Vikings: Valhalla: Season One Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		5.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Vikings: Valhalla: Season One Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 15, 2024

As has been mentioned in some previous reviews of this series' ancestor (at least in terms of its broadcast debut date if not its actual timeframe), to "outsiders" or those who didn't tune in regularly, Vikings probably seemed from a distance to be a B-movie wannabe version of Game of Thrones, and in fact prior to the series landing in my review queue after its first few seasons, I probably felt the same way, even if I had enjoyed the few episodes I had watched during the show's original broadcast run. What soon became apparent after I started reviewing the series is that while, yes, the general outlines of at least parts of the series could certainly reflect elements of the George R.R. Martin classic(s), creator and historian Michael Hirst actually crafted a surprisingly intelligent, if often (again quite like Game of Thrones) viscerally violent saga that offered generally superb production values and some interesting and at times relatively nuanced characters. Vikings ended its run in 2020 (kind of curiously not that long after Game of Thrones ended its run), and perhaps just slightly like House of the Dragon, Vikings: Valhalla serves as a quasi-prequel to its progenitor.

As I mentioned in my Vikings: Season 6, Volume 1 Blu-ray review, due to the vagaries of changing labels and/or distributors, as well as to our various reviewers assigned to them, unfortunately we only covered the first season and then the fifth and sixth seasons of Vikings. For anyone interested in getting a feel for the interwoven stories and at times "real life" historical characters in the show, something that continues with Vikings: Valhalla, the volumes we have reviewed, please click on the following links:

Vikings: The Complete First Season Blu-ray review

Vikings: Season 5, Volume 1 Blu-ray review

Vikings: Season 5, Volume 2 Blu-ray review

Vikings: Season 6, Volume 1 Blu-ray review

Vikings: Season 6, Volume 2 Blu-ray review

Some text cards provide a bit of context as the series opens, as follows:

11th century Europe.

The exploits of the great Viking Ragnar Lothbrok have faded into legend. . .

In the hundred years that followed, Vikings left their northern homelands and settled across Europe, many in England.

But as these settlements prospered, they became a threat to their Saxon neighbors and the English King, <<<, was urged to find a solution to the Viking Problem.

While this season was produced and aired a couple of years ago as this review is being written, some of its subtext (and frankly even text) may kind of hilariously (and/or sadly, depending on your point of view) echo some of the verbiage being bandied about in the 2024 United States presidential election about the incursion of immigrants. That may sound like a completely peculiar statement, but within the first few moments of the first episode, one which is detailed as taking place a century or so before the events of Vikings, the Viking settlement known as Danelaw in England finds itself best by marauding English armies tasked by English King Æthelred II (Bosco Hogan) with (if I may probably inappropriately joke about the situation) "deporting with extreme prejudice" the outsiders, since they are (in a kind of weirdly prescient allusive quote) "poisoning the blood" of England, despite having lived there long enough some of them don't even speak their native language any longer.

That then sets a chain of events into motion where unsurprisingly the Vikings in Greenland and other locations seek vengeance against their Saxon attackers, leading to a new incursion of England. If Vikings at times offered supposed historical figures, it arguably didn't have anyone of quite the "marquee value" of one of this series' focal character, Leif Erikson (Sam Corlett). Even before Erikson can get to England, however, there's already a labyrinth of competing interests and subterfuges that (to once again evoke Game of Thrones) leads to an accruing body count.

Vikings: Valhalla frankly revisits any number of "issues" the original Vikings did, perhaps most noticeably in its depiction of women attempting to find their way in a "man's world", even if they're supposedly royal and with a certain imprimatur of perceived "power". This aspect includes Freydís Eiríksdóttir (Frida Gustavsson), Leif's sister, but also Queen Emma of Normandy (Laura Berlin) later in the season. Suffice it to say the internecine and/or intramural conflicts between various families or alliances is fraught with intrigue which can sometimes subsume the supposed overarching through line of vengeance for the Vikings. As with the original series, production values tend to be quite high, though I couldn't help but think throughout this first season that even without the blandishments of indoor plumbing and similar accoutrements, these particular Vikings have pretty impeccable personal hygiene, even when they've been out raping and pillaging (a rare exception can be spotted in the first screenshot I've uploaded to accompany this review).

Vikings: Valhalla: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Vikings: Valhalla: Season One is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of MGM and Warner Brothers Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.97:1. The IMDb lists several Sony cameras but hasn't as of the writing of this review specified the resolution of the DI, though that said, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out it was 4K. As with Vikings, this is an often jaw droppingly scenic series, albeit with copious amounts of blood, guts and gore literally sprinkled into the proceedings. Outdoor scenes (which are plentiful) pop beautifully for the most part, even with the production design's intentional emphasis on neutral or even kind of bland colors. Several interior scenes are graded or lit toward burnished yellows and/or golds, but even in fairly low lighting, fine detail can remain remarkably intact. A few passing moments of CGI (including an almost comically repeated bird that keeps flying over aerial shots of Uppsala) may not be completely convincing, but are relatively brief in any case.

Vikings: Valhalla: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Vikings: Valhalla: Season One features a nicely boisterous DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. There are action sequences in every episode of this first season, and those provide some of the best surround activity (I kind of even wanted an Atmos track for moments like a fusillade of arrows taking out a bunch of Vikings early in the season). Side and rear channels are regularly engaged both for a kind of background wash of ambient environmental effects in the many outdoor scenes, but also for discrete channelization of some of the blistering effects accompanying the hand to hand fight or larger battle sequences. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English and French subtitles are available.

Vikings: Valhalla: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Perhaps surprisingly, neither disc in this two disc set offers any supplemental material.

Vikings: Valhalla: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Regular readers of my reviews may know I long ago went down what I've called a Frances Farmer rabbit hole and probably never completely emerged, and some may know that Frances' first husband was an actor born as William Wycliffe Anderson, but who took the rather unlikely stage name of Leif Erickson (with his surname kind of hilariously variously spelled throughout his career), probably based upon his Nordic looks. So if that particular guy with that name is always probably going to be the first one I think of, history buffs may find this at times fanciful but still engaging "version" of the real Erikson's exploits to be worthwhile. My one niggling qualm with this first season is that it tries to stuff a lot of different characters and competing plot lines into an eight episode arc, and at least when viewed in a binge as I did in preparation for writing this review, that can ultimately start to feel overwhelming. Technical merits are great and even without any supplements, Vikings: Valhalla: Season One comes Recommended.