2022 - 2024
Vikings: Valhalla landed on Netflix in February 2022 as a sequel to Michael Hirst's Vikings, the History Channel hit that ran from 2013 to 2020. Created by Jeb Stuart, the screenwriter behind Die Hard and The Fugitive, it was produced by MGM Television and delivered three seasons over two and a half years. Season one in February 2022. Season two in January 2023. The third and final season in July 2024.
The show is not a continuation. It is set a full hundred years after the events of the original, opening in 1002 AD with the St. Brice's Day Massacre, when English King Æthelred II ordered the slaughter of Danes living in England. That atrocity lights the fuse. The Norse unite under Cnut the Great, the siege of London follows, and the last great chapter of the Viking Age begins.
Three real historical figures anchor the series. Leif Erikson, the Icelandic-Norse explorer credited as the first European to set foot in North America, played by Sam Corlett. His sister Freydís Eiríksdóttir, a fierce warrior and the moral centre of the show, played by Frida Gustavsson. And Harald Sigurdsson, later Harald Hardrada, who becomes King of Norway and dies at Stamford Bridge in 1066, played by Leo Suter. That 1066 death is the traditional bookend of the Viking Age, and the show commits to taking us all the way there.
Sam Corlett plays Leif as a thoughtful outsider, a Greenlander raised on Christian stories he is not sure he believes. He is the show's quiet centre of gravity. Frida Gustavsson is the bigger screen presence as Freydís, all righteous fury and flashing axe work. Stuart has spoken openly about wanting her to be the moral lead, and Gustavsson delivers. Leo Suter plays Harald as charming, ambitious, and occasionally reckless, which is a reasonable read of the historical Hardrada.
The supporting bench does a lot of heavy lifting. Bradley Freegard gives King Cnut the quiet authority of a man who already knows he has won, and Laura Berlin is excellent as Emma of Normandy, his politically formidable queen. David Oakes plays Æthelred II with the panicky entitlement that history books broadly confirm. Caroline Henderson returns a version of Jarl Estrid Haakon, and Pollyanna McIntosh brings a regal pagan authority to Kattegat. Søren Pilmark is a slippery, watchable Godwin, the Saxon earl who survives every turn of the English succession. Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson plays Olaf Haraldsson, Harald's ruthless half-brother and the show's most dangerous in-family antagonist. Asbjørn Krogh Nissen takes Gestr in an interesting direction in the later seasons. And Marcin Dorociński shows up as Yaroslav the Wise, ruler of Kievan Rus, when the story pushes east in season two.
The ensemble is largely Scandinavian and Northern European. This is one of the show's genuine strengths.
The parent show, Vikings, was a pagan-vs-Christian story filtered through the rise of Ragnar Lothbrok. is something different. It is about the end of an age. The old gods are losing. Kattegat is still pagan, but it is surrounded. Leif is raised Christian in Greenland, which complicates every scene he shares with his sister. Harald is a Christian convert who still fights like a Norseman. Even Cnut, the most powerful Viking in the story, is busy consolidating a Christian English throne.
Søren Pilmark
Godwin
Leo Suter
Prince Harald Sigurdsson
Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson
Olaf Haraldsson
Laura Berlin
Emma of Normandy
Frida Gustavsson
Freydís Eiríksdóttir
Sam Corlett
Leif Erikson
Marcin Dorociński
King Yaroslav the Wise
Pollyanna McIntosh
Jarl Haakon
Stuart is interested in that transition and in who pays for it. Freydís pays. Jomsborg pays. The old pagan network that held the Viking world together is slowly coming apart. The show does not treat this as simple progress, which I appreciated. It treats it as a loss.
There is also a second theme running underneath. Geographic reach. The Viking Age ends not because the Norse stopped being dangerous but because the world got bigger than raids across the North Sea. Season two takes Leif and Harald south through the Silk Road, to Novgorod, and eventually to Constantinople. Season three takes Leif to Vinland. The show is mapping a people who were about to run out of unclaimed horizon.
Production values are strong. Vikings was famous for its battles, its longships, and its willingness to let a single torch-lit night scene last five minutes. Valhalla inherits all of that and films most of it in Ireland, where the original shot. Kattegat is rebuilt. The siege of London in season one is genuinely impressive.
The things that make Valhalla look different from its parent:
One deliberate change from the parent show is the dilution of the cheerful historical anachronism. Michael Hirst was happy to put Ragnar, Rollo, and assorted figures from across two centuries in the same room for the drama of it. Stuart aims for tighter historical fidelity. The dates mostly line up. The characters mostly existed. This costs the show some of the original's myth-making looseness, but it gains something in credibility.
Critical response was polite rather than rapturous. Most reviewers landed in the "competent follow-up to a great original" zone. Fans of Vikings mostly turned up and mostly stayed. Netflix treated it as a solid hit, renewing for two more seasons off the back of season one and closing out the run cleanly in 2024, which is more than many Netflix historicals get.
The show sits in a crowded field. The Last Kingdom covers roughly the same era from the Saxon side and is, for my money, the richer character drama. The parent show, Vikings, remains more mythic and more operatic. For the broader historical-epic conversation, Game of Thrones and Rome still set the ceiling, while Black Sails is the closest tonal cousin for the seaborne warrior-with-a-conscience material.
Valhalla is not trying to beat any of those. It is trying to finish a story the parent show set up and then turn the lights off on the Viking Age with the right degree of gravity. It largely succeeds.
The honest take. Vikings: Valhalla is a good show, not a great one. If you loved the original, you will find a lot to like here. If you came in cold, you will probably enjoy the first season's siege of London and the later Silk Road detour, and feel that the emotional core is not quite as big as the scope promises.
A competent follow-up that knows exactly what it is.
What lifts it above many Netflix period pieces is the commitment to the history. Stamford Bridge actually happens. Vinland is actually reached. The St. Brice's Day Massacre is actually the inciting event, not a vague off-screen rumour. This is a show that did its reading. Fans of Sharpe, Wolf Hall, and Frontier will recognise the instinct.
Three seasons. One complete arc. No cliffhanger, no streaming-era bait and switch. In 2026 that counts.
Asbjørn Krogh Nissen
Gestr
David Oakes
King Æthelred II
Bradley Freegard
King Cnut
Caroline Henderson
Jarl Estrid Haakon