The original plan was to kill off Ragnar in Vikings Season 1. That would have meant a lack of faked death plot in Season 3, and it would have meant certain other elements of Ragnar’s story would ...

fans witnessed the friendship between Ragnar Lothbrok and Athelstan (George Blagden), a Saxon monk he encountered during his first raid to the west, in Northumbria, in the show's first season.