Vikings Season 5

Check out my other season reviews: Season 1 -- Season 2 -- Season 3 -- Season 4

If you've read my season 4 review you'll know I thought it was pretty strong overall. Unfortunately, season 5 didn't capitalize on the strengths of the characters and potential plotlines and contained so much useless filler. It almost reminded me of season 2 with its excessive focus on completely pointless relationships that came out of nowhere. It wasn't extremely terrible, it just wasn't that good.

SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT

First of all, I have to talk about Ivar. Season 4 set him up as a strategist and seeing his battles and him outsmarting almost every other foe was what made season 4 so good. And this season, with its battles and conflicts, had the potential to capitalize on this aspect of Ivar's character. Honestly, it's part of what made him so compelling as a character, because not only was he a psycho, he was also a smart psycho. But we didn't see any of his genius in this season, even in the battles. Even if they were going to need him to lose a battle, they could have at least showed some cool battle tactics, but they just didn't. His downfall, honestly, was extremely badly handled.

Another disappointment was Floki's arc. I tried hard to like this, but the execution was just so boring. They didn't give us enough of a reason to care about the individual characters and it just wouldn't end. I get what they were trying to do, and there were some moments where they showed a parallel between Floki's attempt to stop the cycle of revenge and the actual ongoing cycle of revenge in Kattegat which were really poignant. But it could have been handled so much better.

Ubbe was the standout this season, because he had a goal that he was working towards and showed some development and was... less stupid than anyone else, to be honest. It's kind of sad that the most interesting person was the most "normal" one on a show like this. His story also paralleled Raganar's story in many ways and that was good. You could almost see Ragnar's old determination through him. And his relationship with Alfred was interesting, but again the writers failed to capitalize on that as much as they could have.

Lagertha and her story with the Bishop guy was just... so boring. It was such a fall for the strong shieldmaiden and queen to just become so pathetic and pointless here. And then her disappearance and 2-seconds of madness made her even more pointless. *sigh*

I hate to say it, but even Judith and Alfred and the other son... Aethelred?... were more interesting than the actual vikings this season.

The most useless and annoying of all the vikings this season was Bjorn. He spent the entire season whining, moping, and sleeping with a bunch of different people. I liked his relationship with Torvi. I liked Torvi. He randomly decided their love was over or whatever and married that Saami princess, fine, but as if that wasn't bad enough he then proceeded to keep sleeping with random women.




Overall, there were ok moments this season, but overall it was underwhelming and long. Definitely didn't live up to season 4.