What happens at the end of Vikings? How each of Ragnar's sons meets his fate
Vikings killed its main character two and a half seasons before the finale — Ragnar Lothbrok went into King Aelle's snake pit back in season 4 — and spent the rest of its run answering the question he posed on the way down: which of his sons would history remember?
The final ten episodes arrived on Prime Video on 30 December 2020 and settled the matter, one brother at a time.
Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye
The first to fall, and not to an enemy. In the season 4 finale (2017), a feast-table argument between brothers boiled over and Ivar hurled an axe into Sigurd's chest, killing him. It set the tone for everything that followed: the greatest threat to Ragnar's sons was always each other.
Bjorn Ironside
Bjorn was run through by Ivar's sword in the mid-season-six battle against the Rus, and died of the wound early in the final stretch of episodes. Not before the show gave him one of its most famous scenes, though — already dying, he rode out alone in full armour to face the returning Rus army, whose soldiers fled believing Bjorn Ironside could not be killed. Kattegat buried him in a king's mound.
Ivar the Boneless
Ivar's end comes in the very last episode, on an English battlefield facing King Alfred's army. Sensing the fight is lost, he walks deliberately into the fray and is stabbed, repeatedly, by a terrified young English soldier — a boy Ivar comforts even as it happens:
"Don't be afraid."
He dies in his brother Hvitserk's arms. The show's most monstrous character, given its gentlest death.
The two who lived
- Ubbe — sailed further west than any Norseman before him, surviving Greenland and the open Atlantic to reach the "Golden Land": North America. The final scene of the entire series is Ubbe on the beach with a long-lost Floki, two old travellers talking about the gods.
- Hvitserk — spared by King Alfred after the battle, he was baptised into the Christian faith and given a new name: Athelstan, after the monk who was Ragnar's dearest friend. The story ends where Ragnar's own transformation began.
What came next
Creator Michael Hirst's saga continued in Vikings: Valhalla, the Netflix sequel set roughly a century later, which ran for three seasons from 2022 to 2024 with a fresh cast of Norse legends.
For the record: Magnus — the boy who spent seasons claiming Ragnar as his father — died with an arrow in his chest, fighting alongside Bjorn and still believing it. Ragnar always denied him. Everyone, it seems, wanted to be a son of Ragnar Lothbrok.