Critic Reviews

Vikings enthrallingly captures the world of Norsemen and oarsmen, circa 793 in the Eastern Baltic but soon heading West to England.

Whatever becomes of Ragnar, Vikings has emerged in its second season as a series of appreciably higher quality. Its characters and storytelling, all within a world quite unlike any other on the TV landscape, have gone far beyond the cardboard stage.

All involved are dedicated to the cause of making Vikings one of television’s most striking series. It’s also emerged as one of the best, evolving from a guilty pleasure at first to a first-rate tale of substance and even subtlety mixed with the cold steel of primal warfare.

Hirst transports us to a fascinating and brutal world, combining fact with fast-paced fiction into a show, the likes of which come around all too infrequently. As Ragnar does, so too does Season Three of Vikings expand its worldview beyond the inlet at Kattegat and into Medieval Europe, promising battles, glory, and adventures not to be missed.

As original series debuts go, it’s no “Oz” or “The Shield,” but it does the job it sets out to do in entertaining fashion.

Fimmel, Katheryn Winnick and the rest of the cast remain, like the show, better than the material probably needs to be a commercial success, and thus strong enough that Vikings remains a genuine pleasure rather than a guilty one.

Michael Hirst's saga of pillaging and migration remains everything it has been almost from its premiere.

One girds oneself for some serious hammer time when an opening fight scene of History’s compelling and robust new drama series, Vikings, delivers all the expected gore and blood spatter.

While they are every bit as wild and woolly as the historical figures of Norse sagas, such is the power of Vikings that we come to know and even root for them, so enthralling are they and almost everything else here.

As it did last season, the show thoughtfully explores ideas about how belief systems spread and what people do when confronted with gods--or a God--that makes little sense to them.