All 5 seasons of The Last Kingdom (and the movie), ranked worst to best
Fifth Place: Seven Kings Must Die
It’s almost unfair to compare Seven Kings Must Die to a standard season of The Last Kingdom, but it has enough important moments that it needs to be in the conversation. Seven Kings Must Die is a tightly focused tale of succession which begins with the death of King Edward and follows his heir, Aethelstan, as he takes the throne and finally achieves his grandfather Alfred’s dream of a unified England.
That dream comes at a great cost to Uhtred and many others. After Aethelstan shows his cruel side by murdering his closest rival and half-brother Aelfweard in cold blood, he launches a campaign to force all the other petty kingdoms of England to submit to him as their sole ruler, seemingly as a way to absolve himself of the sin of loving a man.
Of course, that man — Ingilmundr (Laurie Davidson) — is using Aethelstan to stoke unrest and unite the enemies of Wessex against him. It’s only thanks to Uhtred’s intervention that Aethelstan is able to turn things around and face down the alliance of kings at Brunanburh, and ultimately unite the country.
Seven Kings Must Die features some hugely important moments, such as Aethelstan finally realizing Alfred’s dream and Uhtred’s last stand at Brunanburh. The battle itself is a muddy, chaotic fight which captures how brutal a pitched medieval battle might have been without glorifying it. Uhtred’s pals Sihtric and Finan are as fun as ever. And the final shot of Uhtred standing in the doorway between his living friends and his dead ones in Valhalla is a evocative, ambiguous ending.
Seven Kings Must Die suffers a bit from trying to cram an entire season’s worth of material into its two-hour run time. We see a lot of new characters introduced while series mainstays like Aelswith, Stiorra and Oswald are strangely absent. When stacked up against the TV show, it’s hard to deny that Seven Kings Must Die simply didn’t have the time to breathe that it needed, but it’s still a worthy sendoff for the series.
