Vikings star and showrunner talk about that surprising character death

WARNING: This post contains strong SPOILERS for the “Death and the Serpent”

If you watched the most recent episode of Vikings, “Death and the Serpent,” you enjoyed what we thought was the final season’s strongest episode yet. However, it came at the cost of one of the show’s main characters, as the Viking shieldmaiden Lagertha (Katheryn Winnick) met her end at the deranged hands of Hvisterk (Marco Ilso).

Winnick and showrunner Michael Hirst sat down with Variety to discuss the departure of arguably the show’s most interesting character. First up, Hirst revealed how writing Lagertha’s death scene differed from the show’s other important death scenes:

"Well, obviously the death of Ragnar was a big one for me, but on a personal level, I think Lagertha’s death had a deeper impact and was more emotional. One of the ways I dealt with it was that I wanted it to be significantly different in some way. One of the ways we did that was the song. It’s music that is meant to elicit and provoke deep emotions because you don’t understand the lyrics — they’re in ancient Scottish Gaelic. We hired these people and I didn’t tell anyone what was happening. They knew this was going to be music to accompany the death, but I didn’t tell them any more. Then I invited the crew and whoever was around on the day — the cast — to come in and listen to this singer. It was a live performance, which made it even more special. And by the time she’d finished singing, everybody in the studio was in tears. In a way that helped me cope with my own emotional response to Lagertha’s death because it made it collective. Everyone felt a huge sadness that this character was leaving."

The music did bring a certain special something to it, and as Hirst said, even if we didn’t understand the words, we could pick out Lagertha’s name in the lyrics.

Image: Vikings/History

For her part, Winnick pointed to the battle with the bandit leader that preceded her character’s death as being particularly grueling to film. “I’m still lost for words because I don’t know if I’ve really said goodbye yet,” she said. “That final battle was extremely hard. It was one of the hardest rehearsals for me, ever. I really wanted to make it great and it was so important to tell a story through the battle and not just make it another fight.” Mission accomplished.

Hirst also talked about Lagertha’s particular love among the fans. “She has a huge fan club and for a lot of women, she is a role model. I was very aware of that,” he said. “But because I’d helped shape her destiny, I felt that it was appropriate and we could work on these final themes. I wanted it to have as much impact as possible because there are other deaths coming down the line.”

Other deaths coming down the line, you say? We’d have never guessed.

For Winnick, it wasn’t Lagertha’s actual death that brought her to tears, but watching her own funeral in the following episode.

"That was actually the last scene I shot. As you know you don’t always shoot things quite logically, but that was actually the final scene. And it was too hard to say goodbye in the moment, only because the conditions we were shooting in. It was zero degrees, freezing cold, and we had this rain machine outside and we were trying not to get hypothermia. It was just a really, really tough scene to shoot and try to act it, and have her last breath in that moment. And then everybody wanted to come up and give me a hug as we said goodbye to Lagertha, but I had to be like, “Okay we’re doing this another time. This weather is too intense!” I think walking into the funeral in the next episode and having that out-of-body experience hit me harder. That’s when I broke down in tears that it was happening."

Attending your own funeral probably isn’t a fun experience. “I definitely feel that Lagertha was ahead of her time,” Winnick said. “But the reason I feel that women around the world are drawn to her is because she is such a role model. She sticks up for what she believes in.”

As for Lagertha’s killer, Hvitserk, Hirst revealed that despite promising that a son of Ragnar would kill Lagertha, he wasn’t initially sure it would be Hvitserk. “Back when I had The Seer say that I didn’t know which of the sons would kill her. If I had a strong inclination, it would of course have been Ivar. But the story kept evolving. There was always so much predictability in Ivar’s story and so many moments when it could have gone one way or the other.” Hirst added that he “was glad that it wasn’t Ivar. That was too predictable. I was glad that she wasn’t killed sort of deliberately.”

Personally, I enjoyed that the prophecy was fulfilled not out of malice, which would have been the case with Ivar, but out of Hvitserk’s madness. One could argue that Ivar still had a hand in Lagertha’s death since he caused Hvitserk’s madness, but it was still a nice twist.

Image: Vikings/History

As for what the moment means for Hvitserk going forward, Hirst pointed to the character’s past. “He’s been a conflicted character for a lot of the show. He jumped ship when he left Ubbe and joined Ivar. Nobody really knew why he did that, not even me, but it just felt like at the time that’s what he needed to do. He lacks an identity in a way.”

And will we see Hvitserk continue down a path towards darkness? Hirst hinted at a turn back towards the light. “[H]e will have a redemption and he will give himself a purpose in life.” Now that’s an intriguing thought.

Vikings returns next Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. CST.

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