All 10 episodes of The Winter King, ranked worst to best
By Dan Selcke
7. The fourth worst episode of The Winter King is Episode 2
After wasting time in the premiere, The Winter King scrambles to catch up in Episode 2, which gives us real introductions to characters like Derfel, Nimue and Merlin. Happily, they prove pretty able to carrying the story.
Episode 2 also introduces Gundleus, a nasty piece of work who will be a thorn in the sides of our heroes for the rest of the season. He raids Merlin’s compound of Avalon, and kills an infant who we think is King Uther’s child Mordred (actually Morgan switched the babies beforehand). The show commits to the baby murder scene, which may be in bad taste but definitely gives the episode a shot of adrenaline.
Visually, The Winter King is…okay. It obviously doesn’t have the budget of something like HBO’s House of the Dragon, but they do their best…except for this one baffling recurring visual motif where they blur the backgrounds of shots for no reason. I first noticed in this episode and it didn’t stop annoying me straight through to the end. Also, in these early episodes, actors like Stuart Campbell and Ellie James have trouble passing themselves off as earnest teenagers Derfel and Nimue, but they grow up as the story goes on, so I’ll cut them some slack. Campbell’s wig is bad, though.
6. The fifth worst episode of The Winter King is Episode 3
Episode 3 is our first proper introduction to Arthur. He’s saddled with sorting through the fallout of the Gundleus-sacked-Avatar-and-tried-to-kill-the-baby-king situation, which is fraught with complications. Arthur will need the alliance of Gundleus’ uncle Gorfydd if he hopes to fight against the invading Saxons, but he’s beset with calls from his own people to execute the rogue. And it’s unclear how much power Arthur is supposed to have; is he merely a caretaker for the baby king Mordred, or does he want to seize power for himself? In navigating all of this, Arthur shows himself to be a canny political operator. And actor Iain De Caestecker plays him him well. His Arthur is smart but supple, a modern man in a backwards time.
The problem with Episode 3 is that, once again, it’s an episode about Arthur on a show about Derfel, and it doesn’t really have a proper ending. It leads into Episode 4, which as we already discussed is a big pile of something.