Vikings: Valhalla Boss and Sam Corlett Explain What Leif’s Volcanic Eruption Means for Season 2

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for Vikings: Valhalla Season 1. Read at your own risk!]

The identify Leif Eriksson is a legendary one within the Vikings corridor of fame. The Norse explorer is purported to be the primary European to have ever set foot within the Americas, centuries earlier than Christopher Columbus would come calling in 1492. As performed by Sam Corlett, Leif Eriksson can also be the hero of the most recent installment within the Vikings TV universe, Vikings: Valhalla, which premiered on Netflix in February. Within the first season of Valhalla, we meet Leif after a treacherous journey from Greenland to Norway to assist his sister Freydis (Frida Gustavsson) get revenge for an assault she suffered by the hands of a Christian missionary.

Whereas it does not take lengthy to verify that Leif is an efficient fighter, the Viking is soft-spoken and reserved when he is launched within the collection. After a season of combating, and triggered by the traumatic homicide of his romantic associate, Liv (Lujza Richter), in battle, Season 1 concludes with a blood-covered Leif screaming in agony as he wields two battle axes and appears able to kill anybody on sight.

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“After we see him initially, he is accountable for lots of those Greenlanders. He is coming over, he is main the ship. If he makes a mistake, they’re all sort of trapped,” star Sam Corlett defined to TV Information. “All through the season he feels numerous the duty for these lives. Loads of them get misplaced, and in the direction of the tip, he has a wonderful relationship with Liv, who passes away in his arms. There is a deep sense of grief. There is a deep sense of disgrace. That comes out in a really fierce, violent, and primal approach.”

Leif’s explosion on the finish of the season was deliberate with a really particular objective in thoughts. Leif’s transformation could have been triggered by Liv’s demise, nevertheless it’s an indicator of one thing darker that has been brewing for some time, and it indicators that one other legendary Viking associated to Leif goes to have to point out up sooner or later.

“You’ll be able to in all probability learn the tea leaves to determine that we’re heading towards Erik the Crimson sooner or later in our storytelling,” collection creator Jeb Stuart teased to TV Information, referring to Leif’s legendary father. Within the collection, Erik the Crimson was banished from Norway and Iceland for his violent crimes.

“As Leif says to Liv at one level, ‘There’s this darkish a part of me that I hold sort of underneath wraps,’ and so long as she’s in his world, he is in a position to transfer ahead,” Stuart defined. “When she’s violently taken out of his world by Olaf, I believe that the inside Erik the Crimson is popping out. We name that kind of the Outdated Testomony Leif, and you will see that in Season 2.”

Waiting for the subsequent season, Corlett admitted that he is “scared” by “what [Leif]’s future could be and whether or not or not he can attempt to include that and alchemize that into one thing good, or whether or not that is going to be one thing he wears for his life.” However Stuart famous that this a part of the story is important in constructing Leif into the person who can survive a journey to the Americas.

“I did not need him to only present up within the new world in some season. I wished us to get an understanding of how he obtained there, what instruments have been in his toolbox, what drove him to go that approach,” Stuart mentioned. “One of many issues that every one explorers appear to share is that this understanding of standing on the shoulders of others and studying increasingly more concerning the world and data and science and math. To have a curious Viking, which we all know that Leif was, the place does that go, and what can we do with that character? That is kind of the place Leif’s arc goes. We do know he’ll get to the brand new world, however how, and is there one thing that he picks up alongside the way in which that actually directs him there?”

It appears like there’s something however clean crusing forward for Leif Eriksson.

Vikings: Valhalla Season 1 is now streaming on Netflix.

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