Vinland Saga Season 2

Episode 9

For the retainers that destroyed Einar and Thorfinn's farm, the bloody brawl that followed was merely another opportunity to subjugate the slaves and beat even more of their dignity out of them. For Einar, it was a long-awaited opportunity to get back at the bastards who have been treating him and Thorfinn as less than human. For Thorfinn, who only landed a single punch before being knocked unconscious, it was a return to the old ways, which come as naturally to him as breathing in times like this, where violence is both the language and the law of the land, and a man is only as good as the damage he can do before inevitably being struck down. It is, in many ways, business as usual for most any peasant or slave trying to live in Europe in the 11th century. For Thorfinn, though, this return to his place in the status quo of the world he's always known is a devastating moment of reckoning. It is cause enough for him to fear for his very soul.

“Oath” feels like it could become the defining episode of the entire series, or at least, it could find itself in the pantheon of “all-time great” chapters in Thorfinn's long and winding road to the New World. It's also a wild swing creatively speaking, operating almost entirely in the realm of shocking, surreal dream allegory as Thorfinn has a war with his own inner nature, which manifests as a nightmare of (un)buried traumas and twisted interpretations of the mythic imagery of Valhalla. In the beginning, a young Thorfinn is reunited with the spirit of his father only to be confronted by his failure to heed Thors' lesson that “nobody is [his] enemy,” as the two of them are dragged into the soil by the rotting hands of the damned. Then, the grown and haggard Thorfinn must cling for his life to the stony crags above “Valhalla,” a bloody pit of endless torture and suffering where “all warriors” end up, doomed to eternally repeat the same old patterns of killing until the end of time. It's a harrowing experience, but a necessary one, which Thorfinn learns from the most unlikely teacher: Askeladd.

It's probably worth noting here that, culturally speaking, Thorfinn's vision of Valhalla is very much being filtered through his specific traumas and burdens, but this self-reflective rejection of the traditional values that many of his Danish contemporaries lived and died by hits so much harder when Askeladd of all people is acting as the Vergil to Thorfinn's Dante. This is the man who killed Thors with barely a thought, just another drop of blood in a very large bucket that young Thorfinn himself would go on to help fill. Askeladd stole Thorfinn's life away from the boy and replaced it with more bloodshed and suffering than most men would ever see in a lifetime, let alone a few short years. Yet here, in the pits of hell, Askeladd is the one to spur Thorfinn on, to scream in defiance of the fate that Thorfinn has consigned himself to as the corpses of so many of the boy's forgotten victims threaten to drag him into the abyss. Thorfinn is one of the few warriors to ever “escape” this place, and though he'll never be able to fully shed the life of a warrior, he must fight his true battle in order to salvage what's left of his humanity.

This battle, as Thorfinn is finally coming to understand, is the one he must wage against his worst impulses, against all of the demons that he fostered on the battlefields of his youth. When he wakes up to see the aftermath of Einar's stand against the retainers, he cannot join his new friend in reveling in the satisfaction of knocking an asshole's teeth in. Thorfinn has learned empathy and compassion, and that has made it impossible for him to separate the violence done to his oppressors from the violence he committed against so many innocent people. In order to fully change himself, Thorfinn must make a new vow, but this time it is not one of vengeance at all. From this day forward, Thorfinn swears, he will never resort to violence again, no matter what challenges lie before him.

This sounds like an almost impossible task, given the times that he lives in and the men he is surrounded by, but it is exactly that impossibility that makes Thorfinn's mission such a noble one. In the land of the Vikings and the slavers, violence is commonplace because it is easy, to the point where it engenders cruelty, and it allows men's meanest and most selfish selves fester like so much rot in the belly of a corpse. To choose the path of peace is infinitely more difficult when there are so many opportunities for that peace to be turned against you, and against the ones you love. Thorfinn is a new man, though, and he needs this promise of a new way to live. He's already walked the path of the man who will throw a punch before raising a plow, and it almost destroyed him. Whatever comes next may be just as harrowing as the life he lived before, but may well be the only road left that can lead Thorfinn to redemption.

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Vinland Saga Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

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.