SBS thought that the last season was unmitigated garbage, and very few (if any) of their viewers would care to see how it ends. Can't blame them if that's the case. I, for one, have watched every season to now - but have zero interest in the final season.
It's got nothing to do with SBS.
The show airs on The History Channel in the US, and now it's moved to Amazon for the final half season. It will most likely still air on SBS, but I'm assuming after the initial release on Amazon Prime.
 
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