Warning: contains spoilers for The Last Kingdom series 3 episode 6
Episode six in the new run of The Last Kingdom is a treat in so many ways. There’s excellent action, plenty of laughs and a core of real emotion between characters we love.
It’s also a rewarding watch for the neat way it ties in to events right back at the show’s beginning. In series one, episode two, the young Uhtred and Brida—on the run after Uhtred was framed for killing his adoptive father Ragnar the Fearless—seek a way to find an audience with Earl Ragnar’s successor, Ubba.
To get Ubba’s attention, Brida (mid-hump) comes up with the plan of kidnapping his trusted runecaster Storri. Disguising Brida as a Saxon witch, Uhtred delivers her to Storri (who’s busy slicing up King Edmund’s priests and scrying with their guts) and tells him she’s a gift from Ubba, and needs to be executed. “She has the face of a she-wolf,” says Storri, “does she bite?” Little does he know. Brida turns her sword on Storri and takes him captive.
Uhtred talks with Ubba, but isn’t believed, so he returns to his and Brida’s forest camp where he comes upon a strange sight. Storri, on his stomach, naked, bound, gagged, and strapped to a horse with a branch stuck in his, er… down below. After Brida gives the branch a fond wiggle, they send the sorcerer galloping off home, grunting all the way.
Later, Uhtred asks an unsettled Brida what exactly Storri said to merit the treatment she gave him. “He threw a curse. I responded with a branch,” she explains.
That curse, we now know, was on her fertility. Brida hasn’t been able to keep a pregnancy since it was thrown, and in series three episode six, she finally does what’s necessary to lift it.
Read more about The Last Kingdom series three here.