Vikings: Valhalla Boss and Sam Corlett Explain What Leif's Volcanic Eruption Means for Season 2

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for Vikings: Valhalla Season 1. Read at your own risk!] 

The name Leif Eriksson is a legendary one in the Vikings hall of fame. The Norse explorer is speculated to be the first European to have ever set foot in the Americas, centuries before Christopher Columbus would come calling in 1492. As played by Sam Corlett, Leif Eriksson is also the hero of the latest installment in the Vikings TV universe, Vikings: Valhalla, which premiered on Netflix in February. In the first season of Valhalla, we meet Leif after a treacherous journey from Greenland to Norway to help his sister Freydis (Frida Gustavsson) get revenge for an attack she suffered at the hands of a Christian missionary. 

While it doesn't take long to confirm that Leif is a good fighter, the Viking is soft-spoken and reserved when he's introduced in the series. After a season of fighting, and triggered by the traumatic murder of his romantic partner, Liv (Lujza Richter), in battle, Season 1 concludes with a blood-covered Leif screaming in agony as he wields two battle axes and looks ready to kill anyone on sight. 

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"When we see him at the start, he's responsible for a lot of these Greenlanders. He's coming over, he's leading the ship. If he makes a mistake, they're all kind of trapped," star Sam Corlett explained to TV Guide. "Throughout the season he feels a lot of the responsibility for these lives. A lot of them get lost, and towards the end, he has a beautiful relationship with Liv, who passes away in his arms. There's a deep sense of grief. There's a deep sense of shame. That comes out in a very fierce, violent, and primal way." 

Leif's explosion at the end of the season was planned with a very specific purpose in mind. Leif's transformation may have been triggered by Liv's death, but it's an indicator of something darker that has been brewing for a while, and it signals that another legendary Viking related to Leif is going to have to show up at some point. 

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"You can probably read the tea leaves to figure that we're heading toward Erik the Red at some point in our storytelling," series creator Jeb Stuart teased to TV Guide, referring to Leif's legendary father. In the series, Erik the Red was banished from Norway and Iceland for his violent crimes. 

"As Leif says to Liv at one point, 'There's this dark part of me that I keep kind of under wraps,' and as long as she's in his world, he's able to move forward," Stuart explained. "When she's violently taken out of his world by Olaf, I think that the inner Erik the Red is coming out. We call that sort of the Old Testament Leif, and you'll see that in Season 2."

Looking ahead to the next season, Corlett admitted that he's "scared" by "what [Leif]'s future might be and whether or not he can try and contain that and alchemize that into something good, or whether that's going to be something he wears for his life." But Stuart noted that this part of the story is essential in building Leif into the man who can survive a journey to the Americas. 

"I didn't want him to just show up in the new world in some season. I wanted us to get an understanding of how he got there, what tools were in his toolbox, what drove him to go that way," Stuart said. "One of the things that all explorers seem to share is this understanding of standing on the shoulders of others and learning more and more about the world and knowledge and science and math. To have a curious Viking, which we know that Leif was, where does that go, and what can we do with that character? That's sort of where Leif's arc goes. We do know he'll get to the new world, but how, and is there something that he picks up along the way that really directs him there?" 

It sounds like there's anything but smooth sailing ahead for Leif Eriksson. 

Vikings: Valhalla Season 1 is now streaming on Netflix.