The day is bright, the woods are calling, and the Sparrow Scouts are on their way to a camping trip. Not just any camping trip, either, but one where they’re trusted to go off on their own, with only the instructions to report back to the scoutmaster later. (We’re obviously still early in the season, because I think we’re heading to a place where the city gets locked down.) Of course, Hilda has already planned out an alternate route far off the beaten path, one that takes her friends to see a landmass called the Screaming Stones. Frida and David, as usual, are along for the ride, and
1.) Hey Look, It’s David!
It’s been a minute since we’ve seen this show’s timid, adorably cowardly character. He had a brief appearance in the season premiere, but I guess Hilda found herself in situations where he was unneeded. Now, he’s at the front and center of “The Eternal Warriors,” written by Kenny Byerly and directed by Andy Coyle. We’re introduced to him trying to calm down with some mid-tempo soft rock, a fact he’s too embarrassed to admit, even to his friends. Despite all the gains he made last season, his anxiety continues to get the best of him, though he faces Hilda and Frida’s drive with his own quiet confidence.
Across their journey to the Screaming Stones — rumored to keep trolls at bay in this part of the woods, which is not exactly the reassurance David’s after — his fear and over-cautiousness prevent his friends from making as much progress as they’d like. He takes forever to cross a river. He cannot see himself making a small leap across a crevasse. His friends shrug it off and deal, though their off-handed comments drill deep into David’s core.
He wants to be better. He tries to be better, but it’s so much to overcome, this anxiety, this borderline debilitating fear. And while the creators exaggerate his anxieties, there’s this honesty and truthfulness in his reactions. Not everyone can easily brush off the encounters he’s faced alongside Hilda.
Racked with so much guilt and disappointment and self-loathing not even his soft rock can help calm him, David accidentally falls off the side of a cliff (which isn’t even the most messed up thing that happens to him in this episode), where he’s rescued by
2.) The Vikings
the Eternal Warriors from the title.
If you thought David was set to encounter some element that forces him to confront his fear, well, yes, here they are, the Vikings. They are huge and boisterous and indulgent. They bellow everything. When David stands next to them, they tower over him, almost completely envelop him. They wear the typical horned helmets and bulky armor and the animators go out of their way to make certain you feel their weight and presence. The animators also gleefully dig into every preconceived notion we’ve ever had about Nordic warriors.
The clan is led by a man named Torgund. They have been locked in a perpetual battle with a rival clan, headed by another Viking called Knudson, over an artifact called the Medallion of Sigurd. Whoever touched the Medallion, Torgund tells David, will have all their fear whisked away. Considering how David’s day went, he’s fully prepared to help out on the battlefield as a messenger boy, despite Twig’s protestations, if it means he won’t continue to disappoint his friends.
Perpetual beings are no stranger to Hilda, whether they have long life spans or continue to exist after death. Oftentimes, there’s a tragic, heartbreaking story behind it, like with the giants, but here, the animators play it all for laughs. They strive for a balance between portraying the Vikings as a bunch of living jokes and truly horrifying entities. And they can achieve this because
3.) Animation is the Most Expressive Medium
We see this especially in the battle sequences. Hilda tends to favor wild chases and narrow escapes and soaring moments of exhilaration over outright combat. The animators take a lot of pleasure in getting these two primal forces to hurl themselves at each other. Even more effective, however, are the moments leading up to the fight, filled with clearly defined postures, carefully considered lighting cues, and precise compositions. Watch how the Vikings shift from jovial, drunken feasters to physical warriors. Or how their size and presence turns terrifying and elemental on the battlefield. In all these situations, the animators expertly use David to sell the Vikings’ size and force.
Continued belowThere are other nicely animated touches throughout “The Eternal Warriors,” too. I’d say the animators’ skill and precision has grown exponentially since last season, even while working with a TV budget. They’ve taken more care and consideration into each characters’ movements and personalities, use both to reflect the other in the drawings. The animation itself is not rough and scratchy — although I do like how the lines still bear the breaks and hiccups and imperfections of a dark pencil stroke — nor overly smooth and flat. It’s fluid. It’s expressive. It’s not afraid to go for expressionistic or abstract designs to sell its moments. The compositions never lose their focus or overwhelm the frame, which has also made this season stronger with its visual gags.
With each passing episode, I’m becoming more convinced that Hilda shows the strongest animation from any of Netflix’s originals.
4.) The Easy Solutions
For David, the Medallion offers the easiest and quickest solution to his dilemma. Despite the gains he made last season, David is presented with a slight reversion at the start of “The Eternal Warriors.” Like he got into a place of comfort and stasis and forgot what it was like to be friends with Hilda. Several times in the episode he makes a bold declaration that he’s going to be better, do better, only to completely step back from himself and go huddle in a corner. So when the Medallion’s presented to him, or at least the idea of the Medallion is presented to him, he’s willing to take a risk for the fix.
“It’s the only way,” he tells Twig, who tries to hold him back.
Since he aims for the shortcut, the results the show gives him are…extra. He turns into an ’80s bro, his hair tied up in a band, constantly doing high knee exercises, and plowing through obstacles with blunt force. When anything weird appears in front of him, his first instinct is to fight it.
“Yes, I listen to soft rock and I don’t care who knows it,” he declares before breaking into Ryan Carlson’s “Don’t Let Your Love Fall Away.” I’m pretty sure this is an original song to the series. David’s behavior is so over-the-top and out-of-character, Hilda and Frida are immediately concerned for him.
For their part, the Vikings don’t have any real desire for the Medallion’s abilities. They see it as a relic to possess and, more importantly, an object to keep from the Knudson clan. I get the sense they would probably find something else to fight over. Like, they learn their perpetual battle is nothing but a giant joke enacted on them for stealing the Medallion and laugh it off then go on killing each other.
David, meanwhile, alienates his friends, puts himself in grave danger, and faces the ultimate punishment for his quick fix solution when his head is lobbed off after he stupidly tries to charge into battle. And that’s just one of the things that happens to him in “The Eternal Warriors,” since
5.) Dang, Some Messed Up Things Happen to David, Here
Het gets decapitated. Twice. Once in the heat of battle and then again afterward when Hilda accidentally puts his head on backward. His friends put his head on backward. He gets thrown in the mud, knocked off cliffs, dropped into streams, and ambushed by hulking Nords.
“The Eternal Warriors” makes gestures toward an Inside/Out-like exploration of the necessity of fear, of how it keeps us safe, keeps us from doing something stupid. And considering what David goes through, it’s easy to see where brazen pig-headishness leads. David made more gains when he ventured forth on the battlefield than when he touched the Medallion, the show points out.
I think if Byerly’s script kept it there, the episode would have been far more effective. Instead, Hilda tells David she prefers his old, fearful self, and they work with the swamp creature, Sigurd, to reset him to the start. Which, like, undercuts the theme of the story? Without remembering what he learned, what’s the point of exploring these ideas? Meanwhile, Hilda and Frida are so blasé about what David went through, so eager to put him back to normal, it left a weird taste hanging over the episode.
For its technical accomplishments, for its clear thesis, “The Eternal Warriors” stumbles through to its conclusion. The last line of the episode is David declaring, “What?!” and that’s close to how I felt leaving it.
