Vikings: Valhalla Boss Unpacks the Fiery Final Season and Ultimate Ending

The saga of Netflix's Vikings has officially wrapped. The third and final season of Vikings: Valhalla hit the streamer in July with a seven-year time jump and eight action-packed episodes that brought the latest historical explorers and glory-seekers to an end.

The third season traced key moments leading up to the final years of the Viking Age, including Harald Sigurdsson (Leo Suter) and his time in Constantinople, Leif Erikson (Sam Corlett) grappling with how to use his inventions, and Freydis (Frida Gustavsson) struggling to keep the pagan faith alive. Meanwhile, King Canute of Denmark (Bradley Freegard) faced death, and Emma of Normandy (Laura Berlin) and Godwin (David Oakes) held one final power struggle.

By Episode 8, the series ended as it began, with Harald, the new king, in Kattegat and Freydis and Leif on a boat. Only this time, the siblings were sailing away to discover uncharted territory.

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There would have been plenty more story to explore in a potential fourth season, with Harald Hardrada being "the last real Viking" and Leif Erikson's eventual discoveries. But with confirmation that Season 3 would be the show's last, showrunner Jeb Stuart wanted to end the series how he did.

"In this world, we never know what will happen; when we set this up at Netflix, we knew we had three years. My plan was to close the loop within that period to make this an end to the first part of the Viking story," Stuart says. "If the gods were to say, 'Let's go forward,' I would have reconceptualized. But I knew from the beginning that this is where I wanted to end."

TV Guide caught up with Stuart to unpack the fiery episodes and to discuss balancing the line between history and compelling TV characters.

Had you always envisioned that closing scene, with Leif and Freydis exiting Kattegat the way they entered it?
Jeb Stuart: I had. We know the next piece with Leif and Freydis reaching the new world. I was satisfied with the ending, and I didn't feel that I would have done anything differently if I had even one more episode. Obviously, there's some disappointment. Some people really wanted to see them interact with Indigenous people in North America and all that. But it would have been a different type of invention — we don't know some of what happened; we get two completely different tales in the Sagas about what happened when they got there.

You introduced a lot of big storylines this season, like the Varangian Guard and the Erik the Red (Goran Višnjić) stuff. Do you wish you had been able to spend more time in any one area?
Stuart: Oh, I always do. We shot a good bit of our third season in Croatia, covering all of the Mediterranean, Sicily, Rome, and Greece when Leif worked his way back, as well as Constantinople. That's just a new look for our fans who are used to seeing the fjords in the dark, the deep, dense forest, the fogs, and the rolling seas from the North Sea. To suddenly be faced with those Mediterranean Aegean waters, which are so incredibly beautiful and stunning, that's where I went. I wanted to show this is what the Vikings did. They took off and explored places nobody from the North had ever explored.

We know from the big runestones in Scandinavia that when they went south and came home, those were stories worth telling. And they left some of those stories on the runestones. It's fascinating, and I was very happy we could capture it. But give me another 10 episodes? Oh, yeah, I would have been a kid in a candy store.

What were some of the inspirations behind Leif and his inventorship, particularly when he questions the misuse of his inventions?
Stuart: We knew Greek fires were used in Constantinople around that period, and to this day, it's still an incredible mystery that the Byzantine navy and the branching guards had access to this sulfur type of fire that was sprayed over ships and on the water and used in combat. The recipe for it was a heavily guarded secret. It was an easy leap to say that if Leif was coming in, how cool would it be to give him that and those tools?

That scene where it's used against him is that [Robert] Oppenheimer moment where he's like, "What have I done? How far have I gone?" I always thought that was fascinating because Leif eventually converted to Christianity and brought it back to Greenland. He converted his mom, but he never converted his father or Freydis.

So many characters questioned Harald and whether he'd forgotten his ambitions of ruling as king this season, and he protested. Did he forget? What held him back? Was it greed?
Stuart: I don't know if it was greed, but it's clear that he tarried too long in Constantinople. He got too deep with the royal family. He had been shipping his goods back to his uncle for safekeeping. He knew that he wanted it someday. But he was having a great time down there. I wouldn't call it greed as much as I would call it getting too comfortable with the situation.

Becoming King of Norway would always be a battle; it would always be tough. I don't think he ever realized he would just return, and everybody would bow down to him. Otherwise, he wouldn't have amassed this huge force. It's just one of those Daedalus and Icarus flying too close to the sun stories, which I think we all need occasionally.

Why did you want to bring Freydis back to Greenland this season?
Stuart: That was a really fun story for me. It's important that she went home because of all the characters she's changed the most. Here's a story about someone who felt so strongly, and we know from the Sagas, that she never changed in terms of her devout belief in the old ways. At the show's end, she's one of the few, other than her father, who is not open to new change. Even that is a difficult road. It shows she can have the same ideological beliefs as her father and still have conflict.

We see that today, even within our own political parties. That's an important piece for Freydis because she has realized that the last place she could maintain a pagan culture would be in a new land where there are no religions, where she would have to find that. That gives her a reason to explore with Leif.

There were so many times throughout the series where the Vikings were thought to be these brutes, but they outsmarted everyone. What stood out to you in the research process when you were putting these big stories together like London Bridge falling or Harald using birds to start a fire?
Stuart: The story of the birds and the fire is one of the great Harald stories, and to tie that into his personal journey in a slightly different way than the Sagas reveal, it was fun. But with London Bridge, it's one thing to say, "Hey, we're going to bring down London Bridge," and another to do it. Bringing down London Bridge is no small feat. It's horrific for even a premium television show. And getting birds to fly out above an oubliette is not a little thing, either. It takes months and months of planning and thinking about how these birds will react and doing all the visual effects. I'm very lucky to have worked with a bunch of people who were as committed to the show as I was, so I want to shout out to all those people.

Speaking of fires, there were a few this final season. In real life, some say that Magnus (Set Sjöstrand) set fire to Jomsborg, but you did the poisoned flour storyline instead. Were there just too many other fires throughout the season?
Stuart: Yeah, I also felt like with the Olaf (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson) scene where Freydis burns him, that was my use of fire for Jomsborg. I had read the same thing where, for whatever reason, Magnus goes looking for his father and then finds Jomsberg, which no one had been able to find. And in retribution, he burned it down. I felt like the important piece was that he found them, and I was happy to live with that because I was going to reprise the fire later in the series.

Did you ever consider Harald meeting his son, or do you feel you covered that when Freydis told him not to wait too long?
Stuart: That's exactly how I had to do that. It brought their relationship full circle. They share a child, which is a powerful thing for two people whose love for each other started passionately and became one of friendship between two people who are bonded by their futures and their fates.

All seasons of Vikings: Valhalla are streaming on Netflix.