Vikings – Picture: MGM Television
The sequel series for the beloved History Channel show Vikings titled Vikings: Valhalla was announced way back in November 2019 and its first season is expected to arrive within the next year. According to new information seen by What’s on Netflix, the series has technically been given a three-season order upfront.
Along with the original announcement, Deadline revealed that Netflix had ordered an unusual amount of episodes. 24 episodes had been ordered for Vikings: Valhalla upfront which is highly irregular from Netflix. Right away people started to speculate: is this just one season or more? After all, the last three seasons for the original Vikings series comprised of 20 episodes that were split in half and 24 isn’t really that far from 20.
Season 1 has been in development for quite some time. We got a first look behind the scenes at Netflix’s Geeked Week with more news confirmed for Netflix’s Tadum event at the end of September 2021.
But now the situation has more clarity as it looks like these 24 episodes will be divided across three seasons, with each season having 8 episodes.
We are also happy to reveal that the writing process for Vikings: Valhalla season 3 is now underway with season 2 already complete.
This information comes courtesy of a new writer that recently joined the team of Vikings: Valhalla for its third season. Dana Fainaru‘s agency CV states:
Dana is currently writing one episode of the third season of VIKINGS: VALHALLA for MGM Television/Netflix after having written one episode for eleventh season of DEATH IN PARADISE for Red Planet Pictures.
A big order of this kind is unusual but does demonstrate Netflix’s trust in the sequel series doing well. Of course, they carry Vikings (with more regions picking up the show over the past 2 years) so have plenty of data knowing how well the mothership show does.
Production for the first season of Vikings: Valhalla was halted earlier this year with approximately 5 out of 8 episodes completed. We’ve yet to have confirmation that production is back on track. Whenever it does, we would expect Netflix to try and film the remaining 16 episodes back to back so they can be released without any delays.
For more info on Vikings: Valhalla, here’s our full preview on the first season.