“No Man has ever served Mercia more faithfully...Thank you, Aldhelm”
I wanted to honor one of easily my favorite character in TLK fandom. To me, Aldhelm had one of the best character arcs in the entire show. He went from being Aethelred’s smarter, yet still annoying lackey, to being a beloved advisor and warrior to Aethelflead and to Mercia. While I didn’t openly hate him like I hated Aethelred, I found him quite annoying as he was always whispering poison about Uthred in the beginning. But as he started to realize how his Lord was actually the vicious, selfish ruler that constantly failed the Mercians, I realized that Aldhelm’s first concern was always his people, and that his ambitions were always guided first and foremost, by what was better for Mercia.
Then he started shifting his loyalties towards Aethelflead, a true ruler he could follow, and to be honest, their relationship was one of the most special dynamics in the show. He was devoted and loyal to her, not out of desire, but own of genuine affection and admiration. He loved her, despite knowing that his feelings were not reciprocated. Yet instead of growing bitter or harboring any sort of resentment towards Aethelflead or Uthred, he remained a loyal and supportive ally and friend to both of them. The first man to ever handle the friendzone right.
His death in 7KMD became one of the hardest losses from the entire storyline for me. It was incredibly tragic that a character who’s main trait was his loyalty towards his people and towards what was right would die charged with treason. It was truly heartbreaking.
James Northcote did fantastic job portraying a secondary character that slowly, subtly became a fan favorite, warming himself intro the hearts of many. I am sooo so glad they decided to built on that character and give us such a heartwarming arc we could root for.
okay! time for my thoughts on Seven Kings Must Die.
under the cut for spoilers and length.
Lots of folks have previously said that the movie really suffers from the shortened length, that it should have been expanded into a sixth season to allow for all the stuff that makes the show so spectacular, and i really strongly agree.
The show is, in many ways, a show about faith. Not just about religious faith and how different attitudes about the afterlife influence people's decisions and leadership. It's also a show about individual faith, with Uhtred at the center of this theme.
People either have faith in Uhtred, or they don't. Trusting Uhtred is almost always depicted as A Very Good Idea, and those who don't have faith in Uhtred typically meet bad ends, giving the audience - if not Uhtred - a nice ToldYaSo moment.
I have to say, I really liked this aspect of the show. I know some people had issues with the way the narrative centers around this brilliant, strategic, unkillable protagonist - but to me, his character is the fulcrum around which the entire show turns. It's sort of like a story told from the POV of the deus ex machina.
and as a person who works in a field where people who are strategic and trustworthy are almost never listened to, and where there is no audience present for the ToldYaSo moments, no validation, no celebration, I really enjoyed the way the show clearly demonstrates that Uhtred is thinking clearly, he's not blinded by ambition or sentiment. Listening to Uhtred is almost always a very good idea. People who trust him are rewarded, and people who don't trust Uhtred suffer as a result, and Uhtred is vindicated at nearly every turn by the narrative.
The show doesn't just tell us this, it shows us, over and over, with the advice Uhtred gives, the thoughtfulness of his decision making, his consistency and sacrifice and skill. We see his plans play out. We see him navigate the faith and mistrust of others. We grow to trust Uhtred too. Even in moments where he makes the 'wrong' choice, we understand why, and where he's coming from.
It's satisfying, and it means that Uhtred fully earns the rewards the narrative gives him, from his 'plot armor' to the endings of both the series and the movie.
The movie doesn't do as good of a job with this. When Uhtred tells Aethelstan about Ingilmundr, Aethelstan doesn't believe Uhtred, but ultimately there isn't much of a a ToldYaSo Moment, and he soon discovers the truth on his own, and the plot moves forward. It's not clear how much would have been different or improved had Aethelstan believed Uhtred right away, nor do things change much after Uhtred is proven right.
It does do this much better at the final battle. The moment where the 'seven kings' say "Something's wrong - we've been turned around!" is such a great moment. We get to see how Uhtred's thinking and strategy AND his leadership in getting his men to execute this plan are ultimately what gives them the victory.
I also liked how the subtleties of Uhtred's wisdom and experience continue to serve him, again, in a more shown than told sort of way. The reveal when he notices that Ingilmundr still believes in the Dane gods and afterlife, and his ability to recognize what's going on between Aethelstan and Ingilmundr, because Uhtred is quite familiar with love and with that sort of forbidden-love situation.
WHERE IS STIORRA, THOUGH???
And Uhtred making Aethelstan promise never to marry and have an heir, I LOVED that. It felt like a subtle but strong way for Uhtred to give Aethelstan the space he needed to live his life as someone who loved men - him never taking a wife would be perceived as a noble sacrifice rather than a scandal. It feels like such an Uhtred thing to do and I don't think it gets enough attention or credit.
I was really disappointed that we didn't get more of Osbert and Edmund, because the show missed another great opportunity to show us what kind of man Uhtred is. Osbert clearly learned from his father how to be a mentor, how to lead and protect and train and support and raise up a young man. And we got hints of this legacy Uhtred is building, in the way Osbert looks after Edmund, but we needed like. Way tons more.
The general plot of the film - just too much in too short time. Too many villains, not much fleshed out, scrambled up stakes, things not really meaning anything, Uhtred in exile, then behind enemy lines, then picked up by Sihtric and Finan - ...okay? I agree with what's already been said that we needed more time with the schemes, the stakes, the motives, the characters, everything.
The deaths - I knew Aldhelm would die early on in the movie, because the show almost kills him in the series finale, and it's kind of unclear to me why it didn't. I was somewhat surprised and disappointed that no important and beloved characters died at the final battle in the show - the stakes and tone pulled hard toward 'lighthearted' right at the end, which I guess was so all the actors would have a shot at being in the movie, but it doesn't fit with the rest of the show.
People die. In the show, people die suddenly, unexpectedly, people die to sacrifice for a larger cause, they die for petty reasons. Throughout the show, Uhtred loses so many people for so many reasons. So the fact that none of the main characters (except the merchant dane whose name escapes me) give their lives for Uhtred to take Bebbanburg rings sort of...poetically unbalanced.
Don't get me wrong, as a person, I wasn't exactly rooting for us to lose Sithric, or Finan, or Hild, or Aldhelm, or Pyrlig, etc. But come on. We've been through this huge journey of loss and sacrifice and death on the way to Bebbanburg, and then we take Bebbanburg with no grief, no sacrifice? Hmm.
Aldhelm was marked by the narrative for death after Bebbanburg, and so the fact that he loses his life to save Uhtred's, not in a blaze of battlefield glory but just as a man ground between the cogs of politics and ambition, made sense.
Ingrith's death also made total sense. When she says "...and the woman you love" TO FINAN as well as to Uhtred, it's sort of like the "...the world will turn to ash" prophecy in the pokemon movie (shut up, it was formative). It was so clearly going to be her. The tomb thing, with the Christian imagery, and it being previously opened for Uhtred to be lured into a trap, and Ingilmundr using the Christian faith to tear the Saxons apart - it gets a C+ from me. Interesting thematic work, not super well executed.
Alfweard's death was...nothing, idk. He wasn't much of a character, and all it did was set up the break between Aethelstan and what he had learned from Uhtred, and establish how corrupted Aethelstan had become.
The prophecy - I didn't really like the way the prophecy was handled. I thought in the first few seasons, the show did a GREAT job of balancing the element of the supernatural. All the characters believe in some form of supernatural, prophecy, curses, miracles, Divine, afterlife, etc. but they are all interpreting things differently.
I appreciated the way the show never really came down on one side or the other, never 'proved' someone right or wrong. The "bridge" Brida sees when Ragnar is going to Valhalla, the "curse" from Skade, the "signs" from God, the 'dead man' trick - the only thing that prickled was the healer saving Edward's life, and that was never really clarified whether she was using some specific healing method for sick infants or what.
But then Brida ends the curse and miraculously is able to bear a child after a lifetime of not being able to, which...there's really no other explanation besides a narrative validation of her faith, which I thought was a bit of a cop-out. (Reign did this too - did an excellent job for a while balancing multiple different faiths and worldviews within the reality of the show, then just went 'fuck it, the Seer is Right and the Visions are Real').
So I wasn't too thrilled with how the show ultimately handled the prophecy. Numbering the kings in their captions was a bit much. But I did like the ambiguity of whether Uhtred 'counted' as a King.
The ending was lovely, though I would have preferred if they just sort of committed to Uhtred going to Valhalla. It's the end of the thing, we know Uhtred will die at some point anyway, having Finan do the voice over - instead of having an 'ambiguous' ending, I wish we'd have gotten to see more of him stepping into Valhalla, the bittersweet ending, the reward, him seeing more of the characters he's lost over the years rather than just the three who were there, etc.
This might be at odds with me not liking when the narrative establishes the reality of someone's beliefs, but it's different here.
Overall I liked the film, was glad to get to spend more time with characters and world I fell in love with over the course of the show, but it really ought to have been a sixth ten episode season rather than a two hour movie. Or it should have been 'zoomed in' to focus specifically on Osbert and Edmund, or Aethelstan and Ingulmundr, or whatever.
