Well, it happened in the first few minutes when you don’t know the exact premise of the show. I didn’t make the connection when they first showed him and since they kept the old guy way in the background for most of season 1, I probably would not have until much later. So, yeah, still gotta go with a sarcastic thanks to Netflix.
To be fair, they identify him as Wotan, not Odin, and that is the character’s name on the show, even publicly to humans. And it isn’t apparently a common name now, but it also isn’t completely unused.
From the Norwegian Bureau of Statics name statistics for Norway:
Fewer than four people or no one has the name Wotan
There are 3 329 men with Odin as part of their forename
There are 2 607 men with Odin as their only forename
For comparison:
There are 23 460 men with Knut as part of their forename
There are 8 901 men with Knut as their only forename
On a related note, Wotan doesn’t seem to be Odin any more than Magne was Thor. I thought in the beginning that the old gods were just in hiding. When it seems that they are actually being created anew by the seeress. So it seems to be a coincidence that a one-eyed old man named Wotan became Odin.
There might be some “function follows form” things going on here, but obviously the writers don’t feel they need to be fully consistent. Wotan turns out to become Odin. But “Magne” was actually the name of one of Thor’s sons. The mother of mythological Magne was Jarnsaxa. And in Norse myth Ran and Vidar were both Aesir, so part of the same sub-pantheon as Odin and Thor. At least according to the sources we have available today.
The original believers may not have felt the need to be consistent either, but their stories were filtered through poetry and then Christian scribes.
I’m bumping this because I’ve been wondering if Magne’s father is involved in the divinity business. In season 1 they show how he had old runes on his tools. Vidar refers to Magne’s dad while fighting at the climatic S1 finale. It kind of implies Vidar was responsible for the death of said father. They show a pic of dear old dad, but it was really to highlight Laurit’s familial estrangement even at an early age. It may be some kind of long-term prophecy that the family and town is following without knowing.
Your exactly right. Somewhere I read an article by Neil Gaimen about writing the dialogue for Princess Mononoke and he talks about how he wanted to write lines and how he had to in order to make the dialogue match the lip movements of the characters.
Season 3 of this has now dropped.
Thanks for the heads up. I enjoyed season 1, season 2 was not as good. Hopefully season 3 is back to season 1 quality of writing.
We just finished S3. It turns out that it’s the last season-- it ends clearly and decisively.
Spoiler for the series ending:
It turns out…all the God / Giant / Snake beastie stuff was all Magne’s imagination 
There’s a scene where he’s looking through old ‘Thor’ comic books that clearly mirrored the things he had been experiencing.
Then there’s a big climax scene toward the end where he is at his high school graduation, simultaneously experiencing the ceremony and his imagined final ‘Ragnarok’ battle in his head; interspersed with flashbacks about his being diagnosed with psychological issues in the past. He finally throws off his imaginary world and decides to embrace adulthood and throw away childish things when his girlfriend takes him back, and he then throws out his old comic books.
Not since ‘Lost’ has a series had such a stupid, disappointing ending, in my opinion.
Agreed.
Agreed too. ’It was all a dream’, should not be a credible ending for any writer past the age of 10