The slow walk to freedom continues in Vinland Saga Season 2 Episode 3, as Einar and Thorfinn get rudely interrupted while living their life inside the farm. Let’s see how it went for them in this review!
Vinland Saga Season 2 Episode 3 Overview
Vinland Saga Season 2 is an action, adventure, and drama that serves as the sequel to its highly acclaimed and fan favourite Vinland Saga Season 1, which aired in 2019. The series is based on an award-winning manga written by Makoto Yukimura. Read the review of the previous episode of the series here!
The show’s second season is being animated by Studio MAPPA, a different studio that the one which did its previous season in Studio WIT. However, most of the personnel behind the series have been retained. Director Shuuhei Yabuta, of Inuyashiki and Attack On Titan fame, is returning to direct the series.
– Vinland Saga Season 2 Episode 3 Review does not contain spoilers –
Vinland Saga Season 2 Episode 3 Review- Mistake
What is the value of human life? That is the question this season of Vinland Saga has set out to answer, and we are just getting to the centre of the question. When the human doesn’t value his own life, believes that he doesn’t deserve to live, has never seen the good in what the world offers to them, and is just overall done with things, how do you convince him that there is still value in his life? That question comes across much stronger in our current society, where things like the institution of slavery are widely demolished.
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However, things aren’t so cut and dry in the world of this show. Slavery is not only legal but in high demand, and people like Thorfinn and Einar are living that life. Seeing Thorfinn in there is even harder because we have seen him be a free man. We have known him to have a choice and to be able to exercise his rights. He can’t do that anymore and, in the eyes of the show, is barely more than an animal who thanklessly does its work. Thorfinn and Einar are treated as sub-human because they are slaves, and while the show doesn’t have many interesting things to say about it, it does paint a fascinating picture.
Thorfinn is a fascinating character to tell this story from the perspective of, and I’d be willing to wager we are going to learn a lot more about him in the later episodes that build him up as the true person to rally behind in this show. The path to freedom is steep and tough, but it isn’t impossible. There are certainly more exciting stories that can be told in the show, but few will be as meaningful, and even fewer can carry the show for as long as it plans on going.
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The story of weak men against stronger men was also told really well in Vinland Saga Season 2 Episode 3, and you can expect to see all the new characters that this episode introduced are going to be sticking around for a while. The needless cruelty of Fox, the slaver’s son’s cowardice, and Thorfinn’s nihilism all stood out in this episode. Still, Einar was also not to be left behind, with him deciding to do what he did possibly being a focal point of his and Thorfinn’s future companionship.
While the show looks and sounds like an absolute dream right now and is expected to keep that up for its entire runtime, that isn’t enough to retain the viewership that it deserves. That scares me about the future of this franchise, as the story it is telling right now, while better for the show in the long run, is going to lose the casual audience who doesn’t care for it running for ten more seasons after this. There needs to be a goal that it moves towards that doesn’t depend upon the existence of a Vinland that we might never get to.
Verdict
Vinland Saga Season 2 Episode 3 was a raw and unfiltered look at the loss of humanity and the proximity to death that the characters will be in for the entirety of this season.
Click here to read the review of the next episode!