Summary
Barbarians returns with a new conflict — or at least a new version of an old one — and a lot of confidence, continuing to impress with its production design, action, and drama.
This Barbarians season 2, episode 1 recap for the episode titled “New Legions” contains spoilers.
It has been a couple of years since the first season of Barbarians, so for once, Netflix’s recap of the previous season is actually quite useful, and the fairly artless on-screen text that opens “New Legions” is welcome too. So, I’ll paraphrase it here to get everyone up to speed.
Firstly, a year has passed since “The Varus Battle”, otherwise known as The Battle of Teutoburg Forest (or, tellingly, the “Varian Disaster” if you’re a Roman historian). The Cherusci have retreated deep into the northern forests. Ari, now the Reik, is to become king and unite the tribes, but the Roman empire hasn’t yet given up its claim to the land of the barbarians.
Oh, and the show doesn’t say this, but Ari’s queen has given birth to another man’s baby. Details!
Barbarians season 2, episode 1 recap
It’s that last line in the paragraph above, about the Romans still staking a claim on the territory, which proves to be of the most immediate concern in this opening episode. In a fun little action beat, Ari — looking, somehow, both more stately and more barbarian than before at the same time — and Thusnelda ambush a Roman patrol carrying huge swathes of material meant for giant tents — the kind used to house soldiers in great number. With whispers of Tiberius’s presence, and Tiberius having power within the Empire otherwise reserved only for Caesar himself, it’s obvious that the Romans are planning to assemble en masse and try to reclaim the land from the barbarians. The episode’s title, “New Legions”, pertains to the fact that Tiberius is waiting on more men before making any rash moves against the fighters who keep ambushing his men and supplies. Why tussle with a few tribes, after all, when you can sack the entire country instead?
Since Ari is pretty intimately familiar with Roman operations, he warns the assembled tribes but realizes that even together they won’t have the numbers to fight back. So, he goes to meet with Marbod, the chief of an eastern tribe with 70,000 soldiers. The only problem is that, historically, Marbod has little concern for what happens in the west, so it’ll require some finessing.
Ari also has another problem. His brother Flavus, supposedly on an official order but without any evidence to support that claim, arrives in Germania with the express purpose of bringing Ari to justice. Tiberius and his son, Germanicus, are both skeptical of the endeavor — and Ari’s betrayal clearly hasn’t done Flavus any reputational favors — but are happy for him to carry on, albeit without the support of any troops.
The interesting aspect of all this is that Marbod was, like Ari and Flavus, a “tribute” to Rome. In other words, the Romans snatched them all from their tribes with the express intention of later returning them and installing them as Reik, thus giving the Empire influence over the Germanic tribes. It’s a smart long game, but Marbod decided to instead take his tribe out east and avoid any subsequent conflict and contact altogether, so he’s very hesitant to provoke the Romans now. Ari, Flavus, and Marbod all know each other personally from their time in Rome, so Marbod is also Flavus’s first port of call. Immediately, he has been presented with a dilemma: Side with Ari and devote his considerable army to stamp out the developing Roman presence, or side with Flavus, get rid of Ari, and preserve the ostensible peace he seems to be enjoying so much.
This all comes to a head at the Thing called around the solstice, which brings all the tribe leaders together. Ari has a good, fiery sales pitch, but he’s interrupted and then undermined by Marbod, who not only claims there’s another way of dealing with the Romans — trade and trust, instead of war — but actually throws his hat into the ring as a potential king. It’s worth noting at this point that everything we’ve seen of Marbod and his wife, Odarike, suggests that they’re actually closer to Roman than barbarian in their way of living. Marbod lounges around being fawned over by his people, while Odarike, who spends some time with Thusnelda while the men are out hunting, is extremely snooty about everything, suggesting that the more “primitive” tribes don’t even have clean drinking water. It’s almost the exact same rhetoric we see the Romans espouse to justify their conquest.
Ari, perturbed by Marbod’s behavior, follows him into the woods to confront him, where Flavus is waiting. Ari realizes immediately that this is his brother’s doing, and the siblings fight. When Ari gets the upper hand, Marbod cracks home over the back of the head with a rock, knocking him unconscious.
