He's been the most compelling and unpredictable character in RTÉ crime drama KIN and in tonight’s series finale, Eric "Viking" Kinsella has to finally face up to grim reality.
The penny has finally dropped that he's facing years behind bars for attempted murder and with a bounty on his head from gangland boss Eamon Cunningham, his chances inside are not good.
His girlfriend Nikita (Yasmin Seky) is understandably not too keen about standing by her man while he spends a decade locked up. Many questions linger as KIN hurtles towards its explosive finale, not least of which is will Eric crack and turn informer to get a reduced prison sentence?
Tonight, we see him quite literally banging his head off a wall as he loses it in an isolation cell in prison.
Sam Keeley, who plays the live wire Dublin gangland lieutenant, says that Viking is finally facing up to the cold light of his possible future.
"I think in episode seven he gets to see the repercussions of his actions, especially when they’re laid out by Nikita in that scene in the jail," he says. "It all starts to dawn on him and get on top of him and he really has to make choices how as to what type of man he wants to be and how he wants to navigate the world he’s in.
"We see in tonight’s finale the culmination of those choices - stay in the situation he’s in or get out of it and take responsibility for his actions."
Now facing a long stretch in jail, his chances do not look good, especially if he bumps into Bren, his deranged uncle, who we were introduced to last week, on a prison landing.
Seven questions ahead of KIN finale
"Viking is not even safe from his own family," Sam says. "Eamon Cunningham (Ciaran Hinds) has a lot of reach it seems, a lot of lads in there who could do Eric harm. I think Viking would fancy his chances if he didn’t have a hit out on him, but I don’t know - if you’re in there with those guys, unless you’ve got help, I don’t see him lasting very long."
Speaking about playing such a volatile character - a man child with a touch of Travis Bickle meets Max Cady - Sam says it was a challenge.
"A lot of it is peeling back all social cues and ways and how to conduct yourself especially in the world these guys operate in, it’s a very volatile place," he explained. "It’s in the name 'Viking', whether that name was given to him or he gave it to himself, I like to think he explores the stereotypical connotations of a name like that in terms of aggression and forward-moving energy.
"For me it was all about that - being abrasive at every turn. Just allowing yourself to be like a child basically. Be like a kid who doesn’t think about consequences, and then of course there is the accent. Just allowing the aggression to come through at every moment."
"That scene says everything about Viking. He faces the world balls out, as it were."
Unhinged he may be, but Eric does have an honour code underneath his bravado, "Absolutely. It’s in the name of the show - KIN. When it comes to family, his honour code kicks in. You can see it in the scenes with Frank.
"When Frank pulls rank on Eric, you can see that there’s something that’s going to keep him on the straight and narrow and I think as he gets older potentially and meets more situations of adversity, I think he’s going to have to call upon that honour code and how he makes his future decisions."
KIN’s success has meant that Sam gets attention when he’s out and about. "My work is usually independent film and television shows, and my characters have different looks, so I don’t usually get stopped in the street but right now I look pretty similar to how Eric looks on KIN so yeah it’s been fun, people have been great and the response to the show has been amazing. It’s been a lot of fun walking around and people shouting at me in the street."
He adds, "I was stopped at a bar the other night, a friend of mine was playing music, some guy was looking at me and he said, 'Do I know you from somewhere? Did I do time with you?’ And everybody laughed because they thought he was referring to the show, but it turned out he actually meant did he do time with me! Hahaha.
"Once he figured out he knew me from the show, he said 'why did you use your own car, ya eejit!' People get their lines blurred. It’s hilarious, it’s good craic."
Sam worked out extra hard to make Viking a more physically imposing character and you might say he revealed his naked ambition and stole the show in the very first episode of KIN when he opened his front door naked to two guards.
And Sam had to suffer for his art. "Scenes where you take your clothes off are always awkward and weird," he says. "We had fun with it, and I wore a modesty pouch which is the most unflattering garment you have ever seen in your life and sometimes I wonder is it better to just go naked. But no, for the sake of everybody’s sanity and lunch we kept the modesty pouch on.
"The actors were incredible - how do you open the door naked and not laugh at that? But they were so stony-faced. That scene says everything about Viking. He faces the world balls out, as it were."
Elsewhere on tonight’s explosive finale, an already twitchy Frank (Aiden Gillen) has his very own Scarface moment with his own product and ends up unconscious on the living room floor, and a coolheaded and ruthless Amanda seeks to cut a deal with gangland boss Cunningham to save the life of her son, Anthony.
She threatens to torch all his drugs unless he agrees to meet her. He reluctantly consents and they come face to face at the airport before he flies out to meet his own young son.
Eamon offers her a chilling counter deal: turn over the stash, along with Jimmy, Michael, or Viking to be killed, and the war will be ended.
The 'an eye for an eye' circle of death has already seen numerous corpses littered across gangland Dublin and all the while volcanic control freak Cunningham is out there circling like a Halloween ghoul.
In last Sunday’s penultimate episode things came into sharp focus as the endgame approaches and it doesn’t end well for several characters, setting things up nicely for a second series.
"I’d love to do a second series," Sam says. "It’s written so well, Peter McKenna did an amazing job, we’ve got an incredible cast. I’d do it tomorrow; I love the show and I’m fiercely proud of it and I think there is so much room to develop this world and these characters but I’m completely in the dark. They don’t tell me anything but hopefully we’ll know soon after the finale airs."
Alan Corr @CorrAlan
KIN is on at 9.30pm on RTÉ One tonight with catch-up on RTÉ Player.
