Episode 28: Awakening

Snake eats while hearing out what happened, calling his guards fools for tormenting the slaves. He offers Thorfinn a mild apology, then abruptly swings his sword; the flash in Snake's eyes jolts Thorfinn's memory of Askeladd, and his body moves on its own to counter with a kick that startles everyone. Snake observes that Thorfinn's body clearly wants to live, then leaves to nap, ordering the guards to see the two home and warning that further trouble will cost them their meals. Alone with the thought, Thorfinn begins to question whether he wants to live at all, and what he would even do if he did.

Pater tends the wounds, judging them shallow enough to heal aside from the ear, and apologizes for the ordeal, noting that Ketil is at a loss over the guards' behavior. Einar is certain they would have been killed without Snake's arrival, that to such men their lives are worth less than insects, while Thorfinn flatly answers that the strong killing the weak cannot be helped. Pater urges them to come to him rather than the guards next time, applies medicine, and lends Thorfinn a shirt to replace his tattered one, adding that they should thank Arnheid for running to fetch him.

Rather than rest, Thorfinn heads back to fell trees, and Einar follows. His reaction to Snake convinces Einar that Thorfinn is no ordinary man, so he asks whether Thorfinn has been to war and killed. Thorfinn confirms both, admitting he has slain more men than he can count, has stood on battlefields since he was five or six, and joined the Danish invasion of England as a warrior. He asks whether Einar now hates him, and Einar stays silent.

That night, haunted by his own murdered family, Einar rises and begins choking Thorfinn, who is simultaneously trapped in a nightmare of killing the old woman who once saved him. As Thorfinn thrashes and cries out, Einar relents and grips his hand until he wakes. Thorfinn asks why Einar keeps rousing him from his weeping dreams, given that he is no different from the men who slaughtered Einar's kin. Einar counters that someone kept them both alive, so Thorfinn has no right to claim nothing good ever happened, and reminds him he was not the one who killed Einar's family. Thorfinn thanks him for the wake-up, apologizes for talking in his sleep, and Einar simply tells him to rest.

Snake provokes Thorfinn into an instinctive counterattack that exposes his buried warrior reflexes and stirs the first flicker of a will to live. Pater treats the wounds and urges the pair to rely on him. Thorfinn confesses to Einar that he was a lifelong killer in the Danish invasion of England. After a fraught night, Einar refuses to let Thorfinn wallow in self-loathing, and the two reach a tentative mutual understanding.

Awakening aired on January 31, 2023, as the fourth episode of Season 2, adapting parts of chapter 59 and chapter 60. Youji Satou directed from a storyboard by Atsushi Kobayashi. The adaptation drops a manga line comparing Snake's speed to Askeladd's and reworks the barn scene so Einar chokes Thorfinn before the nightmare stops him, rather than pitying him outright.