Chances are good by now that you’ve heard about The Witcher, Netflix’s big monster hunting fantasy show that they’re hoping will serve as their Game of Thrones killer. The streaming service is pulling out all the stops for this series, with season 3 currently in production, a prequel called Blood Origin coming out sometime in 2022, the prequel anime film Nightmare of the Wolf already out, and even a Witcher kids show in the works. There’s an awful lot of The Witcher content on the horizon…and as such, you might be wondering: is The Witcher worth watching?
Short answer: yes. The Witcher is an adult fantasy show that has a lot of the grit and complicated themes that made Game of Thrones so popular. It was already a pretty prevalent pop-culture franchise thanks to the novels by Andrzej Sapkowski and the wildly successful video games by CDProjekt Red, but with Netflix now getting in on it, The Witcher stands to be one of the most recognizable stories of the early 2020s. So even just for the sake of being up on the conversation, it’s totally worth the time.
As to the question of whether it’s any good…that’s a little more complicated. Again, I would say yes, but with some caveats. The Witcher is interesting because while it does have qualities that feel like they belong on an HBO show, it also features a sometimes jarring amount of camp. The Witcher’s first season also had a rather confusing multi-timeline approach that saw our three main characters (two of whom age very slowly thanks to magic and mutations) living their lives across disparate timelines that eventually weave together. This confused a lot of viewers.
The good news is that the show improved drastically during its second season. It received some flack for deviations it made from the books, but if you haven’t read the books or played the games, you won’t even notice. As a whole, the production value and overall writing are significantly improved in season 2. And of course, Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia, the titular witcher, is absolutely perfect casting and the actor kills it.
So yes, The Witcher is worth checking out. It’s also worth getting to at least the beginning of the second season, as the show manages to stamp out a lot of the growing pains that proved problematic in season 1 by that point.
Is Witcher worth reading?
The Witcher is based on a series of novels and short stories by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, the majority of which came out in the late 1980s and 1990s. If you’ve been enjoying the show, you might be wondering if the books are worth checking out. Again, I’d say yes. If you’re enjoying the adventures of Geralt, Ciri, and Yennefer, why not have more?
But once again there is a caveat: the television show has made a few major deviations from The Witcher books. So while they’re worth checking out, it’s also worth noting that it may taint your viewing experience once you realize how the show is treating its source material.
As for the books themselves, they’re pretty good. The first two, The Last Wish and The Sword of Destiny, are collections of short stories. Sapokowski is excellent at this format, and those books are extremely strong. The next five Witcher books are novels which tell a long sweeping tale of Geralt’s mission to protect his foster daughter Ciri. We’re just starting to get into that plotline in the show — season 2 was based on the first Witcher novel, Blood of Elves. The books have some great moments, but can also get a bit slow or convoluted at points. They are absolutely worth checking out if you like the series — they can really deepen your understanding of the world — but they’re not perfect.
There’s also one standalone Witcher novel, Season of Storms, which was published in 2013. This is set during the chronology of The Last Wish, so it can either be read early in the series or after finishing the run of novels that ends with Lady of the Lake.
Is Witcher worth playing?
As for the video games by CDProjekt Red, well…you might guess that as with the books and show, our answer is going to be that if you enjoy The Witcher in any other medium, you should check out the games. But we’ll take that a step farther, and say that if you are even remotely a fan of The Witcher, you owe it to yourself to check out the games — especially the third one, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
Playing the first two Witcher games will give you the most comprehensive experience, but it’s in terms of raw gameplay mechanics and polish, they haven’t aged anywhere near as well as The Witcher 3. The storytelling is still solid, and that goes a long way…but if you’re turned off by older or more clunky gameplay, you can very much jump straight into The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. You’ll have to pick up on some story elements as you go, of course, but that game is so magnificent that it’s easy to spend hundreds of hours lost in it. The Witcher 3 was a gateway for many fans to the wider franchise, and has played a pretty crucial role in the franchise becoming the enormous success that it is today.
The Witcher video games are set after the end of the novels, which end on a somewhat ambiguous note. The game studio that developed them laced tons of details and nods from the books into the games, and it’s clear they really cared about honoring the books even if they were telling a completely different tale. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is an essential experience for any fan of the franchise.
Whether you prefer to read, watch, or play, there is an iteration of The Witcher that is worth checking out.
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