The Winter King strikes the right balance in its best episode yet

I have been very harsh writing about The Winter King, MGM+’s adaptation of Bernard Cornwell’s Warlord Chronicles books. Thus far, I’ve thought the show has strayed too far from the books, I thought they bungled what should have been crowd-pleasing dramatic moments, introduced characters too early, and in the case of Merlin, taken a figure who popped off the page and turned him into a milquetoast mentor stereotype straight from central casting.

Also, the cinematographers keep doing this thing where the characters in the center of the shot look sharp and clear but the background looks all fuzzy. It’s incredibly annoying. I’ve got my eye on you…(checks IMDb)…Aske Foss and Stephan Pehrsson. Stop it.

But the last episode, the one where Arthur falls in love with his future wife Guinevere, was pretty good, and this new one is better still. Is The Winter King finally finding its groove eight episodes into a 10-episode season? Better later than never.

Review: The Winter King Episode 8

Episode 8 splits itself between several stories, all of them interesting. In plotline the first, Guinevere tries to ingratiate herself with the other prominent members of Arthur’s court, including his sister Morgan. Remember: Guinevere is basically a nobody who Arthur married instead of the girl he was supposed to marry as part of a political alliance, so some folks resent her. Morgan gives her the lukewarm shoulder and is clearly questioning Arthur’s wisdom in marrying her, but she still cuts her brother a surprising amount of slack. She later telling Derfel that Arthur usually makes the right decision, so she’ll try and get on board with his decision to marry Guinevere.

But I dunno, man: Arthur pretty clearly screwed up here, as Morgan learns at the end of the episode when King Gorfydd, the father of the girl Arthur was supposed to marry, crucifies Arthur’s advisor Bishop Bedwin in front of Morgan and Derfel, who are there to treat with Gorfydd in Arthur’s stead. The scene is a little histrionic — there’s a lot of screaming and wailing, and Aneirin Hughes plays Gorfydd as a touch too ostentatiously slimy  — but we get the picture: Gorfydd is not pleased that his daughter Ceinwyn was passed over. He sees it as a smudge on his honor. It’s extremely Walder Frey from Game of Thrones-type behavior.

A big chunk of this episode is dedicated to calling into question Arthur’s pedigree as a modern man ahead of his time in backwards medieval Britain. The reason Arthur can’t go to Powys to see Gorfydd is because he has to go to Isca to deal with Cadwy, who has declared Isca an independent state. For Arthur, who’s trying to unite the British tribes against the invading Saxons, this will not do. During a well-choreographed swordfight, Cadwy calls into question Arthur’s intentions. Does he really want unity, or does he just want power?

Likewise, is Arthur right to marry Guinevere for love, or did he put his personal feelings above the good of his people? Cause right there it looks like there will be civil war rather than a united front against the Saxons. All of this gets under Arthur’s skin, and maybe it should. He may be the most forward-thinking guy around, but he can still make boneheaded mistakes.

The power of magic

Another consequence of Arthur’s actions: Nimue is on the warpath. Last episode, the honorable Bishop Bedwin refused to marry Arthur and Guinevere, since it would amount to blessing Arthur after he broke his oath to marry Ceinwyn. But Arthur really wanted to marry Guinevere, so he enlisted the help of Sansum, a priest of a much lower calibre.

And now Arthur owes this jagwagon a favor. Sansum, who is bigoted against pagans, wants to build a church near Avalon, the location of Merlin and Nimue’s pagan refuge, and Arthur finds it hard to say no. I did wonder why Arthur couldn’t have allowed Sansum to build his church but disallow him from building it near Avalon, but there’s more drama this way, so we’ll let it slide.

Nimue, a pagan extremist if there ever was one, is not enthused about this. She dons her best wood spirit attire and lays a curse on Sansum and his followers: if they keep building they church, they will be rotted from the inside out. And then it starts to rain, and by the next morning, three of Sansum’s men are violently sick.

Did Nimue poison these men? Did her pagan gods really answer her call for aid? Do people just get sick in medieval times and now everyone is looking at coincidence and seeing divine intervention? For once in its stupid life, the show lets the mystery be, which is way more intriguing than if it had spelled it out.

One of my favorite things about Cornwell’s books is how well they sell the idea of the power of magic; no one is lighting fires with their mind or anything, but in a world where everyone believes in the gods — including the Christians, a little bit, though they may protest — people who claim to speak for the gods like Merlin and Nimue have power, because people listen to them. It doesn’t matter if their magic is “real,” because their control over people who think it’s real is real. This episode finally engaged with that idea and I couldn’t be happier.

Also it’s cool that Nimue threw snakes at the priests. Anyway, Sansum calls on Arthur to mediate this dispute, and although we don’t get confirmation, it sounds like he thinks that Nimue poisoned the priests, in which case she’s in trouble.

Verdict

What ties all the storylines of this episode together is that they’re all about dealing with the consequences of Arthur’s stupid decision. So even though the characters are spread out geographically, they’re thematically linked. The episode never felt aimless; it always felt like it was going somewhere.

So I liked it, although I wouldn’t blame people if they’d sworn off the show by this point; the first half of the season especially was pretty rough. Can the show redeem itself in its final two episodes? Check back to see.

The Winter Bullet Points

• The episode opens with a sex scene between Arthur and Guinevere. It’s important to show that these two are newlyweds in love, but I don’t think the show has quite enough tact and skill to keep the scene from feeling cheesy. It kinda feels like softcore from the ’80s.
• This isn’t scientific, but I can’t help but notice that the show improves when Merlin isn’t around. Feel free to read my thoughts on that disaster here.
• At Powys, Derfel and Ceinwyn share a moment, which book-readers know portends things to come.
• Pretty much everything in Powys this episode is invented for the show. It all works, but it does feel a bit melodramatic.

Episode Grade: B+

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