An Empty Man

Thorfinn jolts awake from another nightmare, one in which his boyhood self slaughters young Einar's household before the earth swallows him and the dead drag him under. Einar mentions that he cried out worse than usual and babbled about a father and someone named Askeladd. Washing at the well, Thorfinn cannot recall the dream's details yet feels a vital piece of himself has slipped away. On the farm, retainers gather the timber the two slaves have felled, and one grumbles that Ketil should never let a bondsman work the land as an equal.

Patching a roof, Thorfinn admits that Askeladd took his father's life, that he trailed the man for eleven years hungry for vengeance, and that a stranger stole the kill from him. Einar reasons the dreams mean he has not let go, but Thorfinn confesses the opposite: the hate has drained out of him, and its absence leaves nothing behind. Sverkel later walks them to the shore for a fishing lesson, telling Thorfinn that an empty vessel can hold anything and that emptiness is the ideal starting point for a fresh life. The following morning the pair discover their wheat torn out by the roots, a sabotage deliberate enough to keep the hardy crop from recovering. Einar burns to confront the retainers while Thorfinn urges restraint and summons Pater. When a taunting worker calls their harvest slave filth, Einar loses control, but Thorfinn's fist lands first and shatters the man's jaw. The retainers swarm them, and as blows rain down Thorfinn glimpses his father mouthing words he cannot hear.

Thorfinn voices aloud, for the first time to Einar, the full arc of his revenge against Askeladd and how it ended. Sverkel frames Thorfinn's inner void as an opportunity for rebirth through his fishing metaphor. The cultivated wheat is destroyed by unknown hands, prompting Pater to open an investigation on Ketil's behalf. Thorfinn strikes a retainer and breaks his jaw, breaking his own resolve toward peace, and both slaves are beaten while Pater warns that cruelty exists everywhere but hope should not be abandoned.

This is the thirty-second episode overall and the eighth of the second season, animated by MAPPA and broadcast on February 28, 2023. It draws on chapters 68 and 69 alongside a scene created for the adaptation. Tadahito Matsubayashi handled episode direction with storyboards by Yoshiaki Kawajiri. The title points directly at Thorfinn's condition, a survivor who once ran on rage and now finds himself scoured clean of purpose.