This review contains spoilers.

3.4 Scarred

This week is a prime example of why I loveVikings.

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Power isnt, after all, about force.

Almost everyone in Scarred is trying to exercise or extend their control.

And we get to see this done in a wide variety of ways.

For Floki, the key to control is the appeal to the gods.

Not directly, of course.

Oh, certainly he claims to be, as he did when Rollo encountered him outside the victory celebration.

But the framing of the shot suggests that Ragnars brother did not catch him in meditation but perhaps pouting.

However, the fact that its Rollo who discovers him is suspicious.

Bjorns close call with losing orunn is both clumsy and heartless.

And ultimately unsuccessful because he initially tries to play the son against his father.

Ecbert uses a very different tack with Lagertha: sex and the possibility, perhaps, of something deeper.

And its nice seeing Lagertha enjoy this aspect of herself.

But Ecbert clearly hopes for more than a bedmate in her.

He wants personal allies in the Viking camp.

We have to wonder if this was his primary reason for paying court to her in the first place.

But Ecbert, for the first time in our experience of him, misjudges his opponent.

That he does this while tenderly helping her back into her dress intentionally sends a very different message.

Lagertha is fooled neither in her own emotions nor in his.

But Ecbert is not, as I said, entirely daunted.

He instead turns his attention to Aethelstan and argues that he should stay.

But while Aethelstan obviously cares for Judith, he is no more eager to bite than Lagertha was.

Her murder of her own brother certainly seems more than a little crazy at first glance.

Who poisons their own sibling in front of a crowd of powerful people?

Only a madwoman, right?

The juxtaposition of Ragnars relationship with Ecbert must be particularly galling to her.

She has no army to call her own, so she cannot win her freedom on the battlefield.

She has no wealth (or at least access to wealth) to buy her any support.

The moment the needs of the Vikings were at odds with hers, Ragnar would make those priorities clear.

She needs some other tool to establish her own power.

More importantly, it requires no confrontation of any kind.

And thus, there is no warning that its coming.

For a woman in captivity, its hard to imagine a better weapon.

And in this, she takes the place of the now departed Siggy.

She will be missed.