Show notes
Full spoilers for The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die follow. In our Seven Kings Must Die review, the biggest compliment I can give this movie is also probably its biggest problem: it feels exactly like The Last Kingdom. Going back to Bebbanburg, Uhtred, Finan, Sihtric and the rest of this world felt like putting on an old glove. Or, according to Mary, a brand-new sweatshirt before you wash it. Either way, within minutes it felt like we had never left. But that raises a pretty significant question: is this actually a movie? Mary’s answer is basically no. To her, Seven Kings Must Die feels like two additional episodes of The Last Kingdom stitched together and called a feature film. I am a little more forgiving because I enjoyed being back in this world so much, but I think she is identifying the central structural problem correctly. Season 5 already gave Uhtred a natural ending. He got Bebbanburg back. The rain came down. He looked across everything and everyone that had brought him there, and his lifelong dramatic desire was finally complete. Seven Kings Must Die therefore has to spend an enormous amount of energy manufacturing a new reason for Uhtred to leave home, lose everything again and become necessary to the birth of England one final time. Listen & Watch Seven Kings Must Die Recap & Reaction Mary and Blake break down the final chapter of The Last Kingdom, including Uhtred’s ending, Æthelstan’s heel turn, Finan being Finan, the Battle of Brunanburh, the missing characters, Uhtred somehow being approximately 900 years old without a single gray hair, and whether this works better as a movie or as the epilogue to the television series. Our Shields Ratings Mary: 4.5 Shields | Blake: 4.76 Shields Neither of us disliked Seven Kings Must Die. Far from it. Mary’s lower score comes largely from how unfinished and strangely un-cinematic the movie sometimes feels, while my score gets a considerable bump from the comfort of returning to this world and from an ending that, for me, understands exactly what Uhtred’s entire story has been about. The Recap Seven Kings Must Die Recap: What Happens? King Edward dies, creating another succession crisis and putting Æthelstan on the path toward the throne. Anlaf recognizes the instability and begins gathering other rulers who are afraid of what an expanding English kingdom under Æthelstan could mean for them. Uhtred initially believes this is going to be relatively simple. He can go talk to Æthelstan, help settle the succession and return to Bebbanburg. Instead, he watches Æthelstan kill his brother, discovers that Ingilmundr has enormous influence over the new king, and slowly realizes that the young man he helped raise has become capable of choices Uhtred cannot support. Things keep escalating until Uhtred loses Bebbanburg, his power and nearly everything the television finale just gave him. The political conflict eventually draws England and its enemies into one enormous confrontation, with Uhtred once again forced to save Æthelstan and help secure the future of the kingdom Alfred spent his life trying to create. England is born. Uhtred is badly wounded. Then the film leaves him standing between the living world of Bebbanburg and a vision of Valhalla filled with people he has loved and lost, refusing to tell us which side he ultimately chooses. The Review Seven Kings Must Die Is A Really Good Last Kingdom Epilogue — But Is It Actually A Movie? This is where Mary and I landed in slightly different places. Mary could never really get past the feeling that she was watching The Last Kingdom 5.1. The cinematography looks like the series. The music sounds like the series. The performances, editing rhythms, battles and character relationships all feel like the television show we had already been watching. I think that familiarity helped me more than it helped her. There was something genuinely pleasurable about seeing everybody again. Seal Team Uhtred still feels right together, the actors slip back into these people immediately, and the movie does not waste time reinventing a franchise that already knew exactly what it was. But Mary is right about the standalone problem. If you had never watched The Last Kingdom, I cannot imagine this movie giving you enough reason to care about most of these people. The movie assumes emotional equity it spent five television seasons earning. That works beautifully if you already have the equity. It is a much shakier proposition if you walk into this cold. The Movie Has To Perform A Lot Of Plot Yoga To Give Uhtred Another Arc This was the biggest craft problem for me. Season 5 ends in exactly the place Uhtred’s story naturally wants to end. Bebbanburg has been the external desire underneath nearly everything he has done since we met him, and when he finally gets it back, the series gives that achievement the emotional weight it deserves. So where do you begin a movie? Uhtred is home. Things are peaceful. His great quest is complete. Edward dying is certainly an inciting event for England, but it does not inherently change Uhtred. It changes the political circumstances around him. That means the movie has to keep adding mechanisms until Uhtred finally has a problem substantial enough to generate another arc. Edward dies. Æthelstan kills his brother. Uhtred confronts Æthelstan. Ingilmundr becomes a problem. Uhtred captures him. More manipulation follows. Uhtred is stripped of his weapons, banished and driven away from Bebbanburg. His son becomes threatened. Anlaf enters the equation. None of those events are individually bad ideas. The problem is that you can feel the film arranging them. It has to dismantle the ending Uhtred already earned before it can give him somewhere new to go. The Structural Problem For Me, The Movie Does Not Really Begin Until Uhtred Loses Everything The first half is largely about maneuvering Uhtred into position. The actual dramatic change happens once he has been stripped of his status, pushed out of Bebbanburg and given something personal enough to fight for again. That is the moment when the film finally stops arranging the pieces and starts moving through the story those pieces were arranged to create. The comparison that kept coming back to me was Uhtred’s enslavement in Season 2. When Uhtred was chained aboard that ship, we understood instinctively that this man had been reduced to almost nothing. Here, the movie needs another version of that low point, but we have already seen Uhtred survive something so much worse. The new fall cannot help feeling partially manufactured because we know how far he has already fallen before. Æthelstan Is The Movie’s Most Interesting Idea And Its Hardest Sell I like the idea of Æthelstan becoming a problem. We leave Season 5 expecting this young man to become a reasonably good person and potentially a good king. Instead, the movie asks what happens when someone suddenly receives enormous power, believes that power has divine purpose and then becomes emotionally vulnerable to exactly the person willing to exploit it. The difficulty is that the biggest shift happens extraordinarily quickly. I can believe Ingilmundr influencing Æthelstan. I can believe ambition, religion, sexuality and insecurity becoming tangled together until Æthelstan starts doing horrific things in the name of a supposedly righteous goal. What is harder to believe is how quickly everyone moves past those horrific things once the manipulation is exposed. Æthelstan does not merely make a tactical mistake. He has Christians killing Christians, attacks people with whom he previously had no meaningful quarrel and makes choices that get people like Aldhelm killed. Then Ingilmundr is revealed, Æthelstan realizes he screwed up, and suddenly the story needs us moving toward the triumphant historical king again. That about-face is too clean for me. If you are going to make Æthelstan morally compromised enough to drive the entire movie, I want the consequences of that compromise to remain alive even after he recognizes the manipulation. Mary’s Good Thank God They Gave Us Plenty Of Finan If you have listened to us cover The Last Kingdom for any amount of time, you already know where Mary stands on Finan. The movie wisely gives her plenty. His humor still works, his relationship with Uhtred still feels lived-in, he grieves his wife, complains about needing a bed and remains exactly the person you want beside Uhtred when everything starts going sideways. Martha Hillier also clearly understands the rhythm of this group. The “Sword of Uhtred” bit is exactly the kind of small character joke that only works because these people have spent years together. The arseling callbacks, the shield wall and the little pieces of accumulated language do not feel like the movie desperately pointing at Easter eggs. They feel like the vocabulary of people we already know. The Reunion Is Great — Until You Start Asking Who Is Missing Mary’s biggest frustration with calling this a movie is how many questions the compressed format simply decides not to answer. Where is Stiorra? Where is Hild? Where is Sihtric’s family after his entire personal story involved wanting to go home to them? Uhtred’s other son gets mentioned, but these absences make the world feel oddly selective for something designed as the final chapter. I can whistle past some of that because I am fundamentally here for Uhtred and the central story. Scheduling exists. Actors move on. A movie has finite time. But Mary’s point is fair: if the final chapter does not think those answers matter enough to include, it inevitably makes pieces of the television story feel less important in retrospect. The same problem exists with new characters. Mary repeatedly came back to the fact that Ingilmundr and Anlaf arrive carrying enormous plot responsibility without the film giving her enough context to understand who they really are beyond the functions they perform. If you watch something four or five times because you are preparing to podcast about it and still find yourself wondering whether the film properly explained a relationship, that is a storytelling problem rather than a viewer problem. Stats Of A Nerd We Also Need To Talk About 81-Year-Old Uhtred Looking Like THAT There is suspending disbelief, and then there is watching Uhtred survive Alfred, Edward and enough English history to qualify for a senior discount while Alexander Dreymon continues looking approximately Alexander Dreymon’s actual age. Within the chronology we were working from on the podcast, Uhtred is roughly 81 by the end of the movie. I can mostly whistle past it because nobody came to The Last Kingdom hoping to watch an octogenarian carefully stretch before joining a shield wall. Mary had a harder time. A few gray hairs would have gone a long way. Finan can keep dying his beard because, frankly, we both believe Finan absolutely would. The Final Battle Looks Great, But Did It Feel Like The Biggest Battle? I liked the final battle. It is raw, bloody and full of the physical brutality this series has always handled well. The shield-wall trick with the feet is particularly nasty, and the movie still understands that a good Last Kingdom battle needs strategy rather than simply more bodies hitting each other. Mary was much less convinced by the movie telling us afterward how monumental the Battle of Brunanburh was. She has never been the battle person on this podcast, but that actually makes her criticism useful: if the film needs a title card to explain that what we just watched was historically enormous, perhaps the drama itself did not make the scale emotionally legible enough. The cavalry arrival did not help. We both understood the basic rescue beat, but Mary immediately wanted to know who all these horse people were and where they had come from. When your brain is thinking about the Riders of Rohan because at least The Lord of the Rings clearly told you who was riding over the hill, some clarity has been lost. The Movie Could Have Used One More Loss That Really Hurt Aldhelm’s death landed for me because of how quietly tragic that character had become. Think about where he starts in this series and where he finishes. He spends years navigating competing loyalties, trying to do what he thinks is right for Mercia and eventually becomes somebody we genuinely care about. His death is another ugly mark against Æthelstan. Mary actually felt Father Pyrlig’s fake-out exposed the opposite problem. The movie makes us think for a moment that Pyrlig may have died in the battle, only to reveal that the immortal GPS-less priest has once again survived. Mary was glad to see him alive, but she also felt his actual death might have given the supposedly enormous final battle the personal emotional cost it needed. The kings themselves mostly survive while their sons die, which is thematically interesting because those rulers now have to live with the destruction of their future lines. But from the perspective of the characters we have personally followed, the climactic battle does not take as much from us as the movie seems to want us to feel it has. Blake’s Good The Final Scene Is Why I Can Buy The Entire Movie The final scene is my favorite thing in Seven Kings Must Die. Is it a little cheesy to literally place Uhtred between two spaces with different light and have him physically stand there contemplating them? Sure. I do not care. Sometimes the end of a story has earned the right to make its metaphor visible. Uhtred looks toward Valhalla and sees Ragnar, Brida, Clapa, Haesten and people connected to the Danish life he has loved and lost. Behind him are Finan, Sihtric and the people who still belong to his living world. He is once again caught between two identities, except this time nobody is demanding that he pick the correct one. That matters because The Last Kingdom has always been remarkably disciplined about refusing to tell us that one side of Uhtred is legitimate and the other is a mistake. Saxon and Dane are both real. Bebbanburg and Valhalla are both real to him. His loyalties constantly conflict because all of those relationships genuinely belong to the same person. So I do not read the ending simply as Uhtred dying. I read it as the final representation of the choice his entire life has been building toward. Does he go into Valhalla and reunite with the people he lost from that life, or does he remain in the England he helped create with the people who still love him here? Mary Disagrees Does Uhtred Die In Seven Kings Must Die? Mary’s position is considerably simpler: yes. He dies. The man is approximately 81 years old, has just been torn apart in a giant battle, sees Valhalla and the movie ends. Case closed. Eventually everybody dies, and Mary is perfectly comfortable declaring that this is Uhtred’s moment. I am keeping the door open because I think the ambiguity is dramatically more important than the medical diagnosis. The show does not need to certify whether his heart stops three seconds after the cut or twenty years later. What matters is that the final image places his two lives beside each other and lets Uhtred stand between them without the story choosing for him. Read Our Full Uhtred Ending Analysis → Uhtred’s Final Choice Is The Part Of The Movie That Actually Completes His Arc This is ultimately why I can forgive a lot of the plot gymnastics required to get there. The show is not really about Alfred, Danish invasions or the tactical creation of England. Those things matter, but the character story underneath all of them has always been Uhtred trying to understand where he belongs. He spends his life being claimed by other people. Saxons insist he is Saxon. Danes raise him as one of their own. Alfred keeps turning his usefulness into obligation. Bebbanburg represents a birthright chosen for him before he could possibly understand it. Even history itself is something other people will wri…
Full show notes at the publisher 
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
Stay Connected
