I don’t talk about TV too often on here, with the notable exception of Zac Efron in Iceland, but Ragnarok is Norwegian, about Norse mythology and on Netflix, so why not. Ragnarok season 2 was released last Thursday, I watched it hungrily, if a little warily after some of the teasers, and I want to talk about it.
To be honest, if you’re here reading this, I assume you’ve already watched season 2 and you’re looking for other people’s thoughts on it. If you haven’t, I’m going to give you a quick primer and then stick everything under a read more so as to avoid spoilers, both for season 1 and 2.
In short, it’s a myth-flavoured teen drama. Brothers Magne and Laurits move back to the small Norwegian town where they spent their early childhood and negotiate life, school, girlfriends, boyfriends and weird supernatural powers. It’s pretty obvious pretty quickly what’s going on with Magne and if you’ve watched the Marvel movies, you might have an idea of what’s going on with some of the other characters. Edda, the small town, has an environmental problem and a huge great factory that employs most of the adults – you’ll meet three of the Jutul family, who own the company, on the boys’ first day at school.
Will that do? Does that more or less cover season one without telling you the one big obvious thing that you’ll probably get from the Netflix cover photos anyway?
And so let’s dive into Ragnarok season 2. Here be spoilers!
Laurits stole the show in season one and now he’s front and centre. This is his show, or at least his season. Well, we all know Magne is the main character but watch it – everything is about Laurits. Didn’t we all know in season one that Laurits was going to turn out to be Loki? He’s very much a Marvel-version of Loki, the skinny brother of Thor, the blonde actor with the dyed black hair, but I guess that’s the version a lot of people know these days. I’m quite impressed that they’ve managed to make the blonde actor look so unnatural with blonde hair. Jonas Strand Gravli may be blonde but Laurits Seier isn’t and in a really weird way, I love that he looks so non-blonde.
And didn’t we all know he was going to turn out to be Vidar Jutul’s son? I’m surprised they did it so quickly and so blatantly but then I guess we get six episodes of fallout from that. Laurits, son of a struggling single mum, is overwhelmed at the riches that are suddenly his, a dad who’ll give him anything, a massive flashy house on the hill and, of course, the “which side is Loki on?” as he flipflops between his beloved brother, Thor, and his new family, the giants.
I quite like that the key piece of evidence that Laurits is actually a giant is that he’s so much smaller than the rest of the family. I suspect that’s down to a mistranslation – I wonder if there’s any implication of large size in the Norwegian word jötunn like there is in the English word giant? And I like that Laurits takes the whole blood oath with Odin very literally. There are so many things in this show that have been taken from mythology and then translated into the 21st century and Loki’s mixed heritage and blood oath become a stolen blood sample self-injected by a teenager.
I’m not surprised that Iman was on Magne’s team – Netflix teased that he’d be joining forces with her and the Jutul kids. Those teasers made me nervous – I didn’t like the idea of the four elements coming together, it was just too cheesy after season one walked the line between teen drama and myth drama and I’m very glad that it turned out to be a total red herring. All the same, I didn’t know it was a red herring at that point and so I wasn’t surprised at all when Iman turned up. I’m glad she did – I couldn’t quite work out what she’d been introduced for so late in season one and I’m equally glad Saxa and Fjor didn’t join the gang because that never made sense.
It’s such a weird gang. Even before we knew that Magne was going to be Thor, we knew Wotan was Odin. I mean, the name gives it away, not to mention the eyepatch and the grey coat. It still feels weird, and against the rules of nearly-teen dramas to have an old man as part of the gang. And even weirder to have Harry, the dubious mechanic, in there, especially as he went almost the whole season without them deigning to give us his name, and as a god, Bye bye hand, hello Tyr. And a gang using a care home as their headquarters at that.
We’ve had the big shock that Laurits is Loki and that he’s Vidar’s son. The other big shock in this season was the unexpected death of Vidar Jutul in – what was it, episode three? I know the entire family are the villains but Vidar was the Big Bad. Where do you go from killing him mid-season? We had Fjor on the good side at this point. Saxa was settling into business life and not vengeance life. That only really leaves Ran as a threat and she’s not up to much this season other than glowering about her husband’s lovechild, which isn’t the word she uses about Laurits. It doesn’t feel like there’s much left for Magne to worry about.
But of course there is. You’ve already got Laurits going from one side to the other. Kill his newfound father and suddenly Loki is firmly on the side of the giants, even if he’s somewhat surprised that they really don’t want him there.
And it brings Fjor back into play as a villain, and ten times worse than he was before. It felt natural in season one for Fjor to gravitate to the human side. It doesn’t feel natural for him to become so evil in the second half of season two. It also doesn’t feel natural how everyone’s treating Saxa. We already know that she’s as much steeped in giant evil as Vidar. Yes, she’s painting her nails and shopping for clothes. Last season she yelled at you all for baking cakes, joining running clubs, eating sweets while watching TV, having human girlfriends. She’s better at the Serious Giant War thing than anyone in that family. Why is she now being treated like a six-year-old? Can’t inherit the company, can’t run this, can’t take part in that. You’re giants, surely you’re above petty archaic human sexism? (especially as giants aren’t human and therefore Saxa isn’t technically a woman)
And where did Gry go? She was a major character and then suddenly “oh, I’m leaving” with absolutely no fanfare? Did she need to be out of the picture for Fjor to turn back to the dark side? Couldn’t you have done that any other way except almost literally putting Gry on a bus? Speaking of the girls, who were mostly pretty sidelined this season, the early promo pictures suggested Signy was going to be a major character. She’s sitting next to Magne, almost draped over him. If you missed her, she’s the girl who hangs around with Oscar and who Magne sees in the diner and it’s only in episode six of six that I finally caught her name. Maybe she’ll do an Iman and be a major player next season. Maybe she’ll turn out to be Sigyn, Loki’s wife? Unlikely, I hope, given Laurits’ crushes so far. Jens as Sigyn? No, Jens is far too nice and ordinary to get dragged into this war. And also, poor Laurits is far too young for him.
Speaking of Loki, I never ever thought Ragnarok would go so far as to have him give birth to Jörmungandr, the Midgard serpent. Well done, Ragnarok. That was very nicely done and I should have realised what was going to happen long before it actually did, what with the eating for two, Erik telling him about the story and the title card at the beginning of the episode. Can we have a wolf cub next season? I want to see the hospital explain that one away. And bless Turid, her horror and disgust at finding a creature in a tank in Laurits’ room. I love that the English dub said “something disgusting” but the subtitles said “something very gross”. The subtitles did that all the way through – it basically says what the characters are saying but almost never in quite the same words. I intend to watch it in Norwegian with English subtitles and then Norwegian with Norwegian subtitles and see how that works for me. I don’t speak Norwegian well enough to gain any great insight by watching it in its original language but I think it would be interesting to see whether the dub or the subtitles are closer to the Norwegian. I love Turid. I love her speech patterns, I love her weirdness and I love the way she always immediately jumps in with “There’s nothing wrong with being a lesbian”, “I think it’s nice that Laurits is experimenting with makeup” and so on. I know the show tries to make it seem otherwise but Turid is an A+ supportive mum, if a little clueless at times.
And Mjolnir. Well, the teasers were right that Magne had to form his gang to forge Mjolnir. I laughed when they got Harry to make it in the workshop – did anyone ever think that was seriously going to be the giant-killing ultimate Old Weapon? I thought the Jutul’s fireplace was a logical Eternal Fire but holding a totally mortal hammer in it was never going to turn it into Mjolnir either. And I really liked that when they did eventually do it, it ended up with a short handle. That’s exactly out of the myth too, although it’s thanks to Loki deliberately interfering for a bet rather than the approach of Fjor Jutul.
So now we’ve got two sides, a new Big Bad, Loki and Jörmungandr, and Thor’s got his hammer, all the pieces seem to be in place for a big battle in season three. After all, the series is called Ragnarok and battle between gods and giants is still mostly angry faces, a bit of spear rattling and some threats made to everyone’s own side. I don’t want a big battle – that’s just an excuse for a lot of CGI and a lot of noise but if we’re promised a war, I’d like to see one eventually. A big blue sky and a reset. Maybe the Seiers arriving in town all over again, but this time in their full god forms, with no pollution and no factory and no Jutuls, just a twenty second scene at the end to show the world after the end of the world.
(If you want to read the actual myths, they’re available in the Poetic or Elder Edda and in the Prose or Snorri’s Edda. Yes, they named the town after the books of mythology. Prose is more readable, Poetic is more comprehensive, reading both is good. Affiliate links to bookshop.org and they’re both the versions I own. If you read the Prose Edda, please note the paragraph about dwarfs copied almost word for word from page 23 into The Hobbit… Bless Tolkien, he did enjoy his Norse myths.)