Summary
Arthur’s impulsive decision-making comes back to bite him in more ways than one in this penultimate episode.
War is on the horizon in The Winter King Episode 9, and Arthur’s ability to meet it head-on is increasingly coming into question. Season 1 of MGM+’s adaptation of Bernard Cornwell’s The Warlord Chronicles has done a reliable job of lionizing him thus far, giving him his heroic and sexy moments regularly and conspiring to make even his bad decisions work out in his favor.
This is not the case in the latest installment, though. Arthur’s decisions backfire badly; he sabotages relationships with his staunchest allies and showcases his very worst qualities. This recap delves into everything, though beware of major spoilers.
In case you need a refresher, Episode 8 saw Arthur’s chickens coming home to roost, politically speaking. After offending the already psychotic King Gorfydd by ditching his daughter Ceinwyn at the altar and marrying her best friend Guinevere instead, Gorfydd had Bishop Bedwin tortured and killed in front of Morgan and Derfel, and sent the two of them back to Dumnonia with the message that he hasn’t taken the public embarrassment especially well.
Why has Gorfydd allied with the Saxons?
This isn’t even the worst news. Episode 9, through Ceinwyn, who catches Morgan and Derfel as they’re leaving, reveals the distressing news that she has been promised to a Saxon, thus allying Powys against Dumnonia.
This is a major issue for two reasons. The first is that it makes war inevitable, and the second is that it means the war probably can’t be won. Saxon might, combined with Powys’s resources and men, would be far too much for Dumnonia to realistically deal with in open conflict.
What to do, then? Well, Dumnonia does possess a Pagan advantage, but the issue there is that Arthur has just exiled the most powerful local druidess to the Isle of the Dead.
Isle of the Dead
In Cornwell’s book, the Isle of the Dead is a peninsula where people who have lost their minds are sent – it’s basically Australia. The name comes from the fact that people are already considered “dead” when they’re sent there; they’re not zombies or anything supernatural. Oh, and nobody ever comes back.
Arthur sent Nimue to the Isle of the Dead as punishment for poisoning the Christians, which he explains to a disbelieving Derfel. It’s through Derfel that Episode 9 hammers home the idea that Arthur has lost himself since Derfel has always unquestioningly hero-worshipped him but here begins to push back against his decision-making.
Derfel, secretly encouraged by Guinevere, who doesn’t consider Nimue’s potential murder of the Christians to be an especially big deal either way, begins looking into the matter on his own time. It doesn’t take him long to uncover that all the Christians who died were woodsmen, and they all drank from the same well, which had been tainted by the rotting corpse of an animal. Nimue is innocent.
When Derfel takes this news to Arthur, he isn’t exactly understanding about Arthur’s lack of due diligence. This feels like a lover’s spat, but that comes later, when Arthur, feeling disrespected by Derfel and having realized that Guinevere probably pushed him into exploring the matter further, takes his frustrations out on his wife.
Arthur gets a bit handsy with Guinevere and says some spiteful things he probably regrets, but she returns to him later all understanding about the trauma stemming from his banishment years prior. Having learned to not trust anyone, he’s reliably failing to accept help, even from those who mean well. But he’s going to have to put their particular tendency aside to fight back against the Saxons.
So, Arthur thinks outside the box a little and turns to King Tewdric. He has a plan to buy time to take out Gorfydd and Powys by offering the Saxons tin, which they’re short on. In the short-lived truce, he can get Gorfydd out of the way, allowing him to focus solely on the Saxons.
While Arthur puts this plan in motion, the episode ends with Derfel rising out to the Isle of the Dead to rescue Nimue.
We have no idea what state Nimue will be in when – and indeed if – Derfel finds her, and we also don’t know how seriously the show is going to treat the notion of “the dead” when he gets there. So, that should be fun.
In the meantime, the stakes have been thoroughly raised as we canter towards the finale.
