So, it’s come to this: the final season of The Kingdom. I have to say, it definitely gave me a Von Trier-type ending. You’re not going to be coming away from this feeling uplifted, but I wouldn’t expect anything else. It was good to see this through to the end, even with the unfortunate loss of several characters. For potentially Von Trier’s last work, I think he did a good job overall. Here’s an idea of the plot for this season.
We start off this season with Karen, a character from Von Trier’s film The Idiots. She seems to have problems with sleepwalking, though this condition also seems to help her commune with supernatural forces. At present, she’s just finished her copy of The Kingdom II and is disappointed by the fact that there was no ending. Thus, she decides to pay a visit to The Kingdom and see if she can pick up where Mrs. Drusse left off. She even gets her own “Bulder,” whose real name isn’t Bulder but everyone just calls him that for some reason. As she uncovers more and more of the Kingdom’s spiritual center, it becomes clear that they must find a way to help all the spirits pass on before Christmas, or there will be dire consequences. At the same time as her investigation, Stig Helmer Jr, the son of the original Helmer, comes to work at the hospital and “see firsthand the country that drove his father mad.” He’s paired up with Pontopidan, who seems to be the new Moesgaard, to co-run the neurology department, much to his chagrin. Thankfully, all is not despair for our little “Halfmer” (the other staff consistently mispronounce his name, a mistake which translates to Halfmer), as he discovers a secret AA type group for the Swedish staff in the hospital where they all convene to air their frustrations about the “Danish scum” that surrounds them. He also finds himself in a very weird relationship with Anna, a Swedish nurse who at first sues him for inappropriate conduct (after he writes to another staff member that she was “presenting her backside to him and asking for it” as well as what he’d do to her), but then seems to be interested in him, but then sues him again when they’re both caught in a compromising position by accident, but then tries to exchange a kiss with him for something which I won’t reveal since it’s a spoiler, and all with that sort of manipulative “I can see right through you and you’ll never win against me” kind of attitude. It’s an almost middle-school-esque dynamic, really. Oh yeah, and there’s also Naver, an angry, on-edge, possibly insane doctor who has plenty of bones to pick with Helmer after he gives an operation to the wrong person. In addition to these new faces, we still have some returning characters, like Hook, Judith, Rigmor, Mogge, Bob, Mona, and even Little Brother, though in a slightly different form. All of them still have a role to play in this wild chain of events, and I do mean a wild chain of events. I can’t go into detail, but things are taken to their final heights in this season, and the resolution is bombastically finite. I’ll let you see all of that for yourselves, so for now, let’s get into my thoughts.
It’s interesting that Von Trier decided to add a meta element to this final season. In addition to Karen watching the earlier seasons at the beginning, the characters comment on the show itself, claiming that it was a fictionalized in-universe drama that Von Trier made at the hospital. Of course, what happened in the show still happened in this current reality, as is clearly shown with the characters following on from where they last left off. It’s just interesting that they took this angle with it. I’d wager the reason for it was either or both because it had been so long in between seasons and Von Trier wanted to address some of the criticisms of the show and the long hiatus directly, and because much of the previous cast had died in the timespan between then and now, so new characters would need to fill their original roles. The new characters do a good job taking up the mantles left behind, but still giving a new take on these old positions. Karen and New Bulder have a similar dynamic as Drusse and Old Bulder, but Karen isn’t as demeaning as Drusse was to her son and New Bulder isn’t quite as childish as Old Bulder. Helmer Jr is still pretty damn uptight and hates Danes just as much as his father did, but he seems to have much more of a repressed cowardly turmoil to him as opposed to the outwardly curmudgeon-type personality that his father did. It was also cool but sad to see what had become of the returning cast, at least at first. Hook was still stuck in his Helmer-induced jerkass zombie state, Judith was lost in her grief after losing Little Brother so many years ago, Rigmor was now a half-amputee in a wheelchair, Mona had become trapped within the heart of the Kingdom after Helmer sent her through the delivery chutes, and even Bob, who was once a fun to hate Walter-Peck-esque figure, had now been reduced to a doddering old man who held practically no power or respect anymore. Interestingly, Mogge was also featured in this season, but always in a side role, barely speaking, wearing a helicopter beanie, and riding a motorized scooter around the hospital. I thought this was kind of odd at first, especially since they weren’t bringing up the car crash from last season at all (you’d think we’d want to know what happened to him between then and now), but it got me to thinking that there was more going on with him. My assumptions turned out to be right in the finale, though I won’t spoil it. In terms of the new characters, I do want to put a spotlight on Anna for a minute, because given real world events that have come to light, I have to wonder if her character’s existence might be kind of sketchy. Anna comes across as the kind of person that preys on and toys with those that have obvious weaknesses and can’t ever win against her. She clearly does that to Helmer Jr throughout this whole run, though it is kind of justified, since he acted inappropriately towards her in the first place, and obviously he’s not a character that we’re really supposed to like. Many would probably argue that her characterization is misogynistic, which I get, since she does come across as the sort of character someone writes after they’ve been burned by someone that they thought was interested in them or when they’ve been called out by someone for their poor behavior. The thing is, though, when we take into account what Bjork has accused Von Trier of doing to her on the set of Dancer in the Dark, I think the latter is the more likely reason, and this makes her character’s inclusion feel really, really off. It comes across as Von Trier victim blaming, as if “Bjork was a toying, manipulative temptress that led me on” and that sort of thing, which is really disgusting if that’s actually what this all is. I can’t prove any of this, but considering what’s been brought up, it really makes me wonder. Getting off of that uncomfortable subject, there’s a few more things I want to note before wrapping up. It was really cool to finally see the inner swamp of the Kingdom for the first time within the story. It’s always in the intro as part of the backstory, but I was really hoping we would actually get to incorporate it into the narrative at some point. That whole bit was very Silent Hill-esque too, what with the delivery chutes containing tendril-like veins and such (perhaps a bit of influence tennis between the two works?). It was also cool to see Willem Dafoe as one of the sinister skulking, devil minion figures in the hospital. From what I understand, he starred in Von Trier’s film Antichrist, so I’m sure the use of him here was intentional. Also, I’m not sure if this is actually a reference, but at one point, the characters find a snow globe with a figurine of the Kingdom in it. Spoilers for St. Elsewhere, but that show ended on it being revealed that everything that happened in the show was just a kid imagining what might be going on in the hospital snow globe he owns. Yeah, I’m not sure if Von Trier watched American soap operas or not, but it seemed a little too close to just be a coincidence. Lastly, while I can’t really give things away, I will say that you are not going to come away from this show with a happy ending. Honestly, the way the ending comes off, I have to wonder if there’s some statement in there about leaving things where they were and not trying to resurrect old and unfinished works just because (essentially being another commentary on the state of the show before the revival). Again, I can’t confirm if this was the intent, but it is something to think about. Anyway, I’m going on longer than I should, so I’ll wrap it up here.
Overall, my time with the Kingdom was a good and interesting one. While it did feel like it was getting overwhelming at times, I still enjoyed seeing all the oddball and wild story developments it had. I’d recommend it, though of course with the caveat that it is still a Von Trier work, and if you don’t wish to support him, I understand. This will probably be the last major Von Trier project I cover on here, at least for a good long while. My final verdict on The Kingdom: way better than the Stephen King version. Anyway, see you all next time, folks.