Seven Kings Must Die Ending Explained

thank you, hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Screen Chronicles, today we covered the

ending

of Seven Kings

must

die, we talked about it on our podcast, uh, episode review of the entire movie, so check it out. Check out all our thoughts, we have a big discussion about it, but we wanted to break it down today for people to explain what's happening in that scene, there you see, at the end, Utrid has been wounded in the final battle of the motif. and at first it seems that he may possibly be dead. Later we see that he is alive.

He reconciles with Ethel Stan. Bebenberg returns to being his Stronghold again with his family and is thinking about leaving and his group of friends encourages him to return to the room. He just came out from where he was resting, but instead of his room being there, we see a giant hall filled with what appears to be some of his former cast members who have died or Danes who are Danes who are Danish Vi

kings

who believe in the place. which are yes, so what this is here is what you are seeing is Valhalla and for people who don't know what Valhalla is in Norse mythology, fahala is a kind of afterlife that you want to go to, it is usually associated with the death of a warrior. and um specifically for this show and the books that this show is based on Burner by Bernard Cornwall, the specific way to enter Valhalla is to hold a sword and die and hello, you

must

give me my soul, die, give me my sword or a gun a gun or a gun yes it could be an ax it could be yes but we've heard that you can die in battle and all these other things but specifically for the show and the books they want you to have a gun. um and that's the logistics of getting there um and it made it fun to watch like when people died like oh no he wasn't holding on or thank God he was holding on like it was always me yeah he always made it. adds to this and um, what Valhalla is besides the afterlife for the Danes is that when you die you go to the Feast Hall of Odin, who is called the father of all, one of the main gods in Norse mythology and he What Odin is doing is getting all the best warriors over time and he is trying to prepare them for Ragnarok, which is the end of days in Norse mythology, when the world ends, the world serpent eats and fights Thor and the world ends and time goes crazy, um, and what happens when you're in Valhalla, you feast during the day and then you go out and fight and kill each other and then you recover and you come back and you hump and you They feast and it is heaven and it is the ultimate goal of a Viking.

Warrior um is what they want the alternative of going to Nifelheim is much better if you don't die a brave death or you don't die in the Lost Kingdom with a sword in your hand um that's bad, yeah you don't want to go That's a version of Hell, except I think it's really cold and you don't want to go there, you want to go to Valhalla, that's what you want and a lot of similar warriors would be willing to die in battle just to go there, yeah, um, and I think that's what What helps them be so cruel is that they actually want death, that way they want to have the good death, um, so that definitely contributed to their culture and that's something that's been a big part of it. of the last Kingdom and when Utread has had these fatal wounds, he is looking at his friends and family on one side and on the other side, he is looking towards Valhalla, or what appears to him to be Valhalla, and we can see Heston, who was a character who died in the fifth season, as was Brita, who died in the fifth season, and we see Ragnar the Elder, who is from the first season of the last Kingdom, the Dane who raised Utrid as a Dane and we also see to Clappa, one of his main brothers.

The season two team members who died in the season finale there too and we also see tons of other people in the Giant Hall there, so yeah, that's what's happening, that's what they're showing in that scene, um and We had talked about the

ending

on our podcast, be sure to check it out for a little discussion, uh, but Colby has seen it a couple more times since then. I've also rewatched that scene, so we want to talk about that too. a little bit more about that, yeah, um again and I have to admit that my feelings from the first time I saw it until now, I've seen it three times, have changed, I've changed a lot, quite significantly, really um, and I'm excited to feel like I'm thinking about it a little more clearly now.

I'm less excited by the immediate feelings you get, so I'm excited to dive into it a little more. Yeah, I mean, that was exactly when I first saw it. We talked about all this on the podcast, but I was very excited. I thought they were going to kill utread in battle and then I said, "Oh, he's alive and So they're still all talking to him and he's talking to them like he's expected to die, but you know he's up and walking and Finnin says you know I die before you and um and we see at the end here he's actually positioned in what to me represents limbo, limbo, yeah, where he's not completely in the party room with his friends and family and He's not in Odin's hall yet, although he's not playing Valhalla either, so, you see, he looks back and forth and it's like he's holding his own arms and I and for me I think he's the one who has to. make the decision and it reminds me of the scene in the final scene of Harry Potter where Dumbledore says to Harry Potter, where we are at a train station, we have the trains, yes, or you could leave the train station and he says, Well, where does the train go and he goes on, yeah, or you could go back and it'll be painful and life and Harry ends up, you know, Harry Potter spoiler, um, he ends up going back and living, so I think that's where, for me, anyway there's utread and um, there's a, you know, that you mentioned, there's a lot of things that classify. to set up to make you think that the end is utra dies um well, they have it thin and they narrate it by one they have always had uterine and I think I thought that since finitarian well utrad can no longer tell a story much it must mean maybe he died, you know that was a thing, um, he can't, everyone speaks firmly to him at the end, which you know, he also looks at Osbert, which you could interpret as okay, my legacy lives on, so I can go to the Valhalla. but it's not the Kingdom's ultimate way of showing something mythological as true, so I think we have to interpret what Utrad sees as something that's in his head or what he wants to see when he dies, and at least that's how I I see.

In that, I feel like it would go against the grain of showing something mythological, but they made him hallucinate before making him see the rich dismissal in his head, um and it would make a lot of sense if he is towards death. and watch Valhalla and I think it's a beautiful, beautiful ending, like many times you've been stabbed a lot, yeah, but I was that's why I was so sure he was dead, but yeah, we've seen a lot of moments from the show that you could interpret it as this happened due to supernatural forces or you could say there's a rational explanation that we've been talking about since season one when Alfred's son Edward is cured by Esalt, he has a fever, he's crying, and they think.

He's going to die and then, uh, but he's hot and they mention how warm it is and they put him on the floor overnight and it's cooler and it's good, that just helped bring his fever down enough for him to be able to see. You know, you know, move on or did his magic work and then Utrid's son died and Alfred's son lived, is it like that, is it because of what she said, uh, there's the sun for a son or a boy for a child. happening or is it just because it happened all the time, it happened all the time back then and the same thing with the Ben Burr fire that was put out was because Thor thought Utread was worthy and he wanted to make the rain fall and I or they were super lucky, it was so hot that for so long that eventually it's going to rain, you know, and I love that the show does that, and to me it has to be, you know, it's just in your head and that's it.

It's okay, because that's how he's going to die, he's going to die letting go, he's going to Valhalla and if he dies accepting being happy with his life, then at least he'll be happy with what's happening, fine, either way. could be a good ending for utread, right, or he lives and is with his family in the dorm, he's alive because they're rebuilding him and he's bigger and stronger than ever, or he moves on and is happy that his son is staying with the place and he knows it. His friends are there and they will always be there um and the more I think about it and I knew it was a good ending when I first saw it, but the more I see it, the more I think about it, it's brilliant the way they go.

It's brilliant, now we talked in our episode about how we're not happy that it ended like that because we're happy that he ended up happy in season five, yes, but the further I get away from that and I've seen it. Sometimes now I really like the way he ends and me and we have followed utrad basically from when he was a little kid to what could be his death again. They leave it a little ambiguous, but there is a good purpose. it's there there it really is um, which in a way is very nice, yeah, I mean we, you and I, we both like endings that you can enter, they're not always satisfying, but sometimes we I really like those endings in which you are open to interpretation.

You know, we talked recently about the banshees in the Sharon hinterland. Our first episode that we did a podcast on was Joker. There are many different ways to watch those movies. Yeah, yeah, I'm ignoring a few others right now, but anyway, it's still something. I think we can appreciate that they don't say he dies and they don't necessarily say he lives, so you could look at it as being somewhat of a fan if the Last Kingdom that resents you wants to know that Utrid is going to Valhalla, right, right, that It's something that's important to him, um, and it's something that you want to happen, um, and although, again, I don't think he's actually seeing the kingdom of Valhalla, uh, you know, I think it's, you know. or you might think that, but I don't think so myself, I think it's because he's been stabbed 30 times and you know he's up and moving, uh, and you know it just represents his choice between life and death and that scene while he was looking at her a third time, when they go out the window and he's standing in limbo, Valhalla disappears and the last moment you see utrid it's like he's still standing in that room, just staring, you know what I mean, and that It kind of solidified for me again that maybe maybe he just approaches death and he likes to see that option from time to time that vision of his is more like luring him to this path like you could, okay, you can die now and then look back. to his son and he sees life, you know, so he's in that limbo and I think that's cool, man.

I think you were pretty sure he was dead when you first saw him, so the first time I saw him, yeah, the first time I saw him. it was like, oh, he died and you know he got stabbed a bunch of times and he went back to his room to die and he thinks he's going to Valhalla, you know, that's kind of an immediate interpretation, the second time I saw it, there was a little bit more of ambiguity and the more I think about it, it's not clear, he's dead, just not, I mean, he probably succumbed not long after, but maybe not, maybe he didn't, maybe he survived and just left it.

His son took care of Ebenberg and simply lived his life as an old man like he does in the books. Maybe that's up to you, I think, and I think they left it at that, we know that the prophecy is that

seven

Kings must. they die and they talk about the five sons who died in the field um and then it's like maybe and they and throughout the movie they referred to utrid as a king of bebenber of uh he never referred to himself, he never referred to himself same like that so I think the fact that Finn narrating the fact that they referred to him as a king um and the prophecy um and there was an argument that Utrad had with Citric in the movie about how Warrior Kings have a tendency to die and um that, you know?

It's a conversation that people always have about great warriors and they have all these, like Alexander the Great, uh, King Leonidas, they always have these incredible rules and incredible achievements, but they always die in the end because they're fighting and you can't win all the time. , you can't go 100-0, so I think there were a lot of things that set up his death and my analytical brain says I think it was the writer, the writers, um. I intend for utra to die in this, but I think an utra doesn't die in the final book. He's an old man and he's still talking about his life and he's talking about holding the breath of the Serpent, which is his sword, even in his final moments and in case it happens um and I think because well, I think because he doesn't die.

In the books, maybe they were hesitant to kill him and I also think they are aware of that too. how well received or maybe how well the season five finale was going to be received that they didn't want to ruin that happy ending for everyone, so they left it, I think because of all those things, they say, well, let's leave it open. Instead, instead of committing to killing them and sending them to Valhalla, let's leave it open, in case people want that to continue happening, which I do. I want a happy ending and now, after watching it for the third timeOnce, I think you understand. to choose that if you want man, I think so um and I think if you want to choose that like oh I want I wanted to see utra die I wanted to see everything until she died so we can know that we have seen her entire story there is nothing that we missed, that okay too, I think you can believe that he went back to his room to die, um and there are arguments either way, another one you could argue against him dying as far as the prophecy is concerned is Fannin tells him, deep inside your heart, you don't want to be a king, so you're not a king.

You know, you said that at one point, so it's like in that moment he was saying, well, you will be. sure because you are not part of the prophecy, so at the table at the end, before leaving, he says: am I the

seven

th king? um and I think it's an intentional question that they ask and they put it in the script to be more ambiguous, there are things that you detect when you watch it again and if I encourage people to watch the movie again, I've liked it more each time that I have seen it so far and heard it from others.

People who have seen it several times like it better next time, so give it a try and I don't think you'll be disappointed. ABS absolutely fine. I mean, those are our thoughts if you want to see and hear more. of what we thought about that scene, especially our initial reaction after we reviewed the movie right after Kobe watched it the second time I watched the first time, be sure to check out our spoiler talk on YouTube and the podcasts, you can listen to them too if you want to make sure to like, subscribe, tell us what you thought which ending you're buying, watch it yeah, and tell us what you thought of the movie too, but thank you all for listening and it's like I always say and fate is everything oh