Necrotongue

Lagertha and the events in Kattegat easily earned four stars from me, and I added the fifth for the brilliant dialogue between Ragnar and Ecbert. The king of Wessex has long been one of my favorite characters, and I’ve missed his scheming.

I wasn't exactly thrilled about the two expeditions; Ragnar's felt almost like a joke. All the positives came from the events in Kattegat and Hedeby, where things finally started to get interesting.

Here we go again. What was this episode even about? Aside from Bjorn and his crew setting sail for Normandy (and maybe beyond) and Ragnar and Ivar heading to England, the plot was painfully empty. It’s clear that doubling the number of episodes per season is too much for the creators to handle. Instead of a quality story, we’re getting filler just to pad out the runtime.

Honestly, I spent a while trying to figure out what the episode was really about. It felt like a whole lot of nothing, mostly just relationship drama like any other show. The only things that caught my attention were the dark prophecy and, surprisingly, Ivar. He was the most interesting character this time around.

An improvement over the last episode, but not enough to earn a fourth star. It just doesn't have the same spark anymore. Plus, I'm getting annoyed with how the creators lazily throw in a new character for one-off episodes to fill the plot. Honestly, I think Doc Martin should have wrapped up gracefully in the previous season.

Unlike the previous episode, this one was a blast from start to finish. The action scenes on the river were fantastic, and I'll pretend I didn’t notice the absurd platforms Ragnar’s fleet was pushing just for the sake of staging some combat. The Emperor’s garrotes were a nice touch, and surprisingly, I didn’t mind the big time jump.

Well, the creators finally did it — they pushed me to give my lowest rating yet. The episode was a total letdown. It was mostly just dragging boats around, with a raiding scene thrown in for some variety, but it didn't add any real value. There were way too many moments of pointless filler. Overall, pretty boring.

Four stars, but just barely. The highlights were definitely the action in Paris and on the Seine, and I enjoyed King Ecbert’s triumphant return. The only other positive was the disappearance of the Chinese drug dealer. The events in Kattegat were a complete disaster, and I realized Harbard isn’t Rasputin but more like a cult leader. 4*-

The episode started off great. The battle on the Seine and the events in Wessex and Mercia were really entertaining. But then the Norse Rasputin started causing trouble in Kattegat, Floki began having visions, and Ragnar took another hit. That killed the vibe for me.

Looks like there weren’t enough religious visions and other fantasies, so now Ragnar’s going to be perpetually high — great. The Chinese woman and her goods are just pointless filler. Almost nothing happened the entire time, and when we were finally supposed to see a clash with the Frankish scouts, we got more of my "favorite" Harbard instead. If this keeps up, I’m dropping stars from my rating.