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'Vikings' May Be Getting A Spin Off So Fans Can Relax About The Show Ending

by Chrissy Bobic

Vikings Season 6 might be the end of the History series as we know it, but in some ways, it’s just the beginning. On the heels of the announcement that Season 6 will be the show’s last, it was also announced that a spin-off is in the works. But what will the Vikings spin-off be about? Right now,Vikings is finishing up the second half of Season 5, which will come to a close by the end of January, but fans can rest easy knowing that there could be much more to come.

Deadline reported on Jan. 4 that Vikings creator Michael Hirst and Die Hard writer Jeb Stuart have teamed up to potentially create a spin-off series to follow after Vikings ends for good. Right now, the details are under wraps and there isn't much to go on besides the fact that the wheels have started to turn on the possible spin-off. There are, however, a number of ways they could go about continuing the Vikings story while keeping things fresh in a brand new series.

Depending on who’s left standing whenVikings ends, those characters could spill over into a brand new story from Hirst — who wrote every episode of Vikings to date — and Stuart. Or, if the goal is to completely start over, the spin-off could focus on an entirely different set of historical warriors. There’s really no wrong way to go about it and it definitely lessens the blow left behind from the news that Vikings has one season left.

Hirst spoke to Express UK about the future of Vikings and what fans can expect from Season 6. It mostly sounds like a new beginning after Season 5 and a potential way to set things up for this yet to be named Vikings spin-off. "We go to a new place again," Hirst revealed, of the Season 6 setting. "We’re going to Rus, which is Kiev, and the Rus Vikings. [There is] a new civilization there, a powerful civilization. There’s a new world the Vikings are going to become involved with."

There’s also a chance that they find themselves in China, where the show has never ventured before. "We go on the Silk Road," he added. "Each Viking warship had an Odin banner and they’ve only ever found a piece of one of those banners, and a little bit of fabric from one, but it was silk. So we know the Vikings were on the Silk Road. We don’t know if they got to China but we know they were trading because they were traders as well as fighters."

If the Vikings spin-off picks up where Vikings leaves off at the end of Season 6, then it could take place in this new civilization or somewhere in China, focusing on people other than the characters fans have gotten to know in Vikings. I think the spin-off would work best if there are at least a couple of familiar faces, but as of right now, there haven't been any concrete details leaked.

Technically speaking, there’s only so much more that can be told about the Vikings themselves. In real life, the Viking age began to die out around 1066. Right now, the show is in the year 816 or so. While that allows for more than 200 more years of Viking battles, there’s a chance that the spin-off could focus on a different age or different people. Instead, the spin-off could focus on the religious Crusades that followed the end of the Vikings era. Granted, that would mean no familiar characters to continue on in the new series, but it would definitely breathe fresh life into the franchise.

Then again, if this is to be a spin-off and maintain some of the themes, I can see a few choice characters making it out alive to continue to tell the story. Like Bjorn and Lagertha, for example. Basically just those still fighting the good fight. Until more details about the spin-off are released, fans will have to resort to lots of theories and speculation, but that’s usually half the fun anyway.

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