The first teaser for “Bloodaxe” opens on still water, looking past the mast and rigging of a ship toward a forested mountain, and then it drops straight down into a pine forest full of running men. Within five seconds Erik Bloodaxe (Xavier Molyneux) is roaring with a weapon raised over his head, and the tone of the next minute and a half is settled. Prime Video debuted the footage at a New York Comic Con panel on Friday, October 9th, and set the premiere for Wednesday, January 20th, 2027. All eight episodes of the first season arrive at once that day, in more than 240 countries and territories. It is a teaser built almost entirely out of two brothers, one throne and a great deal of fire.
Showrunners Michael Hirst, who created “Vikings,” and his son Horatio Hirst took the stage with Molyneux, Jessica Madsen and Levi Miller, in a panel moderated by Nerdist editor-in-chief Rotem Rusak. According to Amazon’s release, it was the first time they had discussed the series in public. The same release confirms that season two, picked up before a single episode has aired, is currently in production in Ireland. The Hirsts write and executive produce alongside Morgan O’Sullivan, Steve Stark, Arturo Interian, John Weber and Sheila Hockin, with MGM Television producing. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for “Bloodaxe,” its first teaser trailer and Prime Video’s official season one synopsis.
It is a teaser built almost entirely out of two brothers, one throne and a great deal of fire.”
The press release repeats the logline everyone already had, about Erik and his “formidable” wife Gunnhild (Jessica Madsen) fighting for the throne of Norway, but the description Prime Video posted under the trailer on YouTube goes a good deal further. “A king is dying, and his sons are already at war,” it begins. “BLOODAXE opens in 927 AD, as the ailing King Harald Fairhair of Norway must name a successor.” Erik is “the ruthless heir sworn to the pagan ways,” and his chief rival is his younger brother Haakon (Levi Miller), “raised in Christian Wessex under the ambitious King Athelstan and poised to return home backed by an English fleet.” Harald Fairhair (Jesper Christensen) and Athelstan (Rod Hallett) are joined in the cast by Gunnhild’s father, King Gorm (Rune Temte), who the synopsis says is plotting from Denmark to exploit Norway’s instability. Its last two sentences give away more than most teasers would dare. “Faith and fate collide as the men who would crown Haakon demand he renounce his God to take the throne,” it reads, and then, “Brother falls at the hand of brother, the old ways crumble, and the season builds toward an apocalyptic siege that threatens to engulf Erik’s stronghold.”
The trailer itself is cut around a four-line oath, and the captions on Prime Video’s upload spell out every word of it. “I have led our warriors,” the first line says, landing on Erik’s roar, and “I have protected our lands” plays as warriors crash together in the trees, a press of blue-and-white round shields and swinging steel. Flames fill the frame, and an aerial shot finds a boat burning on a beach while raiders sprint inland across the sand. On a rocky field above the shore, a man clutching a large gilded cross is caught in the middle of them. “I have upheld our gods” arrives over silhouetted figures watching a building burn behind a timber palisade at night, which is a pointed piece of sequencing given everything the synopsis says about the old faith and the new one.
Erik’s next scene is the most physical in the teaser. He is in the shallows among the longships, chain mail pulled up around his neck and blood across his face, and he goes face down into the water in a burst of spray before hauling his head back up to stare at the sky. A blonde woman in a fur coat, who looks to be Madsen’s Gunnhild, stands in a crowd before a timber hall with a snowy mountain behind her. The line “And I will be king of Norway” carries from her face to Erik, now in a black fur cloak hung with heavy gold chains, walking toward the camera through a cheering crowd. Then comes a white-haired old man lying in a sickbed in cold blue light, which fits the official description of a dying Harald. A card reading “FROM THE CREATOR OF VIKINGS” sits over longships run up on a shoreline, and nobody involved is pretending this show has to introduce itself.
The second movement belongs to Haakon. Torches move across black water at night, and he stands on the deck of a ship with his arm raised and a soldier in a blue helmet beside him as the line “This is destiny!” plays. A wall of warriors with red-and-black round shields waits in hazy light under “I was born to be the king of this country.” A card reading “A NEW SAGA BEGINS” sits over a black-sand beach and a sea stack, and an army lines a ridge under banners. Haakon then appears in profile in a dim hall with his long hair braided back as “There is nothing that can stand in the way” plays. The answer to that comes with a cut to Erik in a candlelit tent, his face streaked red, turning his head as the next line lands: “Not even Erik Bloodaxe!” The teaser never tells you who is speaking any of this, and the edit seems happy to keep it that way.
That ambiguity is clearest at the halfway mark. Under a card reading “BOUND BY BLOOD,” one hand lowers a small marked metal token into another’s open palm by candlelight. A boy in a green tunic stands in an open gateway with fires burning on either side. Then “He must never be king” plays across two shots in a row, first Haakon standing in gold scale armor beneath a timber frame, then Erik in black armor framed in a gateway hung with round painted emblems. Either brother could be the subject of that sentence, and the cutting makes sure you notice. It is a smart way to sell a succession war without picking a side, and as it turns out, the key art does exactly the same thing.
“DIVIDED BY OATH” comes next, laid over a candlelit hall where a crowned, bearded man stands at the front of the crowd. The words “Let the gods bear witness, for today we fight for our way of life!” then run over a stretch of quick images. It starts on Haakon with his eyes closed in candlelight, then cuts through a torch flaring beside a bearded profile, a man pressing his clasped hands and a silver signet ring to his lips, and a hall packed with people seen from above. Erik and a curly-haired blonde woman kiss beside a carved chair, a forest camp crowds around a bonfire, and someone sits on a throne at the far end of a hall lit by rows of candles. Then the third card, “ONLY ONE WILL RULE,” hangs over an army drawn up in formation on a wide green field below the hills.
The back half widens the world beyond the two brothers. Seen from overhead, a woman in a white gown with blonde braids walks across a forest floor covered in bodies, and a curly-haired man in a dark robe who matches the press photos of Egil (Karlis Arnolds Avots) stands among the pines. A crowd chants “Haakon! Haakon! Haakon!” while Haakon stands among them by a fire with his eyes closed, and a shirtless man and a woman embrace in a doorway. After an aerial pass over a scatter of islands, a dragon-prowed longship leads a fleet, and a figure with long white hair faces a horizon lined with people. Erik shouts in a hall as the line the whole teaser has been building toward plays: “I will fight for this kingdom, even if it is against my own brothers!” In the very next shot, Haakon stands at the center of a band of armed men who raise their weapons and cheer.
From there it is a montage that runs to the title. A deeply lined, gaunt face is lit by a single candle, a blonde woman screams in blue light, and Erik, with white paint across his mouth like a row of teeth, draws his sword. Riders wait on a ridge, and Haakon sits on horseback in his gold armor. He then charges at the head of helmeted soldiers carrying kite shields painted with gold crosses, a detail that lines up with the synopsis and its Christian Wessex upbringing. A blood-smeared fighter swings as debris flies, a braided warrior screams, and a weeping woman holds a bloodied man’s face against her own. The final shot, before the black card with the title and “NEW SERIES | JANUARY 20,” is a blond warrior in chain mail raising a weapon on a beach as the fighting spills off the ships. It is probably Erik, though the frame never settles long enough to swear to it.
The teaser key art that debuted at the same panel makes the pitch even plainer. Haakon and Erik stand back to back, the dark-haired brother glancing sideways on the left and the blond one on the right with an axe resting on his shoulder. Flames climb up in front of a carved chair, and a timber hall burns behind them. The tagline is the same three words as the trailer’s final card, “ONLY ONE WILL RULE,” which leaves Gunnhild, the other half of the official logline, entirely out of the frame. Whether that is a fair picture of the show or just the easiest one to sell is a question the January drop will answer.
Amazon has also been building out the second season. Its own guide to the show lists eight new cast members for season two. They are Gard Løkke, Melina Åkerman, Kieran Bew of “House of the Dragon,” Sebastian Bull, George Burgess, Maddy Ambus, Steven Brand and Lasse Steen, and the guide adds that Steen’s recurring character will first be introduced in season one. Variety places the story in the 10th century, “between Hirst’s previous television outings,” while AV Club points out that the new show is not technically linked to them. AV Club also wrote that the panel confirmed the series will have “all the hemoglobin ‘n’ hatchets a viewer could reasonably desire.” Nerdist, whose editor ran the panel, saw in the trailer “a pivotal clash of would-be kings,” and that is a fair summary of what Prime Video chose to show. The full-season Wednesday drop in January might be the riskier call, since a binge release can burn through a story’s goodwill in a single weekend, but with a second season already shooting, Amazon clearly is not treating this one as a test.
What Do You Think? After this teaser, are you siding with Erik and the old gods or with Haakon and his cross-painted shields? Did Prime Video give away too much by posting a synopsis that says brother falls at the hand of brother? And will the key art’s two-brothers framing leave enough room for Gunnhild, or is she the real power the marketing is hiding?
See you on the next binge!
