Okay, so I got through the season. Final impressions….
I could almost describe season 6 as 10 episodes of great television crammed into 20 episodes, but then I think that would give not enough credit to some of it, and far too much to the rest. More like 20 episodes of great television cut down and gutted to ten, then filled in with 10 episodes of crap, like stuffing, to get the season back up to 20 episodes.
They should have killed Ivar off at the end of season 5. Or very very very early in Season 6. Everything with the Rus was garbage. Everything with the English was tacked on. His storyline was pointless and stupid and uninteresting. They should have focused the final season on Ubbe, and we could have gotten still all the good moments of the season, to include those with Bjorn and Lagertha and Floki, and the westward travels. Oh, and all that stuff with Erik? Also garbage.
There are some good moments and it wasn’t as bad as Game of Thrones season 8 (specifically in that it doesn’t ruin what came before—Ragnar’s plot line still had a perfectly cromulent ending which is by no means undone), but there is too much in this last season that is just filler. Most of it having to do with Ivar and that other brother I don’t even care about.