Summary
An underwhelming finale brings the first season of The Winter King to a close.
The Winter King Season 1 comes to something of an underwhelming end in Episode 10, which finds Arthur trying to battle predicaments on two fronts. On the one hand, he has a tin deal to make in order to stave off the invading Saxons, which includes a meeting with Aelle himself. And on the other, he just banished his best druid to the Isle of the Dead, and his best man has ventured off alone to get her back. This isn’t so much an ending as it is a setup for Season 2, but that’s not especially satisfying for viewers in the short term.
Still, there are some scant highlights here, including Arthur humbling himself, and some closing sequences that suggest the show might pick up some of its supernatural qualities should it find itself being renewed. So, let’s unpack what went down.
The Winter King Season 1 Episode 10 Recap
As predicted, the finale devoted a fair amount of time to the Isle of the Dead, which you’ll recall from our Episode 9 recap is a peninsula cribbed from Bernard Cornwell’s source material to which the mentally infirm are sent.
This episode doesn’t go especially overboard with its depiction of the Isle. It’s really just a hub for Uther’s misogyny, consisting almost entirely of banished women, some of whom were pregnant at the time and have birthed and raised children in the bleak pits. Derfel is shocked to see the state of things, but he’s pointed in the right direction by one of the women. Nimue, true to form, has ventured into the deepest tunnels where supposedly evil forces prey on humans.
What does Aelle want?
While Derfel is off gallivanting, Arthur attempts to make a deal with Aelle and finds his offer of tin slightly wanting. Through Guinevere, who accompanies Arthur on the trip and is promptly used as leverage by Aelle, the Saxons are promised Ratae, which sounds fancy until you learn it’s just the old name for Leicester.
Guinevere finessed Arthur into taking her along because she can speak a little Saxon, but Aelle is pretty fluent in English anyway, so the whole thing’s basically just an excuse to raise the stakes a bit by imperiling her. Arthur isn’t exactly thrilled about giving anything to the Saxons, but it’s better than watching his wife be killed or, perhaps even worse, the Saxons making a deal with Gorfydd and Powys.
What is Sansum up to?
Meanwhile, back in Dumnonia, Sansum, evidently not dissuaded by the deaths of his fellow Christians, continues trying to convert everyone by carrying out baptisms and upselling scripture to Morgan. There’s a grim irony here since Morgan is still grieving Bedwin and lacks companionship, which Sansum points out, recommending poems written in the glory of God to make her feel better. So, her tragic circumstances make her susceptible to what is essentially a sales pitch, and they’re the very vulnerabilities that religion will appeal to, so she’ll feel that God’s word found her when she most needed to hear it.
Sansum is being sneaky here, in other words. He’s a salesman at heart.
How does Arthur save Derfel and Nimue?
Anyway, let’s talk about Excalibur. Since its introduction, a big deal has been made of the sword, but Arthur’s success with it thus far could have simply been written off as it just being very sharp. Not so as of this finale, though, which sees him use an obviously magical quality of the sword to break down a wall separating him from Derfel and Nimue.
This is what I referenced up top, about the show’s lightly fantastical elements coming to the forefront a bit more. This and an ending scene of doomy proselytizing seal the deal, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
In the meantime, Derfel and Nimue are saved, but Nimue is even more annoyed with Arthur than she was before he banished her to a pit of mad women. Arthur is finally forced to properly humble himself, kneeling before and essentially begging Nimue to return to Dumnonia with him and take the paganistic fight to the Saxons before it’s too late. Eventually, she agrees.
How does The Winter King Season 1 end?
Season 1 of The Winter King ends with Arthur returning to Dumnonia with his resolve strengthened, determined to kill Aelle and route the Saxons out of Ratae and ultimately Britain.
We also catch a brief glimpse of Merlin, who has retrieved the Horn of Bran, one of thirteen powerful artifacts supposedly required to magically unite Britain. However, the thing fills up with blood, which spills on the ground, working as a rather obvious visual metaphor for coming bloodshed. Things still aren’t looking especially good for anyone, after all.
