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December 19, 2021

“The Witcher” Returns Stronger Than Ever After Two Years

MINOR SPOILERS FOR THE WITCHER SEASON 2 AHEAD!

With the universe of The Witcher expanding at the rate that is, and Netflix investing in live-action prequels, anime spinoffs, and even a kid’s show (I have…so many questions about how that’s gonna work), there was a lot of pressure on The Witcher‘s second season to validate that level of support from the streaming service. The first season was good, don’t get me wrong, but it takes more than “good” for Netflix to bank so heavily on any of their original franchises – especially one with a large budget and a star whose salary doubled between seasons.

So it’s fortunate indeed that The Witcher season two gleefully one-ups its debut season at every opportunity and on every level. Showrunner Lauren Hissrich has consistently proven in her social media interactions with fans that she’s always willing to listen and engage with valid critiques of her work on season one, and in season two it appears that she and her team have taken great care to evolve in response to those critiques while staying true to her over-arching vision for the series. The process of achieving that delicate balance begins in the writers room.

That’s where it must have been decided to stick to just one timeline from now on, after audiences responded poorly to the gradual reveal in season one that the show had been jumping between three timelines without warning. To be fair, that reveal works better on a rewatch, when you can pick up all the clues that the writers cleverly planted in early episodes, and I hope season two will be equally as rewarding on successive rewatches; because on a first viewing, to someone who hasn’t read the books or played the games, I think it’s the politics that are going to be most challenging to follow in season two.

I encourage anyone new to The Witcher to find themselves a detailed map of The Continent online before settling in to watch season two, because whether you can keep up with which kingdoms are fighting over what, much less play along with all the political intrigue on your own, will largely depend on how fast you can figure out where the kingdom of Redania is in relation to Cintra and where everything is in relation to Nilfgaard. Most fantasy stories on this scale will have some character in-universe unfurl a map to help out the audience – The Witcher is not most fantasy stories, so you’re gonna have to bring your own.

If you can get past that hurdle, the political intrigue of The Witcher is well-executed, satisfyingly complex…and integral to this season and the forward direction of the series. If Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) was your favorite character in season one because you loved exploring the world of the Mages with their secretive individual agendas and allegiances, you’ll find much to enjoy in season two as the Mages clash with new characters like Dijkstra (Graham McTavish), a man with an almost Machiavellian cunning, and old characters with new goals, like the ostracized Nilfgaardian Mage Fringilla Vigo (Mimî M. Khayisa).

In other words, this season of The Witcher was tailor-made for me. Political intrigue is one of my favorite tropes in fantasy, and as much as I love seeing Geralt (Henry Cavill) hunt monsters, especially now that Ciri (Freya Allan) is in on the action with a sword of her own and some very cool magic abilities, I’m always gonna gravitate more towards the cloak-and-dagger stuff, the conspiracies behind closed doors, the plots and the political maneuvering enriched by the addition of a magical element in this case. But rest assured, monster lovers, The Witcher hasn’t forgotten you.

Following complaints that season one was suspiciously light on monsters for a show about a monster-hunter, season two brings a number of new beasts off the pages of Andrzej Sapkowski’s books and into live-action. By the end of the season, The Witcher is just about testing the limits of its expanded budget (without getting into spoilers, there are several basilisks in the finale, each a little less convincing than the last), but you can tell that the show has more money and resources to allocate towards CGI, because the fight-scenes are longer and better-lit, showing off the cool monster designs rather than hiding them in shadows.

There are monsters where there don’t even need to be monsters in season two, which is an improvement over almost no monsters at all. The Bruxa (a bloodsucking shapeshifter) and the Leshy (a malevolent tree) are by far my favorites; both enigmatic, both hauntingly beautiful, and both absolutely terrifying. If there’s a tiebreaker between the two, it’s the Leshy’s relative lack of screentime and personality that pushes the Bruxa into the lead. I’d say it’s impressive that the Leshy made any impact on me at all in just forty-five seconds, but that’s actually very telling of how much I love evil trees.

The Witcher and its monsters are deeply rooted in Slavic (specifically Polish) folklore, and even monsters original to the Netflix series are designed with the same cultural influences in mind. Season two introduces a haggard demoness named Voleth Meir (Ania Marson, a Polish screen legend), nowhere to be found in Sapkowski’s books but immediately familiar to fans of Baba Yaga (me, again). At first she’s just a creepy witch living in a hut in the woods, but then the hut lifts itself up and…well, if you know the Baba Yaga myth, you know what’s underneath.

Voleth Meir is one of several characters in season two linked to events that took place long before The Witcher, which will presumably be explored further in the live-action prequel series, Blood Origin. A sneak-peek at Blood Origin is attached to The Witcher‘s season finale as a mid-credits scene, and with how much worldbuilding there is in regard to Elven bloodlines, the mysterious black monoliths scattered across the Continent, and the fabled Conjunction of the Spheres, I imagine that a lot of fans will want to check that out to see how closely the two series’ are intertwined (also because it stars Michelle Yeoh).

In much the same way that a map is important to understanding the political intrigue elements of The Witcher, I feel that Blood Origin may be essential viewing to figure out what actually happened in this season at all – and there’s a big difference between expecting viewers to look at a map and asking that they watch two series’ (one of which isn’t out yet) just to understand the one they actually came for in the first place. By contrast, Nightmare Of The Wolf is complimentary to The Witcher and fills in some gaps regarding our knowledge of Vesemir (Kim Bodnia), but you needn’t have watched it to understand his character’s actions.

Thankfully, even as its plot occasionally strays towards the past, The Witcher is anchored in the here-and-now by a trinity of exceptional performances from Cavill, Chalotra, and Allan. Throughout season one, Chalotra did most of the dramatic heavy lifting for the trio, it has to be said. And I will argue that even in season two, she’s still given the most compelling material to work with, but the burden of “carrying the show” is more evenly divided between the three when the season opens, Cavill’s Geralt and Allan’s Ciri having already met at the very end of season one.

It’s the first time in her flight across the Continent that Ciri has paused long enough to have a proper conversation with anybody, but Allan is able to quickly and deftly mold a three-dimensional heroine out of her character, who was little more than a plot-device in season one. As she gives voice to her trauma and inner tumult, we explore more facets of her personality beyond the poise and shy politeness hammered into her by her grandmother – including a ceaseless hatred for her family’s enemies that burns within her body, manifesting itself in violence that both terrifies and mesmerizes Ciri.

Disappointingly, the one element of Ciri’s character that didn’t quite make it to the screen in this season is her bisexuality. Several deleted scenes apparently exist of her crushing on the Mage Triss Merigold (Anna Shaffer), along with one that would have confirmed the Witcher Lambert (Paul Bullion) as a bisexual character. That these scenes were removed so methodically is obviously frustrating. As for the bard Jaskier (Joey Batey), his character is more overtly queer-coded than ever, but the only evidence that he harbors any unrequited romantic feelings for Geralt is one confusingly emotional break-up song about the Witcher.

Deprived of his muse, however, it appears that the bard has lost his touch for clever, catchy songwriting. The break-up song, titled “Burn”, disappoints immensely and is even ridiculed in-universe by some of Jaskier’s audience. It’s certainly not a worthy successor to “Toss A Coin To Your Witcher”, Jaskier’s stirring hymn to Geralt that became a smash hit in real-life and on the Continent, where a star-struck fan even boldly approaches Jaskier with his extremely meta criticisms of the bard’s other work, including one song with too many “different timelines”.

It would certainly have been ironic if The Witcher‘s second season had continued the analogy by falling as flat as Jaskier’s new songs. But happily, this is one series that just keeps getting better across the board, and I’m very excited to see whether season three can raise the bar still further.

Series Rating: 8.5/10

July 9, 2021

“Nightmare Of The Wolf” 1st Trailer Review

The Witcher franchise has already expanded from page to live-action to video games – animation is a logical next step, and anime specifically provides an excellent medium in which to tell a number of stories from The Continent that are abundant with the same kind of visceral action and chilling horror that made Netflix’s dark supernatural anime series Castlevania hugely successful. Nightmare Of The Wolf, a feature-length film produced by Netflix Animation in collaboration with Studio Mir, will be the franchise’s first foray into 2D anime, exploring the backstory of one of the greatest Witchers of all time: Vesemir.

One of the most instantly recognizable characters from The Witcher thanks to his prominent role in the CD Projekt Red video games based on Andrzej Sapkowski’s original novels and short stories, Vesemir has a lot of backstory that could be covered in this film – but Nightmare Of The Wolf‘s exceedingly brief teaser trailer, released today, barely gives us a clue as to what’s going on, or what the infamous Witcher’s character arc will be. Hell, we don’t even get a full face-reveal: which is doubly perplexing because the trailer for The Witcher‘s second season, which will feature live-action Vesemir as an old man, is also hiding the character’s face for some reason. We know what he looks like, Netflix!

Because Nightmare Of The Wolf premieres on August 23rd, just a little over a month away, we’ll have already met animated Vesemir by the time we catch up with him in The Witcher proper – so it’s possible the live-action series will include references and callbacks to events in the film, making this an important next stop for Witcher fans who want all the details about who Vesemir is, where he comes from, what his motivations are, and of course, what monsters he’s battled and slain during his journeys. Let’s do some speculating, shall we?

I’m not kidding when I say this teaser is exceedingly brief: it’s a mere forty-five seconds long, and some of that is just title cards flashing by. But from what we can see, Nightmare Of The Wolf follows an attractive young Vesemir (I mean, take the “attractive” part of that with a grain of salt as we literally only see the back of his head, his beard and, like, a quick profile shot that’s mostly just his nose) on adventures through the wilderness, battling all kinds of beasties while helping to establish the warrior traditions of Kaer Morhen that will still be place when Geralt and Ciri train there many decades later.

I assume his primary antagonists in Nightmare Of The Wolf will be vampires (speaking of Castlevania). A notable incident in Vesemir’s backstory, during which he was injured, was his defense of Fox Hollow from a swarm of bloodthirsty vampires (why did I specify bloodthirsty? Are vampires in horror ever not bloodthirsty?) led by a higher vampire named Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy, and we do see a flock of bats with glowing green eyes forming the shape of a leering death’s head in the night sky above Vesemir, followed by a shot of a demon with similar glowing green eyes and pronounced fangs. I’m not saying it’s Emiel, but I’m definitely hoping it is because vampires are awesome.

Of course, Vesemir is a Witcher, so his most consistent and organized opposition comes not from monsters lurking in the woods, but from humans who distrust or fear him and his kind. During Vesemir’s youth, the newly-constructed citadel of Kaer Morhen where he and many other Witchers were training was brutally attacked by an angry mob of villagers from the surrounding lands, and Vesemir – one of the survivors of the tragedy – subsequently rose through the significantly-depleted ranks of Witcher hierarchy to become Kaer Morhen’s leader. His “School of the Wolf” was very powerful for a while, but gradually became too powerful, leading to yet another attack from humans; this time stirred up by King Radowit II, whose crowned visage perhaps appears on the gold coins we see in the trailer.

Vesemir’s negative experiences convinced him to follow a policy of strict isolationism after this second massacre, but he wasn’t always a loner like his adopted son, Geralt – he formed a close bond with Guxart, a rival Witcher who mentored at the School of the Cat, and with whom Vesemir was arrested and held captive by Radowit. Anyone getting rivals to lovers vibes from these two? Just me? Either way, the School of the Cat goes undercover, leaving Vesemir pretty much alone at Kaer Morhen for decades, raising a dwindling generation of new Witchers – including Geralt of Rivia, and later Cirilla of Cintra, which is where The Witcher will resume with the story.

All in all, I’m very excited to see where this goes. This teaser doesn’t give us a whole lot to go on regarding plot, action, or even voice-acting, so I’m not sure exactly how to rate it, but I will be definitely be tuning in to see Nightmare Of The Wolf, and I hope it can tide me over while I wait impatiently for The Witcher to return this December.

Trailer Rating: 7/10

July 9, 2021

“The Witcher” Season 2 Reveals 1st Trailer!

Today is WitcherCon, a celebration of The Witcher franchise and its many offshoots: from the books and short stories that started it all, to the popular CD Projekt Red video games, to the Netflix live-action series based on the books and its own various spinoffs, including an upcoming anime feature-length film following Geralt of Rivia’s mentor Vesemir, and a prequel series which recently added Michelle Yeoh to its cast. In the struggle to fill the mainstream fantasy void left in Game Of Thrones‘ wake, The Witcher‘s massive appeal across multiple mediums makes it arguably the strongest competitor at present: at least until Amazon Prime gets on the board with The Lord Of The Rings.

And today, after being cruelly teased at Netflix’s Geeked Week event with only a twelve-second clip of Ciri, we got our first full trailer for The Witcher‘s second season – which also debuted new images, a poster, and received a release date of December 17th, 2021. The trailer clearly shows that The Witcher‘s creative team are upping the ante for season two, raising the stakes in what looks to be a more cohesive singular story than season one’s sprawling, chronologically complicated narrative. The timeline’s still a little bit confusing though, because Jaskier the traveling bard is back and doesn’t appear to have aged a day in the roughly twenty years since Geralt first encountered him in season one: and I kind of love that the show appears to just be rolling with that, and that we’re all willing to buy that somewhere along the line Jaskier became immortal because of course he did.

That’s the kind of cheeky attitude that helped make The Witcher so popular with fans, and I think it’s part of why holier-than-thou professional critics had a really fun time dumping criticism on The Witcher because it wasn’t “prestige” enough for their sophisticated tastes. But the show is still very grimdark and gruesome, and if this trailer is any indication, it will only get darker from here. Geralt of Rivia and Ciri (formerly Princess Cirilla of Cintra) team up to take on a variety of horrific monsters – all of which are being kept hidden through clever editing, to better preserve the jump-scares they’ll inevitably get out of me when I’m up at three o’-clock in the morning in December watching this show – while Ciri trains to become a Witcher herself at the desolate mountaintop fortress of Kaer Morhen, where Geralt’s mysterious mentor and father figure Vesemir is also being kept hidden: because he too is a monster, although of a slightly different kind. Will he give me a jump-scare too when he shows up? Maybe; it all depends on what the wig situation is.

Here at Kaer Morhen, we find Ciri coming into her own as the series’ protagonist (and apparently finding a really good Witcher hairstylist, because her wig looks amazing), but Geralt and Vesemir won’t be her only teachers. Yennefer of Vengerburg, who disappeared after unleashing an inferno upon the Nilfgaardian armies at the end of season one, is also back – something that the trailer treats as a big spoilery stinger, even though Netflix literally revealed that Yennefer was coming back several months ago – and she’ll be instrumental in helping Ciri to fully access and control her dangerous and unpredictable magical abilities before she succumbs to her desire to “burn the whole world”, as Ciri describes it (which provokes a hilariously exaggerated facial reaction from Henry Cavill’s Geralt that is only accentuated by his neon chartreuse contact lenses: speaking of wigs, his wig has evolved and actually looks halfway-decent these days, but there is absolutely no saving those contacts).

I love that Ciri’s got a dark side to her character, and I can’t wait to see what kind of monster-hunter she becomes in time, when equipped with her magic. There’s been rumors she and Geralt will encounter a fearsome leshy in the woods outside Kaer Morhen, but we also know – and this trailer confirms – that Geralt at the very least will stop by the manor of a man named Nivellen who’s mutated into a horrific beast, to save him from a demoness named Vereena…a grimdark Beauty And The Beast retelling that’s one of the storylines I’m most excited for in season two. We catch a glimpse of Nivellen in the trailer, and I think we also see Vereena at one point, wings unfolded, circling around Geralt in the manor’s snowy courtyard.

I think that, with everything that’s being hidden from us in the trailer, it would have been nice to get one slightly bigger reveal than Yennefer’s return (a first look at the fan-favorite mage Philippa Eilhart would have been an awesome way to get people talking), but I am undeniably excited for The Witcher to come back, and I’m glad that WitcherCon was a big hit with fans of the franchise so that we can do this again next year, hopefully. In the meantime, look forward to my coverage of both The Witcher and its swiftly approaching anime prequel, Nightmare Of The Wolf.

Trailer Rating: 8/10

June 11, 2021

Blink And You’ll Miss First Look At “The Witcher” Season 2

The last big news out of Netflix’s Geeked Week event was the unveiling of another upcoming online fandom event, specifically directed at fans of The Witcher franchise – WitcherCon, which will take place just around the corner on July 9th, and will finally give viewers of Netflix’s wildly successful The Witcher series and players of CD Projekt Red’s bestselling Witcher video games a shared space in which to interact and enjoy news related to both. I’ll let people with a more comprehensive knowledge of the games guide the conversation surrounding that specific topic, but as a fan of Netflix’s series I believe the first full-length trailer for The Witcher‘s second season is probably being reserved to debut during WitcherCon, and I’m beyond excited to see it.

Today, however, to appease the ravenous fans baying like wolves in their comments (no, not me…well, not just me), Netflix gave us a brief taste of what to expect from season two (which you can watch at the 41:30 mark in the video above), in a twelve-second teaser video focused on the show’s central character, Princess Cirilla of Cintra, better known to fans as Ciri. After fleeing from the burning wreckage of the privileged life in Cintra she had enjoyed as a child, Ciri’s journey in season one ended with her finally meeting Geralt of Rivia, the Witcher with whose destiny hers had been intertwined before her birth. Season two will follow Ciri’s own path to becoming a Witcher, as Geralt brings her back to the ancient citadel of Kaer Morhen, where his mentor/father figure Vesemir will begin training Ciri in the ways of the Witchers, making her the first woman to be inducted into the mysterious order.

The teaser gives us a few split-second glimpses of that training, as Ciri discards the heavy, richly embroidered, Cintran robes she wore for most of season one, and shifts into lightweight, practical, armor for her fight scenes. But when she’s not running obstacle courses or hunting monsters in the woods at night, it seems she’ll be diving deeper into the magical origins of her mysterious powers, including the catastrophic events that happen whenever she unleashes her literally earth-shattering wail. She’ll probably be assisted in this search by the mage Yennefer of Vengerburg, the trendsetting icon whom I choose to believe is also responsible for picking out the luxurious white fur gown Ciri can be seen wearing in the teaser in a couple different shots.

Unfortunately, we don’t get to see either Yennefer or Geralt in this teaser, which is mostly filled with brief flashes of significant (or in any case, haunting) imagery, like a ceremonial dagger resting on a plinth, dancing shadow-puppets, runes etched in stone, a skeletal corpse placed on an altar, and my personal favorite: a mural depicting a man having his leg eaten by a large bird or perhaps a dragon. Fantastical and horrifying monsters are a big reason for the franchise’s popularity, and season two is expected to introduce some particularly iconic beasts from The Witcher books and games into the series, including the forest-dwelling leshy, depicted in the games as a towering humanoid creature with a head modeled after a deer’s skull, and a majestic crown of black antlers. I haven’t ever played the games, but the images alone are unforgettable.

As I said, I think we’ll see much more during WitcherCon, including a full-length trailer, but this little teaser is a nice way to end Geeked Week, which also gave us the Shadow And Bone season two renewal we craved alongside some more miscellaneous reports and reveals. I think Geeked Week’s biggest problem in hindsight was a lack of footage from the shows and films being covered during the event, although I’m actually willing to give The Witcher a pass since it will be getting its very own Comic-Con type extravaganza just a month from now.

But what about you? Was this sampling of season two enough to appease you, or were you left disappointed by the lack of content? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!