With the end of Vikings: Valhalla Season 3 comes the end of the story for Leif (Sam Corlett), Freydis (Frida Gustavson), and Harald (Leo Suter) — or at least, the end for now. The bittersweet series finale wrapped up the trio’s story arcs, which first began back in March 2022, while setting each of them up for the next chapter in their story as the great age of the Vikings rapidly approaches its end.

To mark the end of Netflix’s hit historical drama, Collider had the chance to sit down with Sam Corlett to talk about the final season and that bittersweet ending for the characters. We chatted about what drove Leif for three seasons before he eventually decided to take his fateful journey west, and about all the full-circle moments the character experiences as the show winds down. We also talked about the legacy of Leif Erikson and whether we’ll ever see more of this crew on screen — as a movie, perhaps?

COLLIDER: How does it feel having it out there now?

SAM CORLETT: It feels really awesome to finally have it out there. We’ve got such incredible new cast members involved, and knowing that this is one of their first big things, some of them have delivered incredible performances. I’m so happy for all of us to be able to share this with everyone. It’s cool. I looked at my phone this morning and my mom sent me that it’s number five in Australia after 24 hours, which is pretty cool.

I know you filmed Season 3 a while ago, but we’re gonna cast our minds back. Is there a moment that really stands out to you, be it a character beat or something physical, that is the thing you are proudest of in Season 3?

CORLETT: I love the moment saying goodbye to Harald at the docks. We shot that in Croatia, and it was really special. It was the calmest I think we’d ever felt on set. It was just like a cool breeze, we weren’t rugged up in all our Viking clothing, and we were just present with each other. It was a cool moment because we were saying goodbye to each other. That was one of the last things we ever shot. So, that was really special in Croatia. The other one would be the reuniting of Leif and Canute. That was a cool moment because Leif saw in Canute a father figure, and it really felt like a beautiful bookend from that moment in Season 1 with Canute saying, “I see you,” and Leif being able to say that back to him in Season 3, “I see you, and I appreciate you.” That was really beautiful.

Sam Corlett Reflects on the Biggest Challenge of ‘Vikings: Valhalla’ Season 3

That scene with Leif and Canute really stuck out to me as, like you said, such a full-circle moment. It really did bring Season 1 back in. On the flip side of that, what moment do you remember being the biggest challenge in Season 3?

CORLETT: Some of these battle sequences that we had in the first few episodes were so massive, and there was so much coordination. I feel like the Irish crew doesn’t get enough credit. The amount that they do above and beyond what’s expected, like the fact that this is a series and it has such a cinematic spectacle to it, we’re very lucky. I remember we were shooting when the fire went in the tunnel. Leif comes in to save Kaysan and pulls him out, and the cameraman is inches away from fire, but he really wanted to get the shot for us, and so is risking his life. That was pretty incredible. Often a lot of the fight sequences in that armor can have a bit of a challenge to it, but we know that going in, so we don’t complain.

There’s obviously that warrior component to Leif, but he’s also very much a thinker. He’s a strategist. Can you talk about your approach to playing that without having him come across as more scheming? Because we do have the thinkers on this show — Godwin comes to mind, whereas with Leif it’s always just thinking ahead. Can you talk about playing that line?

CORLETT: That’s interesting. I suppose to compare those two, Godwin seemingly has an individual interest whereas Leif’s interest is for the team, for the people around him. That thread within that is his purpose to go West. I really think he wishes to serve the people around him.

One of my coworkers pointed out to me that on The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, you also play this kind of scheming character, and she’s like, “The two could potentially run into each other in terms of the way it’s done,” but you play them so differently.

CORLETT: In The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, I was the Prince of Hell. I wanted to embody the sins. That was a very self-motivated, self-interested kind of arc. I would say the individual versus team. He really wanted to be of service to the people around him and he’s a very loyal character.

‘Vikings: Valhalla’ Season 3 Plays With Leif’s History

Talking about this adventure of his heading West, I might be a bit biased because, growing up in Canada, we learned about Leif Eriksson very early, so I feel like he’s one of the better-known historical figures on the show in terms of how long we know about him. How much of it did you know going in, and then how much of that knowledge sort of informed you as you went through the three seasons?

CORLETT: I remember Mr. Gill, my history teacher, and I remember the Vikings test was actually the only one that I got an A on when I was in history in Grade 10.

It was meant to be.

CORLETT: It was meant to be! I remember the exact textbook, where I was sitting in the class when I was reading about these people, and I found their spiritual connections to the gods super fascinating, and the way that they ingest mushrooms to almost disassociate with the physical and know that whatever they do is a spiritual expression. I found that pretty fascinating. Obviously, our show takes a lot of historical agency by combining a few different stories and pairing Harald and Leif together. We see a lot more of Harald’s actual history within this show. The intention for Seasons 2 and 3 of Leif’s arc was to show the making of the man that we know, and how did he come to develop faith and confidence in his ability to navigate ships that far West where no one had ever gone before?

You mentioned this show taking that historical agency with the character. Were there any moments where you got the chance to have some input on where he was going while still hitting those historical beats that you need to hit?

CORLETT: Definitely. I got it more on a human level. Knowing that these were the beats that we were gonna go through, I really worked closely with Jeb Stuart, our showrunner, to see what we could explore within Leif’s character that excited my soul to express. We shot during COVID, so there were times, definitely, in Season 2 when my mental health was going down, and to be able to have a character where I could express that and look for a sense of catharsis, but also light at the end of the tunnel with, that was really beautiful.

Then when Season 3 came around, we were out of those weeds. Seven years’ time passed between [Seasons] 2 and 3, and so there was a lot more of a brightness to Leif and a lot more of a curiosity. He’s honored the deaths that have happened in his life, and he’s eager for a new path. Having that direction of that idea of the golden land, I think we all kind of have our own golden land that way that seems to loom somewhere in the distance, and we don’t quite know what it is, but we know that taking steps towards it will somehow light our heart up.

Will We Get More ‘Vikings: Valhalla’?

Speaking of that golden land, the way the series ends, it’s sort of setting him up to pursue that and to go on to the next arc of his life. Did knowing that that’s where it was going, to this great unknown, affect how you went into it? Did not having that neat, tied-up-in-a-bow ending inform the way you played it?

CORLETT: Not so much. We knew that we were gonna do three seasons. We weren’t sure if we were gonna get [Seasons] 4 or 5, but we definitely were discussing what we’d show next. The way we ended this season was the best way to wrap it up in a way that could go both ways. Something I was dreaming of was being able to see the Vikings and the Native Americans meet. That was something that I was really excited about because the early days of studying the Vikings took me into studying Indigenous people around the world. Because essentially, the Vikings are the Indigenous people of Scandinavia, so their relationship to Earth, their spiritual ways, their medicines, their food, their everything was so harmonious with nature. I’d study texts that had that, which would be of the Native Americans, of Indonesia, where I actually visited, and all these different places around the world with incredible, rich cultures. I wish we got to share that story.

Never say never!

CORLETT: True, and there are ideas of wrapping it up somehow.

You mentioned shooting the scene with Leif and Harald and saying bye to him, but the band gets back together in Season 3. We’ve got Freydís, we’ve got Harald, we’ve got Leif — they’re all together again. Can you talk about shooting with Frida [Gustavsson] and Leo [Suter] again after this?

CORLETT: To reunite with Frida Gustavsson, playing Freydís, that was so cool. Also, having read her journey, having gone home and seeing Erik the Red, and the final meet-up back at Kattegat was really special. To speak again about bookends, the moments that we shared in the prison in the first episode of Season 1 and then the moment that we shared in the prison in the last episode of Season 3, you know no matter where Leif and Freydís went, we always held each other in our minds. It was really beautiful to have that reuniting.

The thing I love most about Leif’s arc is he is a warrior, he’s a Viking, but he’s the quiet one. He’s the thoughtful one. What I want to ask about is your approach to making sure that both of these elements of his personality, the warrior and the academic, both come through. How do you prepare to play that as an actor?

CORLETT: Jeb Stuart, our showrunner, wrote Die Hard, he wrote The Fugitive and his wealth of cinematic knowledge is abundant. We spoke about some of the old classic Westerns — Unforgiven, we spoke about Jeremiah Johnson, we spoke about, in regards to Leif and Harald, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. A lot of it was looking at those and seeing how much is said without speaking. Leif doesn’t need to prove himself in a way that a lot of the warriors seemingly do. He has a lot of confidence in his capacity, probably due to his upbringing with one of the most violent Vikings as a father, and manipulative father in accordance to the way Season 3 was written.

Originally playing Leif, it was always like he had a pretty strong bullshit meter, and so he didn’t feel the need to show that he knew if someone was trying to trick him, he just would stare at them. I really enjoyed that aspect. Even sometimes as actors would come in, there were a couple of times where I had to be like, “Look, I really like you as a human, but I’m just being Leif in between.” [Laughs] A couple of times, the extras really thought I was really angry at them because I didn’t show too much joy. But I had this quote: “A tiger shows and a lion knows,” and there were a lot of tigers that were trying to show off, and Leif being a bit more of a lion only exerted his energy when he needed to. He only spoke when he needed to, unlike me right now, who’s blah, blah, blah… [Laughs]

No, I love it. I haven’t heard that before, but I really like that saying.

CORLETT: Oh, I came up with it.

I guess it’s all wishful thinking, but I think seeing Leif as he is now, post-Byzantine Empire, post-all of that, juxtaposed with Erik the Red would have been really cool, but that’s for the eventual Season 4 that I’m dreaming about.

CORLETT: There have been thoughts of a film wrap-up which would be cool. But in Season 1 through Season 3, with the introduction of all these incredible characters, there are so many things to tie up, so it would be hard to make into a film. But I can definitely say that the return to Greenland and to the New World would be a really special little chapter detail.

Now that Vikings is over, what is next for you?

CORLETT: There’s something — I think it’s gonna be announced next week — a new six-part Netflix gig which I’m really excited about, which shot back here in Australia. Then I did a film directly after Vikings, which just went to the Sydney Film Festival, and it’s going to the Melbourne Film Festival. That was just announced, and that was with Greta Scacchi and Leila George, who was in Animal Kingdom. That was a passion project, a labor of love, and it got a really beautiful reception in Sydney and will go to cinemas in October.

What’s it called?

CORLETT: It’s called He Ain’t Heavy. It’s a brother-sister relationship, and the brother’s gone down the rabbit hole of methamphetamine and ended up on the streets. It explores the impact that addiction has on a family, the frustrations of love, and the frustrations of wanting to be understood in every member of the family. The addict is eager to be understood, and then the sibling and the mother are eager to be understood. It was pretty incredible to do, and close to home in some ways. Then, physically, it was cool to go from like 90 kg in Vikings down to, like, 66 in He Ain’t Heavy. That kind of physical fasting and all that stuff opened up whole other realms of emotional access, which was pretty cool to explore.