Ranking the seasons of The Last Kingdom (and the movie, of course!)
The Last Kingdom Season 2: Time as a slave
Oomph, this season brought us a blow. We start off with Uhtred being betrayed—again!—and sold into slavery. That leads to one of the most heartbreaking deaths in the whole series. It also leads to one of the best moments between Hild and Uhtred.
This is such as important season for character development. Uhtred gets to the point where he questions everything. People he trusted betrayed him, but then others come to his aid and he’s reminded of his brother’s loyalty. This becomes a problem later, though.
Uhtred has to make some big decisions about when it comes to his loyalty to King Alfred and to his brother, Ragnar. We also see a lot more play out in Mercia, bringing us Aethelflaed’s marriage to Aethelred but also her interest in the Dane Erik. This is such a wonderful season to develop other characters who will be important later on, and it’s so naturally done.
Every time I watch this season, though, I’m reminded of how quickly Uhtred’s time as a slave passes. I don’t know whether that’s a good or bad thing. I swear it was longer the first time watching!
The Last Kingdom Season 5: A major victory
Knowing The Last Kingdom Season 5 was going to be the last always meant that I feared we would lose a few characters. I’ll be honest and say I feared the series would change Finan’s storyline and kill him off. That didn’t happen, but each fight scene he was in I worried.
This season brought some major losses, but it also brought a major victory. I love that we got to see Uhtred and Edward working together for Uhtred to finally get Bebbanburg back. At the same time, we saw how they fell into traps laid out be a stronger army. It took Stiorra agreeing to come to her father’s aid to save them all.
This season also brought a redemption arc for Aelswith. Well, the fourth season started it, but this season really helped us see this woman in a vastly different light. I loved her humor and her way of being the annoying mother-in-law for Uhtred of sorts—it has to be of sorts since Uhtred and Aethelflaed could never officially be together but we loved them as one.
The ending to the season has one of my favorite moments. Finally answering the question about where Uhtred’s second son was all this time.