The Last Kingdom ran for five seasons and 46 episodes, from its premiere on BBC Two on 10 October 2015 to its finale on 9 March 2022. Netflix took over the series in 2018 after co-producing the second season. A feature-length sequel, Seven Kings Must Die, closed the story on 14 April 2023.
Stephen Butchard created and developed the series for television from Bernard Cornwell’s The Saxon Stories novels. Alexander Dreymon leads the cast as Uhtred of Bebbanburg. The show mixes real historical figures and events with fictional characters, and its stated subject is how a people combined their strength under one of the most iconic kings of history to reclaim their land and build a place they call home.
It scores 7.8 of 10.
Trailer, via The Last Kingdom.
Uhtred of Bebbanburg and the Saxon Stories
The premise is a search for identity, and the series treats that search as a political problem as much as a personal one. Uhtred’s upbringing leaves him caught between two peoples, which puts him on the wrong side of the oaths he swears. The show’s stated thematic reach — politics, religion, warfare, courage, love, loyalty — is broad on paper. On screen it holds because the loyalty always costs somebody something.
Dreymon carries the run. Around him the cast is deep. Eliza Butterworth plays Aelswith. Mark Rowley plays Finan. Ruby Hartley plays Stiorra. James Northcote plays Aldhelm. Arnas Fedaravičius plays Sihtric. Harry Gilby plays Aethelstan. Timothy Innes plays King Edward. Stefanie Martini plays Eadith. Phia Saban plays Aelfwynn. Adrian Schiller plays Aethelhelm. Jaakko Ohtonen plays Wolland.
That is a lot of names, and the show earns most of them. Aelswith in particular is not the obstacle she first looks like. The series keeps handing her a reason to be right.
Five Seasons, Three Networks, One Long War
The run divides cleanly. BBC Two launched it in 2015. Netflix co-produced the second season, then acquired the series outright in 2018. The last episode aired 9 March 2022.
That split matters more than the usual network trivia. The early seasons are a BBC historical drama with a budget that shows in the shield walls. The later ones are a Netflix action series with a bigger canvas and a faster pace. Neither is bad. They are different shows wearing the same title.
| Phase | Network | Episodes | What it plays like |
|---|---|---|---|
| Series 1–2 | BBC Two, then co-produced with Netflix | Opening run | Slower, more political, more grounded |
| Series 3–5 | Netflix | Remaining run | Bigger battles, faster plotting |
| Seven Kings Must Die | Netflix | Feature-length sequel | The story’s conclusion, 14 April 2023 |
The genre tags — Action & Adventure, Drama, War & Politics — are accurate but flatten the thing. The war is the setting. The politics is the plot. The drama is whether any of these people can keep a promise.
The Battles Are the Easy Part
The Last Kingdom does heroic deeds and epic battles well enough. Shield walls, last stands, a king who has to be argued into his own crown. What separates it from the rest of the field is that the fighting is rarely the point. The point is who is left standing next to whom afterward.
The show’s best material is the argument before the sword comes out. The court scenes, the succession fights, the endless negotiation over whether Uhtred can be trusted with a future he was raised outside of. These scenes are talky and they are the reason the battles land.
A show of heroic deeds and epic battles with a thematic depth that embraces politics, religion, warfare, courage, love, loyalty and our universal search for identity.
That is the series describing itself, and for once the description is not overselling. The identity question is not decoration. It is the engine.
Where the Show Stumbles
Five seasons is a long time to keep a premise this narrow from repeating itself. The Last Kingdom repeats itself.
Uhtred’s arc is a loop for stretches: win a battle, lose a patron, swear a new oath, lose it again. The middle seasons feel this most. Characters who should be gone linger. Characters who should linger are gone. The show is faithful to Cornwell’s novels, and that fidelity sometimes means keeping a plot thread past its usefulness.
The finale is the harder case. Ending on 9 March 2022 after 46 episodes, the series leaves enough unresolved that a feature-length sequel was needed to finish the story. Seven Kings Must Die arrived on Netflix on 14 April 2023 to do that work. A show that needed a film to conclude is a show that did not stick its own landing.
None of this is fatal. It is the difference between a very good series and a great one.
Why 7.8 of 10
The Last Kingdom is a British historical drama that survived a network change and got better at spectacle without getting worse at people. It has a lead worth following for 46 episodes, a supporting cast that keeps expanding without collapsing, and a clear idea of what it is about.
It also has a sag in the middle, a habit of resetting its own protagonist, and an ending it had to outsource to a sequel. Those are real costs.
The published critical score is 7.8 of 10, with a Metacritic mark of 78 out of 100. That is about right, and this paper lands in the same place.
Seven-point-eight is the score of a show that is genuinely good and knows exactly what it is, and never quite becomes more than that. The battles are the advertisement. The arguments are the show. Watch it for Aelswith, stay for the oaths, and accept that the last chapter is a film.
7.8 of 10.
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