Megan Applegate recaps the sixth episode of Vikings season 2…
This week’s episode title, “Unforgiven” could have been interpreted a couple ways.
The first? The most obvious.
Jarl Borg journeys from his home to Kattegat with Rollo to forge a new, better-than-the-last-time-these-guys-screwed-me-over deal with Ragnar and King Horik.
He’s tentative, but eventually thanks Ragnar for forgiving him for that whole, you know, massacring the village while Ragnar was away raiding and threatening to kill his whole family thing. Borg finds Ragnar a bigger man and thinks that maybe, finally, because he’s got the boats to carry them all, he’ll finally get to play in the Viking games. It’s not in the cards, but we’ll get to that.
In the meanwhile, Horik makes Siggy get jiggy with his awkward son.
While. He. Watches.
She’s all kinds of weirded out and angry and I’m going to put my money down now on Siggy being the one to do in King Horik. They say women never forget. Add to that the humiliation and strong-arming in that situation and you can be pretty sure a twisted sister like Siggy is going to find a way to make him pay. Or not. For all I know Siggy will end up Queen Siggy and blow this theory all to shot.
Bjorn’s got a thing for a slave girl who’s still pretty upset at the whole, you know, slave thing. She’s got no love for him—not even when he awkwardly shows her to his room and tells her that she can sleep there. That he wants her to want to sleep there. I don’t think things are going to go well in this case—she’s a little too enslaved and he’s a little too naive.
Back in Wessex, we find Athelstan copying his illuminated Bibles. He makes a strange friend in King Ecbert who, it turns out, is not only a member but also the president of the Roman Pagan Fan Club.
Ecbert’s got himself an absolute (secret) treasure trove of ancient Roman art, sculpture, and scrolls. Athelstan’s new job is to copy the scrolls before all the pagan knowledge is lost to Ecbert forever. I’ve got a funny feeling about this—call me crazy but crucifixion can only be promised so many times before you start to feel like a marked man in England. Athelstan promises to keep Ecbert’s little collection a secret, but with Ecbert’s wormy little son following Athelstan around making sour faces all the time, his luck is bound to run out eventually.
Ready for the possible second meaning in the title “Unforgiven?”
Poor Lagertha. Seems Jarl Sigvard wasn’t happy that she left without leaving a note—or without bringing back “his stepson.” She seemed pretty unforgiven a few seconds into her scenes in Hedeby.
She made it back home and her husband gives her an icy toast at dinner. He’s boiling just underneath the surface but eventually told her to go to bed as he made other plans. They might have involved another woman (what we all probably assumed), but that definitely involved the severe beating of his wife by his lackeys. It was an awful scene and paled only in comparison to the next, when Sigvard is about to humiliate her the following night by ripping open her shirt in front of the dinner guests.
Lagertha, being the mighty maiden that she is, denies his request with a steak knife in the eye.
It’s a heated moment or two when it looks like she might have to ward off Sigvard’s men with a dining utensil and one eye swollen shut. A man steps forward with a sword and promptly cuts off Sigvard’s head much to our relief and Lagertha’s astonishment. What does it mean? We’ll have to wait, obviously, but it could mean a lot.
Back to Kattegat.
You didn’t think Jarl Borg and the creepy skull of his dead first wife were really going to be honored guests, did you?
Rollo and his men set in motion their revenge by locking Borg’s men in the barn and setting the thing on fire. Borg is dragged before Ragnar much to the dismay of Horik. I guess Horik forgot the fact that he was the one who originally cut Borg out and started this whole mess in the first place, but hindsight’s not always 20/20 when you’re a plotting, egotistical Viking.
The teaser for Episode 7 promises to contain “the most shocking moment in television,” but I’m pretty sure if Horik betrays Ragnar for Borg, I’ll be less than shocked.
Horik’s on a crash course for Rollo’s wrath if he’s not careful.
Megan Applegate
Originally published April 9, 2014. Updated March 21, 2022.
