Vikings, which ran for six seasons over on History, served up action, adventure, drama and occasionally some historical accuracy. Now, the sequel series Vikings: Valhalla is about to debut on Netflix, and Entertainment Weekly has gotten its hands on the first teaser trailer. Watch below!
Valhalla takes place a few generations after the end of Vikings. The show begins after King Aethelred II of England (Bosco Hogan) orders the genocide of Danes on his lands in an event known as the St. Brice’s Day Massacre. Naturally, the Vikings of Norway and Sweden are none too pleased about that, and come to England looking for blood. They’re attacking London Bridge in the trailer.
“You have been summoned here to avenge the death of Vikings,” says King Canut of Denmark (Bradley Freegard). “Bring me England!” We also see Nordic prince Harald Sigurdsson (Leo Suter), one of the three main characters, rousing the troops. “This blood is not my blood. It is our blood,” he says. “It is Viking blood!”
The other two main characters are Viking explorer Leif Eriksson (Sam Corlett) and his sister Freydis Eriksdotter (Frida Gustavsson). Also in the trailer are King Aethelred’s son Prince Edmund (Louis Davison) and Emma of Normandy (Laura Berlin).
Will Vikings: Valhalla reference the original Vikings show?
The whole thing is managed by Jeb Stuart, who served as a writer on Die Hard and The Fugitive; no wonder the trailer has such a heavy action bent. “I come from the action feature world where things are moving quickly,” Stuart told EW. “I’m not going to give you 30 seconds to say, ‘Hmm, wonder what he meant by that strange phrase?’ You gotta keep up. You gotta move.”
As for how many references the new show will include to the old, Stuart says that there won’t be “any connected tissue” between the shows, which makes sense; after all, all of the characters from Vikings are long dead.
That said, there will be some familiar locations. We’ll visit Kattegat, the capital city of Ragnar’s kingdom from Vikings. And Valhalla will tie up some loose ends involving the character of Rollo (Clive Standen), who didn’t feature in the final season of the original show. “As a fan of Vikings and a student of that particular type of history, you do know that Rollo really was part of the founding of Normandy, and Emma of Normandy comes over and becomes one of my main characters, and William the Conqueror is a descendant of Rollo,” Stuart said. “We’d love to be able to get to that part of the story and get to that place that [Vikings showrunner Michael Hirst] did say you stop and you turn and nostalgically look back at the Viking era.”
All that and we get a release date! The first season of Vikings: Valhalla will drop on Netflix on February 25.
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