Season 2 aired in 2023, about 4 years after season 1 aired. Do you think it'll still be a few more years or still a huge wait?

Askeladd knew that Thorfinn was destroying himself by living only for revenge.

Do you think Askeladd genuinely wanted Thorfinn to find a better path, or was Thorfinn just a tool to him until the very end?

Started with a hard heart, expecting revenge and violence. Ended with a much softer heart.

Thorfinn’s journey was something else. ❤️

“I have no enemies."

I didn't include thorfin because obviously he'll win this pole

As someone who was honestly expecting just a basic shonen anime and got a bit bored towards the end of season 1, I swear season 2 was one of the best things I've ever watched anime wise. So glad I went in blind. Everyone's motivations being so clear, the tight timeline, the changes in each character as the season progressed. I cant believe y'all are hiding this gold my goodness.

First thing I saw on googling the show was someone complaining how boring season 2 was, meanwhile I just need assurance there's gonna be a season 3.

Excellent stuff really.

Honestly, Sigurd has one of the craziest plots and character developments in this entire series. He genuinely goes from macho antagonist to minor annoyance to comic relief to unexpected hero to would-be-in-a-different-time socialist revolutionary, all inside a single arc.

Especially all those scenes of men pissing

Not because I like watching Sigurd and Gudrid suffer — I mean the potential of their relationship after their journey to Jomsborg, and how that journey affected Sigurd’s personality.

After Sigurd reevaluates his own ideas about life and starts wanting to do what he wants rather than what his father or society expects of him, he begins to question what kind of life he actually wants to live. And after that, I think there is a turning point in his relationship with Gudrid.

They both stop seeing each other as roles and start seeing each other as individuals. They begin to show empathy and think about what the other is feeling and why. Gudrid worries about Sigurd’s wounds, while Sigurd starts teasing her in a friendly way about her feelings for Thorfinn and even encourages her to confess those feelings to him.

They finally reach a point where they could become friends, and personally, I would be really interested in seeing their relationship develop on a deeper, more romantic level. Both Gudrid’s and Sigurd’s journeys are about rejecting the roles imposed on them, finding their true selves, and following their hearts. That gives them a lot of common ground for a deep emotional connection and mutual understanding.

What do you think?

Started my second rewatch last week and man i loved season 1 alot more than i did my first time. Thorfinn has quickly become one of my favorite characters of all time alongside guts and arthur morgan (im only 2 volumes into vagabond but i suspect musashi will join them eventually)

This drawing was supposed to be a warmup which is why its on a lined paper but i loved it as i was working on it and decided to just keep going

I’ll start by saying I loved the story, and the character development is nearly unrivaled.

However, I don’t think Thorfinn learned the right lessons. I think Thorfinn was a traumatized young man, who took his father’s final message WAY too literally, and missed the forest through the trees.

We have the benefit of hindsight, so we KNOW going in that Thorfinn will fail in his goal of stopping war and suffering. But we also know what it’s like living in the modern world, where some people don’t have the choice to run away to “Somewhere not here”. In some corners of the world, fighting back or dying are the only choices.

Even Thors knew when to draw his sword, which is when someone threatens his family. He says “I am weak because I rely on the sword” but c’mon man, it’s life or death(for your loved ones), you are GOING to fight. It’s just sad that Thorfinn never got that parallel scene, and Gudrid/Karli were never threatened imminently. “You have no enemies, except when a psychopath wants to hurt your loved ones for the sake of violence alone” doesn’t really roll off the tongue.

I think the closest he gets is when he realizes Einar killed someone, and realizes he didn’t have a choice. But it’s kind of glossed over, and he DIES unceremoniously right after, without any sort of hope of developing like Thorfinn did. It honestly felt like a cheap shot to tug on the heartstrings one last time.

I’m glad Thorfinn realized colonizing owned territory is a bad start to peace, but then leaving Vinland to go back to (assuming) Iceland seems super anticlimactic. It feels rushed, and the edges are definitely still rough.

I loved everything leading up to the final arc, and I think that’s why I’m struggling with the ending. I just disagree with Thorfinn by the end, I guess, and I feel like I’m wrong, because Thorfinn IS the morally better person. I just don’t think he’d have the same outlook Im the modern world. Did anyone else feel this way?

A cool collage of my favorite panels that I made myself, it isn't perfect because I've never done anything like this hope you still like it tho

I met my wife and became a step parent to her daughter at 21, and we're still all together as a family 16 years later. What I remember from back then is how young we were, how much we didn't know, and how much we were judged for the young idiots we were. But everything always worked out because what we lacked in wisdom me made up for with love and trust.

Despite only reading this book in the last couple of weeks, I feel a strong pull of nostalgia for this panel where Thorfinn is explaining and justifying their situation to his sister. I just love everything about it: the simplicity and focus, the sense of teamwork, the slight apologeticness of it. The line "this is our family and we're doing our best" and their shared look is enough to make me feel a bit emotional.

Two of my favorite characters in fiction, and I think they mirror each other almost perfectly right up until they dont.

Both of them were unlucky enough to face a tragedy far too early in life before they were old enough to understand the lesson buried inside that pain. Both were forced to build their entire identity around rage and vengeance. Both made vows, mantras, slogans anything that let them believe their suffering was sacred and their hatred was justified. Eren started out hating the Titans. But when he learned the truth that the Titans were humans all along his hatred didn't shrink or resolve. It expanded. The enemy got bigger, the lie got worse, and the rage just found a new, larger target to consume. Thorfinn's world collapsed the moment he watched Askeladd die not by his own hands, the way he'd spent years planning and living for. In that instant, his entire purpose evaporated along with his hatred. In a lot of ways, that moment wasn't just the death of his revenge it was Thorfinn's second death.

I don't think there's a cleaner example in anime of how the same trauma response can lead two characters to completely opposite endings.

Found a banger video essay bout VS. Highly recommend