Vikings: The Vision

December 9, 2016 2:24 PM - Season 4, Episode 12

Ragnar seeks to equip his voyage to Wessex, even while being warned that the gods have deserted him. Bjorn prepares to fulfill his dream of exploring the Mediterranean.
posted by porpoise (7 comments total)

This mostly just felt like filler/set-up for what comes next, I think. Although lots of good stuff with Ivar. The scene with Sigurd taunting him by pulling the chair away was powerful. The crutches scene, though, I did wonder couldn't they have come up with some other design that would work better?

Sure looks like we're heading toward Ragnar's death. Will be sad to see him go.
posted by dnash at 8:10 AM on December 12, 2016

Agreed that this was mostly a filler episode.

Sad to see Ragnar losing his plot. Pretty sure the show will keep Ivar alive, as reflected in history.

I'm guessing that, like most technology, the 1.0 version of Ivar's crutches probably wasn't optimized; give Floki a few shots at it and Ivar's probably rocking a medieval Humvee with ballistae and catapults and war dogs and bees coming out of his eyes.

Was amused to see again just what a total piece of work Aslaug's brood is. Too bad she and Ragnar didn't have any daughters; I suspect that they would have turned out fierce.

*edit: also interesting to see the kids call back to the wandering "love priest" from when they were kids and calling out Aslaug on it.
posted by porpoise at 4:54 PM on December 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yah, it's funny how last season was all about snakes and advertised with Ragnar being shut out of Valhalla, but this season will likely be the one that deals with his death. I wonder if Ragnar's motivation is entirely to gain a death fitting of entry and nothing more.

I agree that Ivar will turn out just fine. He's grown on me as a character and I'm really interested to see how he overcomes his disability to become one of the famous sons of Ragnar.

Now, Aslaug seemed to be bleeding during the back and forth with the storm. Any thoughts on what was going on there?
posted by Atreides at 9:00 AM on December 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I was curious about that, too.

It looked like a bad miscarriage, but she wasn't really showing enough for a miscarriage to produce that much blood (?).

Timing could be right, though. But looking at the dinner scene again, she was super slim-waisted.
posted by porpoise at 6:48 PM on December 13, 2016

my first thought was that whatever she was meant to be high on during the sacrifice was very likely something with strong abortifacient side effects, but that feels like it might be weirdly niche knowledge expectations for a show like this? idk.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:41 PM on December 17, 2016

Excellent point, poffin boffin, but I suspect that it is definitely a bug (abortifacient) rather than a feature.

[insert incoherent "war against drugs" winning, or at least, scoring meaningfully and how that is all so unhelpful in the framework of harm reduction]

I think maybe this is probably another case of the show stepping around historical fact and adding a little extra artificial drama. But, yeah, makes it harder to guess where the show's going and ....
posted by porpoise at 11:19 PM on December 20, 2016

Just catching up on these episodes (we're semi-luddites without streaming, watching the DVDs), it looked like there was a brief flash where maybe Auslag was bleeding from her eyes? Would fit with the vision thing, but it did look like she ended up with a lapful of blood, so ... ?
posted by mon-ma-tron at 6:09 PM on December 9, 2017