Vikings “It’s Only Magic”

By now, I am used to Vikings having whole episodes where not a lot happens and I get the feeling it was done mostly to pad the season out to the requested ten episodes…or twenty depending on how you’re counting them.

Regardless, there was one plot that actually went somewhere…literally.

I don’t mean the Erik/Ingrid plot.  They’re still in Kattegat.  Erik makes no sense in that he may or may not be in love with Ingrid, and after saying he’ll take his chances with a witch and ends up blind, now he figure she’s the reason he’s blind and offers a slave his freedom if he’ll kill Ingrid.

Look man, just because we saw her doing some kind of weird ritual for some reason doesn’t mean she made him blind…wait, it probably does.

Why did she want him blind?  Was I not paying sufficient attention to a plot that bored me?  Probably.

I’ll give Ingrid this much:  she had the second best line of the episode when it comes to on-the-nose commentary when, after urging some other Viking nobles to pay their taxes for more defenses in case the Rus come back, she says, “Walls do not pay for themselves.”

That’s probably Vikings‘s idea of clever political commentary.  Hint:  it isn’t clever.

Oh, the Wessex stuff isn’t all that interesting either.  Alfred is having flashbacks to when he was younger and a different actor, playing chess against Ivar, played by the same actor.  Alfred gets a badass haircut, even if he still seems like something of a milquetoast.  Probably because he also had a seizure of some kind.  Ivar, meanwhile, is showing signs of his bones being extra fragile.  But Wessex is in “hurry up and wait” mode for now.  See?  Padding.

No, the interesting part comes from Ubbe’s plot.  He manages to beat out Ingrid for most on-the-nose commentary when he says of their Golden Land that it is a “New World”.  You know, the kind that is full of lush vegetation, clean water, plenty of game, and natives who know how to stay out of sight.

Yes, Ubbe and his friends discovered America.

It’s not like it’s all new stuff there, though.  Will we get a slow motion, subtitled Viking sacrifice to their gods there?  You betchya!

However, the episode ends with Othere guiding Ubbe’s party to a village where they are soon surrounded by Native Americans who wear more face and body paint than the Vikings do during their religious services.

So, that’s something new.