WiC Watches: The Witcher
By Dan Selcke
Image: Netflix/The Witcher
Episodes 7 and 8: “Before a Fall” and “Something More”
It’s finale time! The Witcher ends its first season with a good old-fashioned two-parter. These two episodes go big. Yennefer and several other mages of the Continent stand against the coming Nilfgaardian army, which threatens to roll over the Northern kingdoms after sacking Cintra. Although we’ve been following the likes of Cahir and Fringilla all season, we still don’t really know what Nilfgaard is after, but at this point I don’t think we need to. They’re clearly animated by some kind of religious fervor, and it makes them seem more like monsters than men. And that’s okay; not every villain needs to be fully three-dimensional. The Nilfgaardians are scary in their simplicity. Stopping them feels important. We’re with the mages as they stand against the invaders at the Battle of Sodden.
We don’t actually see this battle go down on the page, only hearing about it after the fact. Hissrich, who wrote this episode, and her team have a terrific time coming up with ways magic users could battle back and forth. Nilfgaardian mages lob fireballs and then turn to dust, paying off the earlier scene at Aretuza where Fringilla successfully performed magic but then watched her hand wither away. Triss Merigold makes poisonous mushrooms blossom out of the Earth. Arrows are fired through portals. Metal worms mind-control people into dropping pellet bombs on their own allies. Plant gate! There’s just a ton of imaginative stuff here. It’s fun, and it all looks terrific. If they skimped on the budget elsewhere this season, it was because they were saving it for here.
The Niifgaardian armor does look like crinkly trash bags, though. Can we change that for season 2?
Image: The Witcher/Netflix
I also liked how the episode included characters who had been set up earlier in the season, like Triss and Tissaia de Vries and even King Foltest, so we had some people to fear for beyond just Yennefer, who’s the star of the show. I also liked new addition Vilgefortz (Mahesh Jadu), a militarily minded mage who shares a tête-à-tête with Yennefer that actually lands:
"Vilgefortz: “First, she shuns the military. Now she’s a military expert.” Yennefer: “First he speaks to her as though she’s not there, and then he loses a limb.”"
Too much of the dialogue this season smacked of the writers trying and failing to be clever — and there was still some of that here, don’t you worry — but that one actually worked. Either cut back on the Casablanca repartee or make sure all of it is that good, please.
Anyway, these episodes belong to Yennefer, with Geralt and Ciri more or less sidelined during all the big events. What’s impressive is that it more or less works; the show put enough work into developing her character that Yenn can carry a two-parter on her shoulders. I thought her final hero moment was a little cheesy, with Tissaia giving her a bottom-of-the-ninth pep talk about letting her power “explode,” but Anya Chalotra was excellent as always, and I liked the development of her relationship with her fellow mages. Maybe she’ll be able to soften up a bit now that she’s put everything on the line and lived to tell about it?
Although, come to think of it, I didn’t like how we didn’t get a firm resolution to the battle. King Foltest shows up at the last moment to reinforce the mages, which implies that the Northern Kingdoms win, but we don’t actually see it happen. I mean, I know it happens because I read the books, but what about people watching this for the first time? Did the message get across to you?
Image: The Witcher/Netflix
So I’ve been complimenting the big finish in “Something More,” but I actually enjoyed “Before the Fall” more. We get a nice, contemplative scene between Yennefer and Istredd that makes them both seem more like real characters with wants and needs, something I wasn’t really getting from Istredd in particular before. I also loved the meeting of the mages, where a majority of them opted not to help defend Cintra from Nilfgaard on account of Cintra never taking them seriously enough before. That felt pretty true to life. I thought the episode lingered too long on the sequence where Yenn messes with the new sorceresses-in-training, but you can’t have everything.
The scenes in Cintra, which were basically the same scenes we saw in the premiere but from Geralt’s point of view, were also strong: moody and exciting, and carried as much by imagery and acting as dialogue, something I think the show could stand to do more of, especially when you have someone as good as Henry Cavill working for you.
But it does make those scenes from the premiere doubly baffling. I complained in my first review that the episode was showing us climactic moments without first giving us a reason to care. Here, we did care. Seeing Calanthe fall out that window was more affecting after I’d gotten to know her better, so…why did we have to see it at the beginning, when it was a hindrance rather than a help? Why spoil this moment before we can appreciate it? “Before the Fall” confirmed to me that the three-timelines conceit was a bad idea. We got to a good place, but the show made us jump through some silly stupid hoops first.
Geralt’s journey in “Something More” was…fine. The flashbacks to his childhood with his mother were interesting, and I’m sure will prove important later on. Unfortunately, his part of the episode was plagued with that clever-but-not-really dialogue problem. Geralt, after being bitten by a zombie: “Not a happy ever after after all.” That’s a dumb thing to say to someone else, let alone by yourself.
Image: The Witcher/Netflix
I also didn’t like Geralt’s line when he and Ciri finally meet up at the end of the episode, in the woods besides the farmhouse where Ciri had been taken in by a kindly woman. “People linked by destiny will always find each other,” Geralt says, as if the show hadn’t been pounding the “destiny is all” theme into our heads all season.
In fact, that whole ending sequence felt off to me. In the books, Geralt and Ciri unite outside the house. Why have Ciri run into the woods first? Why close the season with her asking about Yennefer? Doesn’t the fulfillment of destiny make for a powerful enough moment without doing…whatever that line is supposed to do? Tease the relationships to come, I guess? This moment is supposed to be about Geralt and Ciri. I feel like Hissrich didn’t trust the moment like she should have.
Overall, though, this was a strong finish to a wobbly season of TV that improved as it went along. I’ll gladly watch a second season.