Borrowing her character's gift of foresight, Sutherland saw her Vikings exit coming. In 2016, right after Aslaug's death episode aired, the actress told Entertainment Weekly that she'd been waiting for Aslaug to be killed off ever since she joined the show.
"The whole time I was on Vikings, I was waiting for this to happen," admitted Sutherland. "I figured [because] my character had been introduced in such a controversial way, the only thing to do with her was to get rid of her at some point. I actually thought that it would happen earlier, to be honest!"
She further explained that she found out for sure that Aslaug was going to die on season 4 while they were filming episodes nine and ten. One of the producers approached her while she was waiting to film a scene, and she joked that being approached in that manner must have meant her character was about to die. That's exactly what was happening, as it turns out, but Sutherland said she accepted Aslaug's fate because the character's manner of death fit her personality.
You could argue that Lagertha gets the final word in the ongoing feud, but Sutherland believes that Aslaug goaded her rival into giving her a send-off fit for a Viking.
"I think that's her Viking way of being killed," Sutherland told Entertainment Weekly. "If she just went walking off somewhere else, what was she going to do? Die of old age? That's not a very dramatic death for her. The Vikings believed in dying in battle, being famous. It's sort of art imitating life. You join a show like Vikings, you know that, at any given moment, the producer's gonna come up to you, tap you on the shoulder [and say], 'We gotta kill someone, and it's gotta be you.' All you do is hope for it to be really dramatic. I think Aslaug wanted the same thing."
The characteristic smirk on Aslaug's face as she falls to the floor certainly speaks to this interpretation.
