The Witcher
The Witcher season 2 has arrived, and we're enthralled by the continuing tales of Geralt and Ciri. While they're spending their time at Witcher keep Kaer Morhen with Vesemir and Lambert, Yennefer, Jaskier, and others get their own continuing storylines.
We've seen six of the eight season two episodes, and they're pretty good. Here's our review. (Note: If you're avoiding any and all spoilers, consider steering clear of the review for now. This page remains focused on pre-release information.)
The show is based on Andrzej Sapkowski's Witcher books (and not the games, which is how many of us were introduced to Geralt and friends), and its first season set the scene with a disjointed series of vignettes. In the second season, we've gotten a more linear story. Here's everything we know about The Witcher's second season (that isn't in our review), and what you can expect.
The Witcher season 2 episodes
- A Grain of Truth
- Kaer Morhen
- What is Lost
- Redanian Intelligence
- Turn Your Back
- Dear Friend
- Voleth Meir
- ...and a "top secret" episode title
Netflix's The Witcher, which made its debut Friday, will be the last big show for 2019. And, according to CNET's review, it's worth a watch.
It's also one of the few new shows this year that comes with a vast backstory. The Witcher is based on a series of Polish novels that started in 1992. They've since been adapted into a series of popular video games, multiple comic books and one poorly received film.
This primer will help newcomers get up to speed with the Witcher universe.
The Witcher is not a person, but rather a profession. To put it simply, they're monster hunters. The Continent, the land where the Witcher takes place, has a variety of beasts and ghouls. Some notable examples include the walking spirit of a forest called the leshen that's made up of plants, animal pelts and skulls, and the bruxa, a powerful female vampire who has a deafening scream.
Witchers are trained to dispose of these monsters using a variety of tools and weapons at their disposal. Their most useful is their silver swords because the metal is usually the most effective against unholy beasts. They also have a selection of simple magic spells called Signs that can be cast using a particular sign with their hands. Two commonly used are the telekinetic push Aard and the fire spell Igni. Witchers can use Signs quickly in a battle at the expense of a bit of their own endurance.
One of the most important Witcher tools is a silver medallion. These magical neckpieces vibrate when monsters are nearby or if magic is being used, which makes them invaluable to a monster hunter.
Those training to become a Witcher learn magic, bestiary, weapons and herbalism. Once ready, a student will partake in a Trial of the Grasses where they're strapped to a table and are given different chemicals called Grasses. This process is what gives a Witcher several physical advantages such as improved healing, the ability to see in the dark and supernatural strength. The trial is painful and dangerous with most wannabe Witchers dying in the process.
A student becomes a full-fledged Witcher once the trials are over. They will then travel across the land hunting monsters for money, being despised by others for their unique appearance.
Witchers are a dying breed. There are far fewer monster hunters as the lands have become safer, so their services are less needed. The Witchers are also reluctant to train new recruits as they're all too familiar with the pain from their trials.
Geralt, played by Henry Cavill in the series, is considered a unique Witcher. Because of his ability to withstand the Trial of the Grasses, he was subjected to additional testing, causing him to gain more abilities while also turning his skin and hair pale white. He was left at School of the Wolf as a child by his mother Visenna, who was a sorceress. It's presumed that his father is a warrior named Korin who once helped Visenna.
Despite what his name suggests, Geralt is not from the land of Rivia. Witchers are taught to come up with their own surnames to appease potential clients. He originally wanted his name to be Geralt Roger Eric du Haute-Bellegarde, but after a bit of ridicule from his teacher, Geralt took a knife and picked a random spot on the world map, which ended up being Rivia.
In the early novels -- Sword and Destiny was the first novel, though the second, The Last Wish, is considered the first canonically -- Geralt's adventures are split into short stories with a similar tone. He's often hired by someone wealthy, usually royalty, who asks him to deal with some sort of beast. He's a pragmatist when it comes to monster hunting, but he's also a cynic when it comes to humans. His jobs have him dealing with people who hide their true intentions and, at times, can be a monster in their own right.
KRISTEN: I don’t know, should we start with the wig? The two most important things Hollywood learned from the Lord of the Rings films are as follows: 1) It is possible to make an entire movie franchise about people walking, and 2) If you cast a hunk as a gentle-hearted fantasy-realm hero, make sure to put him in a white-blonde wig that looks like it was snatched straight from the head of Jennifer Elise Cox in The Brady Bunch Movie. And so poor, beefy Henry Cavill who stars as Geralt of Rivia, the titular Witcher — finds himself saddled with a flowing, distracting mane of flaxen locks.
His hair is definitely the brightest thing about The Witcher’s first episode, which takes place in the dreary, muddy, soot-colored town of Blaviken. It’s a place where people don’t cotton to Witchers, at least if the grimy, bearded man Geralt encounters in the pub is to be believed. “We don’t want your kind around here, Witcher,” he growls. Rude. Anyhow, the pilot also features two rough-and-tumble princesses (Freya Allan, Emma Appleton), a wizard (Lars Mikkelsen), and totally gratuitous full-frontal female nudity. There are seven naked women in the first episode alone, Darren. Seven! I… think I’ve seen enough
I have a confession. I am a member of the Henry Cavill Appreciation Society. The big Super-Brit was a deadpan delight in the goofball spyfest The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and a brilliantly looming tower in the most recent Mission: Impossible. Why, oh why, oh why he opted to star in a series that buries him under a bad wig and worse color contacts is a mystery to me.
Or maybe it’s a failure of franchise-chasing. The Witcher comes from novels by Andrzej Sapkowski, which also inspired an acclaimed video game series. I haven’t played the games, but the pilot has certain tropes from that medium exported without imagination to television. There’s the constant download of fantasy verbiage, including much talk about a “kikimora” and a town I swear is called “Blevicum.” Mikkelsen’s character has a big line about how Geralt “made a choice,” which feels like a hat-tip to the open-world nature of the games. The intention here is dark pulp fantasy, so this is the kind of show where a character like Appleton’s Renfri is a Princess and a mutant who has sex with Geralt the night before they battle to the death.
I’m definitely not averse to the wild extremes of this genre — shout-out to the visceral blood terrors of Adult Swim’s Primal — but the first episode felt like cheese gone moldy. That nude bordello really edged the whole vibe in a fratty direction, and the long running time required a lot of take-forever talk about prophecies and destiny. Did you watch further into the season.
: Because life’s too short for Netflix drama running times, I skipped ahead to the fifth episode, which brings the Yennefer and Geralt plotlines together. Episode 5 also features Magic Viagra and a masked orgy set to some truly ridiculous retro-softcore music. I do think there’s room for a mature-content fantasy romp in our post-Game of Thrones universe, but eternal exposition runs alongside a tin ear for dialogue.
This is the first TV show I’ve ever seen that would actually be better with commercial breaks. The goofy syndicated fantasy of yesteryear had to have a brisk pace, building every 12 minutes to an act-breaking cliffhanger. The Witcher fully embraces the endless-movie layout of the worst Blank Check streaming TV. At the end of the series premiere, someone tells Allen’s Princess Ciri that Geralt is her destiny. In episode 5, people are still telling her that Geralt is her destiny. I assume they will meet in the season finale. Alas, my destiny is to never watch this borefest ever again.
A dynamic many were looking forward to being introduced is brought to life here, with Ciri and Geralt finally united. It’s a promising and much-needed addition to the series. Ciri offers a great opposite to Geralt’s steely and stone-cold demeanor, but she’s also able to relate to him, with her proving that Geralt’s got a bit of soft-side, even if he’s bound by an oath to protect her.
Henry Cavill’s dedication to the role of Geralt is another shining gold star for the series, with absolutely stellar casting. While he may seem a bit one-note, this season looks to explore the layers of the character, with Freya Allan’s Ciri playing a pivotal role in that.
Nivellen is quite the eccentric and welcoming host, with Kristofer Hivju delivering a magical, Tormund-Esque, performance under all those prosthetics. However the entire thing just feels off, it feels like Nivellen is hiding something, no matter how many magical tricks he can pull to distract Ciri, you feel as if Geralt never really trusts him, as Nivellen’s cursed appearance really put him on edge, this wasn’t the same Nivellen he’d met all those years ago.
The series is very obvious in its mistrust of Nivellen, with the cursed man harboring a Bruxxa named Vereena, responsible for countless deaths. For his crimes, he was cursed to never be able to love, presumably turning him into that beast once he’d fallen for Vereena, but he didn’t care cause she’d loved him either way. This felt like an obvious play on Beauty and the Beast, except the roles are swapped and this time around both of them were the beast. It’s not until the curtain is pulled back and Nivellen’s curse is broken that it really works, when it’s revealed that Nivellen was cured due to raping a priestess, it’s hard to sympathize with a man who’d just lost the one thing that loved him, and it feels like a callback to earlier in the episode when Nivellen had asked Geralt how he was not heartbroken following Yennefer’s presumed death, with Geralt responding, “Who says I’m not?” It feels like Geralt is beginning to scratch the surface of showing emotion, having lost the good person he’d once seen in Nivellen and considered a close friend.
Perhaps the weakest part of this episode is whatever they’re trying to do with Yennefer. All we see is her locked up in chains under the watch of Fringilla and a few surviving Nilfgardians. Where episode 1 leaves Yennefer promises something surely more interesting than her just pacing around the woods for an hour.
While this was a bit of a slower start to what will, hopefully, be an eventful season, it was a good starting point for our characters. I look forward to seeing the relationship between Geralt and Ciri progress, and how Ciri learns to hone her abilities. I hope to see storylines come together by the end of the season, with Yennefer and Geralt finally reuniting.
Netflix's high-fantasy drama, released Dec. 20 on the streaming service and based on a book series and video game, is in fact a very, very bad TV show. It is cheesy and hacky, full of nonsensical plot twists, gratuitous female nudity, bad dialogue and rather poor acting choices, some from its marquee star, Henry Cavill.
But – and hear us out on this one – "Witcher" is actually riotously fun and rewarding, not in spite of its badness but because of it. There are so-bad-they're-good shows, and then there is "Witcher," an amalgamation of terribleness, hilarity, cool fight scenes and a song you'll never get out of your head.
"Witcher" is not a "hate-watch" like HBO's infamously angering "The Newsroom." You do not feel bad when Cavill's Geralt of Rivia, a superhuman monster hunter who speaks only in a monotone and doesn't appear to have emotions, rattles off platitudes about honor, duty and the ridiculously named "Law of Surprise." The more you watch, the better you feel, as the ridiculous characters and twists wash over you, each more absurd than the last. (A knight with a hedgehog head is also a romantic hero.) By the eighth and final episode, you might even find yourself wishing there were more.
"Witcher" is not a "hate-watch" like HBO's infamously angering "The Newsroom." You do not feel bad when Cavill's Geralt of Rivia, a superhuman monster hunter who speaks only in a monotone and doesn't appear to have emotions, rattles off platitudes about honor, duty and the ridiculously named "Law of Surprise." The more you watch, the better you feel, as the ridiculous characters and twists wash over you, each more absurd than the last. (A knight with a hedgehog head is also a romantic hero.) By the eighth and final episode, you might even find yourself wishing there were more.
After an agonising two-year wait, The Witcher has finally ridden back onto Netflix for its highly-anticipated second season.
The new instalment continues the stories of Geralt of Rivia and young Princess Cirilla ‘Ciri’ after their paths crossed in 2019’s final chapter.
However, a number of fans have been left asking if the actress playing Ciri has been recast as the character supposedly looks different in The Witcher season 2.
The Witcher slashed its way back onto Netflix for season 2 on December 17th, 2021, almost two years to the day since season 1 made its debut in 2019.
Season 2 picks up from the events of the previous instalment as Geralt is convinced that Yennefer has perished in the Battle of Sodden and he decides to bring Ciri to the safest place he knows, the witcher stronghold of Kaer Morhen.
While the world around them threatens to come tumbling down with violence and intrigue, Geralt must contend with something far more dangerous, the mysterious power that is building within Ciri.
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