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Vikings: Season 6 Will Be Its Last, Spinoff Already In The Works
History announces that Vikings, its long-running historical fiction saga will come to an end with season 6. The series marked the cable network’s first successful entree into the world of scripted television, following the rise of Ragnar Lothbrok (Travis Fimmel) and his family — wife Lagertha (Kathryn Winnick), brother Rollo (Clive Standen), and first-born son Bjorn (Alexander Ludwig) — as he ventured into (and raided) new lands, meeting, new people and adding to his own legend wherever he went. The result was a hit for the network, one that has not only lasted far longer than most might have imagined, but also paved the way for other works of historical fiction, like Knightfall and Project Blue Book, which premieres next week.
The series is currently making its way through the final 10 episodes of season 5, one that has seen a great many changes, as Ragnar’s sons battle it out for control of Kattegat, with the increasingly unstable Ivar the Boneless (Alex Høgh Andersen) currently sitting on its throne. More so than any other season, this batch of episodes feels as though it is building toward an endpoint, one that will likely come in 2020, at the end of the series’ 20-episode sixth season.
As reported by Deadline, production on Vikings season 6 has already wrapped, with the first half of what will be the final go-round set to premiere in late November 2019, while the second half will pick up sometime in 2020. That has been the case with the series for the past few years now, following the increase in season 4 from 10-episodes to 20, which has allowed creator Michael Hirst to explore a much greater expanse of time within the scope of a single season.
Though Vikings will come to an end soon enough, it seems as though the Vikings brand will not. As Deadline also reported, History, MGM, and Hirst are currently working on a spinoff. There are no details about the project at the moment, only that it would serve to “extend” the Vikings series, and that, should it move into production, Hirst will have the help of Die Hard and The Fugitive writer Jeb Stuart in creating this new storyline.
As mentioned above, Vikings certainly feels as though it’s ready to reach a conclusion, as the series just recently killed off two important supporting characters. The effect not only shored up the sprawling cast of characters, but also infused the series with some dramatic portend about Ivar’s reign and what may come should he remain on the throne. In all, it sounds as though the series is well on its way to reaching a dramatic conclusion befitting the saga that was started back in 2013.
