A good battle, but not really epic. No tactics, no special feat, only one action. They just clash and go. A little disapointing after the whole going over mountains thing.
Also it just ends there ? Feels like they lost so many more men on the first try in season 3. Why don't they just retreat and come back with a new tactic ? And on the other end why would the Franks let them go knowing they usually come back ? They could have used the chain to block and slaughter them all. Wasn't Rollo saying just before What defeat ? As long as he's not dead Ragnar is not defeated ?
Then what, 10 years pass and they just decided to kill several storylines just like that ? That's a great cliffhanger and Travis is great so I wanna see what they do with that, but come on. I don't count this stunt in my rating of the episode. I hate this kind of abandonning of current events and pausing, like nothing happened during 10 years, but all the unresolved things left in suspense will start moving on now.
1) So 10 years passed. Didn't they raid anything during that time ?
2) Aslaug is still there, probably alcoholic, nothing on letting Bjorn's daughter die ?
3) The whole Harbard thing was totally useless this season.
4) Aethelwulf and Alfred going to Rome, was there a point ? What about when he learns of Kwentrith's death ?
5) What about Harald that wanted to be king ? 10 years without Ragnar and nothing ?
6) The Frank king knows about Roland and gets rid of him and his sister. How did that happen ? And so this lead nowhere, they were just a plot device to replace Odo by Rollo.
7) In the end, there was almost no impact of Ragnar's addiction. Unless he's still a junkie but it does not look like it. Another whole useless arc.
8) As the child is dead now, I guess we'll never see Porunn again
9) Floki and the seer ? On hold for 10 years ?
10) The Wessex settlement. In 12 years, nobody bothered to go and check or even wondered what happened to these people ? It was supposed to be their future, nobody wanted to go and check, or join them, or try to establish other settlements ?
Review by MarthBlockedParentSpoilers2016-04-22T08:24:18Z
This is the mid-season finale, right? Or does this season only have 10 episodes as well?
While I enjoyed this season a lot and I'm kind of sad that it's over, it was the weakest of all seasons for me. There were too little epic fights for my taste. The whole Wessex story line was kind of redundant as it didn't connect with any of the other story lines. The whole "Let's attack Paris again" plot felt like an extension for season 3.
Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed it quite a lot since it's Vikings but I think that they could've progressed more with the main plot. It was basicly a huge build-up until this point. Then again, I don't know any of the sagas exactly in detail, so I can't tell how close they actually sticked to the 'true' story.
Talking about this episode in particular: I enjoyed the fight a lot. Could have been a bit longer in my opinion, but the outcome was as expected. Also I'm not sure if Ragnar is still sick from season 3 and / or a drug addict or something similiar. Someone please elaborate.
I like the idea about the timejump of 10(?) years. Although I am curious what happened to the other characters we don't see (especially Lathgertha, did she survive the battle at Paris?), I think this helps the story moving forward and introducting a lot of new characters - Ragnar's sons are supposed to be crazier and brutal than Ragnar himself after all.
The last 5 minutes were great. Kattegat became quite a huge city! That speech from Ragnar showed us again why Travis Fimmel is such a great actor. I'd be really sad if the writers decided to kill off Ragnar at that point, but I can understand it. The next (half) season shall be the reign of Björn (who was a total badass in this season as well) and his brothers.
Overall, great acting and a satisfying experience with a bit of lackluster at the story side. My fingers are crossed for the next season.