David Farnor | On 05, Jan 2025

Vikings has always looked like a pale imitation of Game of Thrones. On the surface, it sort of is. There are mountains. There are swords. There are gods. And, most importantly, there are beards. Beards with men attached to them.

The best beard? That’s attached to Ragnar Lothbrok (Travis Fimmel). We meet the legendary ruler as a young family man, his chin fuzz only half-grown. He wants to go West and seek the lands of treasure that all the cool Viking kids are talking about. The problem? The boats don’t sail that far. Luckily, his friend Floki knows how to build something that can. And his brother, Rollo (Clive Standen), is right behind him. Unfortunately, he’s also got plans of his own.

That focus on family is what gives Vikings its real heft: smaller in scale than Game of Thrones, Michael Hirst’s series soon sails into its own waters, embracing its space for character development. Ragnar and Rollo’s sibling rivalry erupts again and again through riveting clashes. Clive Standen is brilliantly intimidating as the overlooked sibling, his physical presence sitting somewhere between tragic and dangerous. Even his better half, Siggy (Jessalyn Gilsig), can’t dissuade him from going toe to toe with Ragnar, and their conflict shapes the wider political scheming and, indeed, the history of the Viking age.

Ragnar’s focus is always on that bigger picture: he’s interested in legacy more than riches, which leads him into increasingly complicated ties to England. There, he becomes unlikely friends with the wonderfully conflicted monk, Athelstan (the superb George Blagden), and uneasy allies with the slippery King Ecbert (a delightfully calculating Linus Roache).

Threatening to steal the whole show repeatedly is the amazing Katheryn Winnick as Lagertha, Ragnar’s wife, who grows from a gutsy shield maiden to an earl in her own right – by way of her own ruthless brutality. She brings some much-needed balance to a very male-heavy show, as the series gradually shifts to focus on Ragnar’s sons – most notably, Alexander Ludwig as Bjorn, his awkward but charismatic eldest who finds his own version of Ragnar’s strength and authority.

Travis Fimmel, however, is undoubtedly the reason to tune in. He delivers one of the best small screen turns in recent memory as the enigmatic, smirking leads, whose icy calm over time grows into captivating confidence, concerning frowns and alarming weakness. It’s a remarkable, magnetic performance that takes us in and out of his thrall, along with the rest of his followers and family – we never quite know what he’s going to do next, or when he’s going to accept his own mortality.

Hirst smartly uses time jumps to keep the show progressing and growing in scale for its later seasons. An outstanding turn from Alex Høgh Andersen as Ragnar’s disturbingly malevolent son, Ivar the Boneless, gives Game of Thrones’ Joffrey a run for his money – alongside Ragnar’s many other bickering sons, including Hvitserk (Marco Ilsø), Sigurd (David Lindström) and Ubbe (Jordan Patrick Smith). While they squabble, Jonathan Rhys Meyers has a ball as the less-than-devout Bishop Heahmund.

If there’s a gaping hole in these final chapters, as without Fimmel the series struggles to find a driving force, that’s also an apt reflection of what the characters experience – and captures the sense of legacy they’re all striving after.

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