Like I said before, the show really suffers from the loss of Alfred
Heck, I feel like they broke the 4th wall last season and said it themselves. On at least 2 different occasions, they said that Alfred was more than Uhthred's equal but Ertwirt was no match for him.
They spent most of episode 5 focusing on Ertwirt and the mercians and it was terrible. Uhthred got maybe 10 min of screentime.
Plus episode 5 seems like when they got a new director or something cause the camera shots and pacing is all over the place.
Like the crazy shot of Aethelflaed's daughter when she had the fever. Or the zoom in shot of her "daddy" when he got killed.

both were terrible