Vinland Saga Season 2

Episode 23

What a perfect conclusion to this story.

Yes, I know that Vinland Saga isn't quite done with its second season, and if the preview is anything to go by, the actual Season 2 finale is sure to get the tears flowing again as Thorfinn makes his way "Home" after all of these years spent lost. Still, "Two Paths" is absolutely where this stage of our heroes' journeys reaches its end, and I couldn't have imagined a more fitting way to wrap up Thorfinn and Einar's long and difficult road to freedom. Like so many of this season's episodes before it, the vast majority of "Two Paths" is concerned with a group of men standing in a field and talking about their views of the world, and, like so many episodes before it, "Two Paths" manages to squeeze more drama and raw emotion from that absurdly simple setup in just a handful of minutes than many anime are capable of achieving across entire seasons.

Something that I have been wrestling with throughout this season of Vinland Saga is whether or not it is possible — or even necessary — to reconcile the simple beauty of Thorfinn's dream for a peaceful world with my knowledge of the world that we live in. After all, we know exactly what has become of the Vinland that Thorfinn and his growing band of followers have dreamt of for so long, and let's just say that it hasn't been a land free of war or slavery since…well, basically since humans first set foot on its soil. Even if we ignore the real history of Thorfinn Karlsefni's voyage to The New World, there is no way to take our Thorfinn's utopian vision as anything other than a doomed tragedy, at least not unless Vinland Saga ends up becoming a full-blown alternate-history fantasy.

"Two Paths" is the episode that finally convinced me to toss aside any concerns I have for historical or cultural "realism" and embrace Thorfinn's dream without irony or cynicism. We're already occupying a version of history where two uppity slaves attempt to talk Canute the Great out of his warmongering campaign. Not only do they survive this ridiculous encounter, but they also succeed. Canute laughs in the face of their audacity, and then he packs up his army and departs Ketil's land with a smile on his face.

Thorfinn's vision for a world that can work outside the system of brutality and oppression that men like Canute have been resigned to simply manipulating from within is ludicrous. Naïve. Doomed to fail. Yet, in this one instance, against everything we know about human nature and the immutable facts of humankind's past, present, and future... it works. Peace wins out over war. Freedom wins. Instead of being cut down or tossed back into bondage, Thorfinn and Einar have been set loose unto the world to achieve their utterly impossible dream. They can dedicate their lives to building a society that gives the poor and the abused hope for a better life, instead of a swift and merciful death. Fantasy be damned. I'll gladly follow Thorfinn to the ends of whatever horizons he will have to cross to make his world a reality.

What else is there to say? Vinland Saga is accomplishing every one of its artistic goals, and it's doing so with such confidence and skill that it's making the act of being a genre-defining masterpiece look easy. The only flaw that I could find in this episode is that its ending means that we are only one week away from this season of the series being done for good. I am not looking forward to the inevitable future where we don't have the privilege of getting more Vinland Saga every week.

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James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.

Vinland Saga Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.