For Lost Love

A hooded schemer brings Brodd and a pack of louts to deliver Olmar's rejection from the royal guard, encouraging them to jeer at the boy who could not carve a pig. Brodd twists the message into open ridicule, and a humiliated Olmar draws his blade only to swing wildly while the men laugh and dodge. Thorgil hears the commotion, hauls his weeping brother upright, and tells him a warrior answers an insult by killing or dying. As Olmar finally charges, the hooded man flicks a coin into Brodd's eye, letting the strike land and kill him. Thorgil then butchers the four remaining men, sparing his stunned brother the rest.

Ketil arrives horrified that they have slain the king's soldiers, but Thorgil brushes it off as a lawful response to insult. When guards move to arrest them, Thorgil kills several, maims another, and interrogates a survivor, learning the whole affair was engineered to pin Olmar's killings on Ketil so the family could be seized. Ketil despairs that Canute has marked them, yet Thorgil grins that the real fight is only beginning. Word reaches Canute that the family escaped by ship after Wulf's men failed to secure the vessel, and Canute presses ahead with the plan, now armed with a pretext to march on the farm. Alone, he sees Sweyn's head laughing, pleased that his son grows to resemble him. At sea, Leif reveals the hidden family, reminding them their passage is a paid bargain sealed by handing over triple cargo value and the slave Thorfinn, while Ketil refuses to leave his barrel. Canute vows he will build his utopia for the sake of lost love no matter how his father mocks him.

Olmar is manipulated into a duel and kills Brodd only through the hooded man's coin trick. Thorgil massacres both Brodd's companions and the arresting guards, extracting the confession that the entire episode was a setup to justify seizing Ketil's estate. The family flees Jelling aboard Leif's ship as fugitives, with Leif's aid tied to a deal that includes handing over Thorfinn. Canute orders the assault on the farm to proceed and continues to be haunted by Sweyn's approving phantom.

Broadcast March 28, 2023, this is the thirty-sixth episode overall and the twelfth of the second season under MAPPA. It adapts chapters 77 and 78 along with an original scene. Hiromi Nishiyama directed, with storyboards by Tadahito Matsubayashi. The title echoes Canute's private justification for his ruthlessness, the love he lost and now channels into building an ideal world.