The third season of Netflix’s “Vikings: Valhalla” continues to be the historian’s answer to all the “Game of Thrones” fantasies: More realistic characters, a more intense (some might say cheaper) look, no dragons.
Still, Jeb Stuart’s “Vikings” spinoff series tortures real-world timelines the way a fervent Christian convert would a stubborn pagan. The writers of “Die Hard” have pieced together famous 11th-century figures who might have met in dramatic ways they definitely didn’t. The show piles on the coincidences, narrow escapes, and heroic confrontations to the point of Hollywood-style artificiality, leaving you yearning for the relative authenticity of a White Walker attack.
Still, “Valhalla”‘s imaginative approach to history is entertaining and smart. Each episode will incite curiosity to dig deeper into the events and people depicted here. The uneducated crowd will be thoroughly entertained by all the political intrigue, family feuds, pomp and bloodlust on display, even when the larger battles are marred by shaky footwork. With at least four far-flung storylines going on at any given time, the story never drags, nor lingers anywhere long enough to become too boring.
Set seven years after the events of Season 2, this eight-episode series opens up a new theater of operations in the Mediterranean and does so in explosive fashion. Now the respected commander of the Byzantine Empire’s formidable Varangian Guard, Norwegian Prince Harald Sigurdsson (Leo Suter) strategizes the best way to capture Syracuse and drive the Saracens out of Sicily. He gets a big helping hand from his best friend and fellow traveler Leif Eriksson (Sam Corlett), who has become the ultimate medieval autodidact while still maintaining his Hot Jesus persona.
We’re expected to believe that Leif invented the infamous incendiary weapon known as Greek fire, a move he deeply regrets when the jealous Greek General Maniakes (Florian Munteanu) uses the compound on helpless civilians. After returning to Constantinople in triumph, Harald and the hateful Maniakes plot a bloody, stealthy showdown, while the troubled Leif decides to sail west—west, finally, with the dream of setting foot on the American mainland the Greenlander glimpsed as a child.
But first, Leif wants to know what happened to his sister. A lot, it turns out. Warrior Freydís Eiríksdóttir (Frida Gustavsson) is now the high priestess and leader of Jomsborg, the last non-Christian European Viking colony. She is also a fiercely protective mother to a son Harald never knew he shared with her, who is constantly being captured and escaping, and who wants to lead her people to the truly green land her brother told her about when they were children.
