The Last Kingdom: Aldhelm’s story ends in a way fans won’t “expect”

After five seasons, Netflix’s medieval drama The Last Kingdom is wrapping up with a movie called Seven Kings Must Die. Fans will finally see how characters like Uhtred, Æthelstan and others end their journeys.

After so many years on TV, The Last Kingdom has amassed a large cast of beloved characters. One of them is Aldhelm, played by James Northcote. Aldhelm came on in season 2 as an advisor to the vile Æthelred, but ended up transferring his allegiance to Æthelred’s much more respectable wife Æthelflæd (I swear the creators are trolling us with these names sometimes). After Æthelred’s death, Aldhelm ends up helping Æthelflæd rule the kingdom of Mercia, and then goes to work for her brother King Edward after her death in season 5.

So he completes a villain-to-hero arc! How will this all wrap up in Seven Kings Must Die? “It certainly closes Aldhelm’s story out in a way that I don’t think people will necessarily expect,” Northcote told Express. “But I was very pleased to be able to take him to that place and so I’m really looking forward to people seeing it. Aldhelm certainly is a survivor, for a character who in the books would have died probably in season three maximum he’s come quite a long way.”

The Last Kingdom movie Seven Kings Must Die is “on a scale that is the right way to end the show”

Speaking about the movie more generally, Northcote says it’s “going to be a really beautiful end to the story of The Last Kingdom.”

"Because I thought the end of season five was a beautiful ending, but there’s definitely still things left unsaid and undone. And what the film does is finally tying those threads together and bringing the story to a close that the fans deserve."

It was also cool for Northcote to reunite with his old castmates to make a movie rather than a TV show, which has a bit of a different feel. “Because we have been making this for six or seven years now together as a team and so many people have been on that from the very beginning,” he said. “Obviously it sort of felt just like going back to school making the film together, but at the same time, there was something different working in that format.”

"The way we approached it differently, production approached it differently. And so I think the film is on a scale that is the right way to end the show. I haven’t seen all of it so I can’t speak with great authority but from what I know it’s going to close that final chapter out in a beautiful way."

Seven Kings Must Die drops on Netflix this Friday, April 14. Destiny is all!

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