Ragnarok – In Norse mythology, the definition of the end of the world. Ragnarok begins with natural disasters and culminates in the great battle between the gods and giants.
Epic opening scene of the first episode.
After this quote I’m like oh, it’s a show about a guy with god powers, so who did they cast to play him? And then BAM!, Midnight City by M83 starts playing while our show’s lead character Magne (played by David Stakston), AKA the most Norse looking dude on the gods’ green gables, is introduced in a scene where he gazes out of a car window. I’d say it’s well casted because he looks Norse as fuck.
His mom Turid got a job in a town called Edda, where it seems she has some history. They are traveling to his grandmother’s house with his aunt and his brother Laurits. Laurits looks like the Loki to Magne’s Thor. His hair is black and he looks like he hasn’t seen the sun in years.
As they’re pulling into the town, an old man in an electric scooter stalls in the middle of the road in front of their car. Magne chivalrously hops out to help the man cross the street, and an old woman watching goes up to him. He makes some electric eye contact with her, and can suddenly tell that it’s going to rain and rips the hand-crank window lever off of the door of the car. Lit.
In his new high school, he’s introduced with his brother to the class. The teacher, a nice man named Erik, is talking about the old Norse gods. It turns out Edda was the last town in Norway to become Christian and give up faith in the Norse gods. Erik explains that in the old Norse mythology, Ragnarok happened when the gods were betrayed by the giants and died, but nobody knows where the giants went. Definitely some foreshadowing happening here.
Magne gets seated next to his new friend Isolde, a dip tobacco chewing environmentalist that has a YouTube channel, a septum piercing, and blue highlights. She isn’t exactly Miss Popular, and someone sends her a nasty message by bending her bike, which Magne fixes easily with his super strength.
Magne has a hard time in school, he’s dyslexic and wears glasses. He plays with a Tangle and doesn’t concentrate well. However, in the past two school days he discovers that he no longer needs his glasses. He comments on how pretty a girl named Gry in his class project group is, but so far we don’t have any details about her.
Magne’s mother Turid’s new job is in accounting, for a corporation that seems to own the town. The owners of the corporation are the Jutul family.
Something is definitely off about the family, comprised of the tycoon father Vidar, the teenage son Fjor and daughter Saxa, and the seemingly cold mother Ran. Ran is also the principal of the high school, and very gorgeous with her high cheekbones and platinum blonde hair.
“How old is she, 50? She looks like she’s 30. Whatever, she’s definitely had some work done,” Turid says on the phone.
Daddy Vidar asks his kids to keep an eye on Magne, but only after he pees right in front of them in the bathroom while Fjor is lamenting that he doesn’t really look like a senior in high school and flexing his six pack in the mirror. There’s a weird Joneses Family vibe coming off of them.
Isolde’s invites Magne over to eat at her house, and we learn that teacher Erik is her dad.
Isolde is trying to save the town’s polluted tap water because she thinks it has something to do with her mother’s untimely death to cancer. Magne reveals to her that his father also died young. As he’s leaving her house, Isolde’s book bag falls and reveals a very teenager-y lovey dovey page in her notebook with Saxa written in big red letters, two pictures probably from her Instagram, and a sketch of them holding hands. She makes Magne swear not to tell anyone about her crush.
It’s probably not that big of a secret because at family dinner time, Turid questions Magne about Isolde and asks if maybe they’re dating. Laurits quickly interjects there’s no way because she’s a lesbian. “My gaydar never fails,” he says convincingly.
In another scene, Magnes’ mom is using a hammer to fix something and he takes it from her to try and help. The hilt of the hammer has an insignia on it that is his father’s family crest, and he gets that weird electric reaction when he touches it.
Isolde and Magne are hiking to the top of a mountain owned by the Jutuls, and what’s most important in this scene is to pay attention to how Isolde’s blue jacket matches her blue eyes and blue hair tips perfectly. They almost reach the top of the mountain, and Magne does a weird jig jump over a metal chain with a “restricted” sign that really didn’t sell me on how this guy is supposed to be the most powerful guy? Isolde stepped over it much more gracefully.
Magne gets a text right before his phone dies that something is wrong with his mother so he leaves Isolde alone while he runs back down the mountain, but it turns out that Laurits was just messing with him. Loki? Laurits? I’m not fooled here.
Meanwhile, Daddy Vidar gets nakey on top of his mountain and goes full Norse exorcism to hunt some wild sheep. Seriously. His eyes go weird yellow and he starts to hear a deep voice speaking with a lot of gutteral Nordic j’s. He breaks the neck of one of the sheep and rips out the heart and proceeds to walk his lil birthday suit butt to a peak overlooking the valley to roar while he eats the heart.
Isolde is exploring the mountain by herself and finds a strange door that says “Property of Jutul, LETHAL DANGER” when Vidar’s roar pulls her away. Magne, traveling back up in that direction after getting pranked by his brother, sees her literally paraglide back down the mountain and get struck by a power line. Vidar (now clothed in his sleek black tuxedo because he’s rich baby) jumps out of his car to help resuscitate her.
Magnes is sad about the loss of his new friend and runs into the street, in the rain, to go scream it out. Thunder breaks out across the sky in sympathy, and the episode ends.
~
I have some questions here, like what happened to Magnes’ dad?
Is the water supply really contaminated and is that really what made Isolde’s mother sick?
Who are the Jutul family, really?
Let me know what you think about this new series! I think it started off pretty predictable with the whole new kid in town premise, but I really like Isolde’s character and I’m interested in seeing more.
Prattle Peach 
