The Last Kingdom Is the Kind of Show That Steals a Week From You
Some shows are easy to watch.
The Last Kingdom is dangerous.
You start with one episode because you’ve heard it’s good. Then somebody betrays somebody, Uhtred makes a reckless decision, Alfred gives him another impossible job, and suddenly it’s midnight and Netflix is asking if you’re still watching.
Yes.
The Last Kingdom originally ran from 2015 to 2022, so this isn’t remotely a new series. But it still feels surprisingly current because it has something a lot of sprawling historical dramas struggle to maintain: momentum.
The setup is simple enough. Uhtred is born a Saxon nobleman, captured as a child and raised by Danes. By adulthood, he belongs completely to neither side. He’s Saxon by blood, Danish by upbringing and generally convinced that whatever Uhtred wants should probably take priority over everything else.
This creates problems. Lots of them.
Alexander Dreymon plays him as arrogant, funny, impulsive, loyal and periodically impossible to defend. Uhtred will spend three episodes earning your respect and then make one decision so obviously stupid that you want to reach through the screen and explain the situation to him.
It doesn’t matter.
That’s the trick. He isn’t interesting because he’s always right. He’s interesting because you never quite know what he’s going to do next, and even when you can see disaster coming, you still want to see how he gets himself out of it.
For all the battles, Viking raids and sword fights, the relationship that really makes The Last Kingdom work is between Uhtred and King Alfred. They are almost perfectly designed to irritate each other.
Alfred is disciplined, religious and obsessed with creating a unified England. Uhtred is impulsive, skeptical of authority and mostly obsessed with getting his ancestral home back.
Yet they repeatedly need each other.
Alfred understands Uhtred’s value better than he likes to admit. Uhtred understands Alfred’s importance better than he likes to admit. So they spend years arguing, negotiating, threatening each other and occasionally saving each other.
Every time the two of them end up in the same room, the show gets better.
Historical dramas can sometimes feel like they expect you to arrive prepared. The Last Kingdom doesn’t. You don’t need to know anything about ninth-century England, the Saxon kingdoms or the Danish invasions before starting.
The history gives the story scale.
There are shifting alliances, political marriages, battles, betrayals, revenge, succession fights and enough people switching sides that you occasionally have to remind yourself who hates whom this week. But the show rarely gets bogged down in the machinery of history.
More importantly, it rarely forgets that it’s supposed to be entertaining.
Once the show has you, those seasons disappear remarkably quickly because nearly every episode pushes directly into the next one. There’s always another battle coming, another betrayal, another political problem, another person Uhtred probably shouldn’t trust.
If you missed The Last Kingdom when it was current, that may actually be the best way to watch it now. No waiting between seasons. No wondering when the story will continue.
It’s all sitting there.
You just need to make the mistake of pressing play.
