The Last Kingdom S4 E9 review: a tense penultimate episode sees the Saxon heart “ripped out”

There is some historical justification for what happens. Attacks on the city and its territory were significant in the ninth and 11th centuries

In the meantime, Uhtred of Bebbanburg (Alexander Dreymon) and his companions have the dubious privilege of escorting Aelswith (Eliza Butterworth) south to her estate in Wiltshire, where she is to care for the young prince, Aethelstan (Caspar Griffiths), newly accepted back into the royal family. For all her significance in bringing the royal family together, Aelswith is not proving easy company. Under these circumstances it is perhaps forgivable that the heroes fail to do much about the lugubrious ambush set by the world’s laziest Viking, Haesten (Jeppe Beck Laursen), who sends Aelswith, Stiorra and Aethelstan as captives to Winchester, the younger of the group assumed by Haesten to be servants or slaves. Now Haesten can finally dispose of Uhtred and his gang. They are trussed and left to a slow death by inverted hanging from the nearest tree.

THE LAST KINGDOM SEASON 4 REVIEWS (LIST UPDATED DAILY):

• The Last Kingdom S4 E1 review: will Alfred’s legacy come tumbling down?
• The Last Kingdom S4 E2 review: winds of change and dramatic father-son relations
• The Last Kingdom S4 E3 review: moments of introspection remind us of history’s “shared humanity”
• The Last Kingdom S4 E4 review: “Royal rage could be a terrible thing in the early Middle Ages”
• The Last Kingdom S4 E5 review: “This has to rank among the more gruesome episodes of the season, if not the series”
• The Last Kingdom S4 E6 review: a mysterious medieval ‘Sickness’ leaves its mark
• The Last Kingdom S4 E7 review: a royal funeral, the abuse of power, and a little artistic licence
• The Last Kingdom S4 E8 review: a fiery opening paves the way for a new ruler of Mercia
• The Last Kingdom S4 E10 review: resettled pieces on the board allow drama to “catch up” with history

Keen to get back to ingratiate himself with Sigtryggr at Winchester, Haesten makes the classic Bond-villain mistake of leaving the scene, with the ‘Dark Age David Blaines’ watched over by just two guards, who have orders to slit the heroes’ throats if they take too long to die. Unfortunately for the guards, they are unaware that Eadith (Stefanie Martini) has been off gathering firewood…

In Winchester, now displaying Viking war banners on its ramparts, the captives are holed up with Alfred’s tomb, replete with effigy, seen early in the season. The dangers are clear, heightened by threats within. Aethelhelm – the grandfather of the young prince Aelfweard – twigs that Aethelstan is not just a servant. The stakes are high.

• Who was Æthelstan? Tom Holland considers the son of Edward the Elder and grandson of Alfred the Great

Gazing on Alfred’s effigy, Aelswith speaks to the boy prince Aethelstan about their shared history in a moment that looks back to Alfred, and forward to an imagined reign of Aethelstan – and has more than a hint of any manner of futures of an English kingdom. It’s quite a speech, delivered in an understated but powerful manner, which stood as a reminder to me of the importance of medieval women as keepers of familial memory. “Our sense of history is who we are,” Aelswith observes. “It is how God separated us from all the animals.” Now it becomes easier to appreciate why Aelswith, a character who really ought to be dead by this point in the 10th century, is depicted in Winchester, a place that wasn’t actually captured by Vikings at this time, gazing on an imagined effigy of Alfred. Such imagination can tell us much about the real history itself.

Want to read more reviews of season 4 and know even more about the real events from history that inspired the drama? Read more from the experts at our curated page on The Last Kingdom

Aelswith may be striding the moral high ground but Eardwulf (Jamie Blackley), fuelled by ale, is at a new low as the archetypal traitor wracked by conscience. Stiorra (Ruby Hartley) has been recognised as Uhtred’s daughter and taken from the group of royal captives to the royal library, and she becomes a target of Eardwulf’s self-pitying aggression in a moment full of tension. Sigtryggr (Eysteinn Sigurdarson) appears something of a kindred spirit to Stiorra and arrives in time to save her. He also learns of the manner of the dispatch of Eardwulf’s lord, Aethelred. In a moment worthy of Viking saga, Sigtryggr makes sure Eardwulf has betrayed his lord for the last time. His sister Eadith, who has sneaked into the city on behalf of Uhtred, cries out with anguish when it is clear that Eardwulf’s end is nigh. He sees her in the crowd and there is a poetic irony that his last act is to save his sister. Sigtryggr, however, has created a rift with Brida with his speech. His sense of a measured-but-efficient type of Viking conquest does not go down well with her, as it disrespects the Vikings before him who have perished.

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Things have evidently changed, though. Having reached the outside of the city following a rather impressive long-distance run, Uhtred and his companions are stuck there. It is telling of Uhtred’s predicament that he relies on Eadith to enter the city while he himself remains beyond its walls. The failure to recapture Bebbanburg in episode 2 is evidently weighing heaving on Uhtred’s mind. He can only watch helplessly as King Edward (Timothy Innes) arrives unexpectedly, launching a rather ineffectual cavalry charge against the closing gates of the city – with predictable results. With no way of replicating the sudden success with which Sigtrggyr took the city in the first place, the siege is on.

Ryan Lavelle is a professor in early medieval history at the University of Winchester and a historical consultant on The Last Kingdom. An internationally-recognised expert in Anglo-Saxon Winchester and King Alfred, he is the author of the award-winning book Alfred's Wars: Sources and Interpretations of Anglo-Saxon Warfare in the Viking Age(Woodbridge: Boydell 2010).

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