‘Vikings’ Season 6 Premiere: Katheryn Winnick Speaks Out About Playing Lagertha For The Final Time

SPOILER ALERT: This article discusses History Channel’s Vikings. Please proceed with caution if you have not yet viewed all available episodes and wish to avoid spoilers.

Lagertha (Katheryn Winnick) is perhaps the most iconic character in History Channel’s Vikings, outside of Ragnar Lothbrok (Travis Fimmel). Over the years, the feisty shieldmaiden has had her fair shares of ups and downs both on the battleground and off. Now, the actor who plays Lagertha has spoken to Rotten Tomatoes about playing this character across such a large span of Lagertha’s life and what it will be like for her heading into the final season.

“Lagertha’s journey throughout the years has been a huge evolution where she was a farmer, wife, shieldmaiden, queen,” Winnick said.

“She ended up struggling, losing everything, went mad.”

As seen in the trailer for Season 6, it is expected that Lagertha will try to live a quieter life in her old age. However, considering the life that this character has led up to this point in time, many fans are not expecting Lagertha to settle down into her retirement for long. According to Winnick, even with Lagertha choosing a different path, there will still be at least one particularly big moment for the character in the final season of Vikings. Winnick was not about to detail any spoilers ahead of the Season 6 premiere. However, she did reveal that there will be one particular scene that she hopes viewers appreciate.

“There was one, or a couple [of] episodes … it was definitely very momentous for her and, hopefully, it came across to the viewers, because this is really labor-intensive and emotionally intense this one particular scene.”

While Winnick will not miss the hours of time spent in the make-up chair in order to age Lagertha, the actor is sad to let the character go. However, she is thankful to the fans who were so adamant that Lagertha survives the series that she and the show’s creator, Michael Hirst, actively looked for ways in which to go beyond the source material of the Viking sagas and find new ways in which to bring the Viking character to life.

“In the end, we needed to come up with creative ways of still keeping her storyline alive. Chronologically she’s a grandmother at this stage, with Bjorn’s children and everyone else. So it was an interesting journey as an actor to go through that final stage.”

Season 6 of Vikings will premiere on the History Channel on Wednesday, December 4, at 9 p.m. This will be the final season but, as recently reported by The Inquisitr, a new spinoff series, Vikings: Valhalla, is currently in development with Netflix.