Ragnarok Season 3 Wreeview (2023) – Netflix
I have always maintained that Ragnarok is the best modern retelling of the norse mythology. even though that particular moniker stays with it, this season wasn’t really it.
i mean yes, it is directly in line to the stories it was supposed to tell, but something is missing this season, and that is possibly the fact that there actually never were a real villain to fear in this season.
okay, first some context: giants live amongst humans and surprise surprise they also run the heavy industries that destroys nature. magne, who embodies thor in the body of a teenager. apparently gods are born as humans in this idyllic norse town, but giants control it and without weapons they are probably better fighters as well.
hence the first two season was tight. it always felt like the giants, even though less in number always held more power with the money and brute strength. however thor gets his hammer made in season 2 end, and from there we will start.
we know that giants has lost a member so it’s technically 5-3 now. and the giants are scared of the hammer too much. and they can’t do anything at all. firstly, we all know what the hammer can do, but it never showed why is it so powerful that the giants are scared of it. anyway, that was probably never the intention either way.
i am just taken over by how much teenage life has to do with being the god of thunder. not just that, loki is also a teenager and half brother to thor, so that relationship also full of teen drama. the show makes it a point to showcase just how much thor is attached to his hammer, to the point he lets the hammer control him, even though it is the hammer that needs thor, and not the other way around. and i just think, doing it with a teenage coming of age lens has been pretty amazing to say the least.
this season gets more detailed about the lives of the gods and giants, and we generally stopped seeing the life around edda. but i can accept that, there wasn’t anything important there except the people, and we got a lot of those people.
it is quite weird that those people didn’t have much of a character arc. except for thor. and loki to some extents. the real transformation actually happens to Hodur.
i think the biggest part that this season tried to tell us is that, we are always scared of letting down our loved ones. but c’est la vie. that’s life. i personally think, that fear of letting your loved ones down or the fact that we have grief about missing them is the real proof that despite everything we loved them. and i also think it takes a real man to accept their own faults. it also takes a self aware man to understand the harm they have caused and how to not do this again or if possible correct the mistake already made. they put thor in this role, and especially the last episode is the creme de la creme of that.
in that regard, ragnarok keeps the story, as it should. i mean, is it a real story? or is it an active imagination? you’d need the last episode of season 3 of course, and in that regard this is kinda like tokyo ghoul, as in, the whole story makes sense at the end. i have certain issues with those kinda stories, as once you see it, it diminishes the mutiple watch potentials once the cards are shown. it can be done in smarter ways, but this wasn’t it.
i think cg also took a large hit. they didn’t really have to do a lot of cg before, but this time there is a mythological serpent that they needed to show a few times, and it looked absolutely awful. there wasn’t much other cg work, but some of the weapon throws were assisted and that could be visible. but that is more of compositing problem than bad cg, but all the same.
i enjoyed ragnarok. i think the first season was my favourite, but i would recommend you to the whole series. it’s 18 episodes and i doubt there will ever be another season as to me this was a perfect end, and unlike the last two seasons, this one didn’t end on a cliffhanger.
i’ll reiterate again: it is the best modern retelling of the mythology of ragnarok. ragnarok is the end of the world as we know it. i guess for a teenager that would be their school life.