Welcome all, to the final episode of Vinland Saga Season 2! I won’t call this the grand finale, as that was last week. This one is more like an epilogue, the wrapping up of loose ends and a look towards the future. It’s a pleasant, happy ending to a story filled with loss and war. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Now lets dive in!
All things considered, this was a rather quiet episode of Vinland Saga. A nice and relaxing one after the last couple that were emotional climax after emotional climax. As I said in the intro, in a lot of ways this feels more like an epilogue then it does a finale. And personally? I like that. It makes the season feel… Final. As if, assuming we never get a season 3 adapting more of the manga, we have gotten a complete story. And I think that’s a really good thing. A show shouldn’t end saying “But wait there’s more and you’ll have to wait to see it”. It should end in way that, if the next season never gets greenlit, we can feel satisfied. And with the way Vinland Saga tied it all back to season 1? I think it did just that.
Getting into the details a bit, this episode was all about Thorfinn finally coming home and seeing his family. And this was something Vinland Saga did really well. I liked how no one recognized him, no one believed him. To them, Thorfinn was this kid that died almost 2 decades ago. Someone they never even got to bury so there’s nothing to remember. I imagine a lot of them are new residents to the town since then to, who might not have known his father. They don’t have cellphones or mail, they don’t have Facebook to keep in touch. To these people, anything outside Iceland is probably a complete mystery. So when a short guy shows up and starts claiming to be Ylva’s long lost brother? And he can’t remember their names? Yeah, it makes sense.
It only gets better when the first one to recognize him, to truly embrace him, is his mother Helga. And her first words after all these years? Exclaiming how much Thorfinn looks like his father, Thors. The man who was everything Thorfinn wanted to be, who inspired him to choose this path. That was probably just as much a kick in the gut for Thorfinn as seeing his mother again was. Especially because the only place the really look alike is the eyes. The thing that everyone from Thorkell to Askeladd have commented on. It made for a really touching family reunion in my eyes. Of course out of everyone on the island a mother would recognize her own child. That for all he’s been through, all the change, he’s still Thorfinn to her.
After that we get a small recounting of his journey thus far, and this is what really made me think of this as an epilogue. We revisit everything that happened and how we got here, finally telling his family about what happened to him since Thors death. We see Ari again and get a tearful reunion after the fiasco on the ship. They hear all about his inner struggle and how he became who he is now. There’s a nice callback to when Thors and Helga fled from Jomsborg for the same reason Thorfinn wants to create Vinland, leaving behind all the violence and war. It’s like Thorfinn is continuing his fathers journey and taking to it’s extreme. All of this culminating in his mother, Helga, approving and supporting his plan. Making it clear he isn’t doing this just for himself but for everyone who would flee war and violence.
The question now then is, where do we go from here? Personally, I would be fine if this was the last Vinland Saga we ever got. I don’t think it really needs a Season 3. I’d like one, sure. I wouldn’t say no, and there’s plenty left to adapt. But this arc was sort of the thematic climax of the entire series for me. This feels like a satisfactory way to just… end it. We don’t really need to see Thorfinn’s journey across the sea, nor it’s outcome, as the real journey was Thorfinn’s personal and internal one. The one where he goes from being a violent bloodthirsty warrior to a man striving for peace and renouncing war. From this point on it’s really just refining that and putting it into practice. Will that be good? Yeah. But it will never be as good as what we just got.
So yeah, in case it wasn’t obvious, this was a good episode and Vinland Saga is the easiest Anime of the Season I’ve given out in years. I absolutely loved it and I’m looking forward to writing the review. It’s going to take some time, I have a lot of thoughts I need to figure out how to put into words. But you can expect that to come out soon! In the meantime I still have Erin going, as well as the upcoming new season First Impressions. So keep a lookout for those and I’ll see you when I get this done!
The manga really should have ended at this point
From what I hear nothing comes closes to the farm arc. Why the writer didn’t end things here is beyond me.
Probably a desire to see it through to the end. I don’t see anything wrong with it continuing per se, I just know that if we never got another piece of Vinland content, I would be satisfied with this ending.
Manga maintains good quality even beyond farm arc. I really like next arc as well and the one after 🙂 I actually thought Vol 13 (or 26 Japanese edition) ending would have been a great finishing point as well. But think there is still 2 volumes or so coming.