After a close encounter with the armed forces of Nilfgaard and Redania, our valiant witcher is once more back on the road with his hansa. After suffering battles, encounters with monsters, and heartbreaking losses, our group of adventurers is in dire need of a rest before they push on to the next leg of their journey — whether Geralt likes it or not.
"The Joy of Cooking" is the most experimental episode of The Witcher season 4, focusing almost entirely on the hansa's night of camaraderie. I wish I could say that it worked well, but unfortunately, this was my least favorite episode of the season by far. The show took some absolutely wild swings, and a few of them went wide of the mark so badly that I genuinely had to wonder if I was still watching the same TV show as the first four episodes of the season.
To talk about it further, we need to get into FULL SPOILERS for The Witcher season 4, Episode 5, "The Joy of Cooking."
The hansa's night off
Most of this episode takes place at the hansa's camp in a forest, and the location shooting is absolutely stunning right from the jump. The score is also excellent, and very reminiscent of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt game. We begin with a frustrated Geralt, because he wants to cross the Yaruga River, despite Milva's protests that everyone needs rest after the warcamp battle. But she senses his determination, and offers to go scout the crossing in spite of her misgivings.
It's immediately obvious that she's right: Jaskier is in a bad way, acting loopy and weak with a headband covering his bloody head. Zoltan bound his wound from the battle, but he's no medic and laments that Regis isn't around to do a better job of it. Jaskier is determined not to slow the group down, but Cahir also sides with Milva, echoing the need for rest. This leads to some tension between him and Geralt, where Cahir reveals that he too has been having dreams of Ciri, including one of her encounter with the greylock. Before things escalate, Milva returns and informs them that the crossing is flooded. They have no choice but to camp for the night and rest.
They start cooking some food, and we shortly launch into the true meat of the episode: backstories for each of the characters. First up are the dwarves, Zoltan Chivay and Yarpen Zigrin. We find out that Zoltan was exiled from Mahakam by a dwarf named Brouver, which leads into ou rfirst look ever at Mahakam. The city is beautiful, and a treat for fans who've always wanted a glimpse of the dwarven city.
Zoltan had a successful forge there, before he was accused of supplying weapons to humans. But Zoltan pushes back, claiming it was Brouver who was sending Zoltan's weaponry to humans, who used those weapons to kill Zoltan's own people. Zotlan took back his weapons when he found out, and Brouver started a fire in his forge in retaliation. Zoltan hid in a crawl space as the building exploded. By the time he got out, Brouver had done too much damage to his reputation to recover it.
This allows Yarpen and Zoltan to finally bury the hatchet. The parrot Field Marshall Windbag has a vulgar opinion about the story, which leads us into the parrot's flashback — yes I am serious — that shows a brief glimpse of how it was taken from its mate to become a pet. I laughed, because it's too absurd. Field Marshall Windbag then flies away; we'll have to keep an eye out in future episodes to know if it's gone for good.
The archer's life
As the group prepares their cook fire, Milva offers up some tubers she learned to cook with in Brokilon. Despite Geralt's attempts to avoid conversation and check the crossing, Jaskier encourages Milva to share her past. He's so earnest and interested she can't resist.
We learn that Milva was assaulted by her step father as a teenager, until she finally snapped and killed him. She then fled into the forest, where she became a deadly archer. Eventually she saved a group of dryads, and they invited her to make a home in Brokilon Forest.
After that, Milva guided Scoia'tael guerrilla fighters through Brokilon. She recalls their penchant for revelry, and how she spent the night with an elf. The next night, she finds out that the entire group of Scoia'tael was ambushed and killed. It was not long after that that she was tasked by the dryads with helping Geralt recover from his wounds.
Time passed while Milva told her tale; when she stared it was day, but by the time she finishes night has fallen. Now it's time to enter into the most outrageous portion of the episode.
The bard's tale
Jaskier's flashback is next, and it is done almost entirely in song. It sounds like something out of a Disney movie, which feels totally incongruous for this world. Joey Batey has great comedic timing, but this is a jarring transition and it hits like a out-of-tune lute to the face.
Jaskier recalls his days in Oxenfurt, a city renowned as a hub of culture and learning thanks to its famous university. The colors in the town are extremely bright, to the point that it looks unrealistic. This is intentional — Jaskier sings about how odd it is that some days you can feel so good the world feels the opposite of what it really is — but at the same time, it's still just weird as hell to watch in a grim, gritty dark fantasy series. I enjoy a good musical sequence as much as anyone, but this feels so tonally off that it is one of my least favorite scenes of the entire season.
The general thrust of Jaskier's story is that he discovered Valdo Marx (Nathan Armarkwei Laryea), a rival bard who would go on to gain the adoration of the masses. In Jaskier's recollection, Valdo was a grimy street performer until Jaskier took him under his wing, teaching him the ways of the bard. But then Valdo stole Jaskier's precious song book and began passing off his mentor's songs as his own, and gained immense popularity as a result. Thus, Jaskier developed a lifelong grudge against Valdo.
Look, this is fun backstory, but did it require a full five minute musical sequence with intricate choreography and staging to convey? It totally threw me out of the episode, and took attention from other sequences which would have benefited from more attention. I always like hearing Joey Batey bust out a good song as Jaskier, but this one did not do it for me.
*Book Spoiler Alert*
During the beginning of Jaskier's story, he sings the words "Anarietta gave my heart a break." This is a nickname for the Duchess of Toussaint, who has a history with Jaskier that comes more into focus in the final book of the series, The Lady of the Lake. She's expected to appear in season 5.
Despite my misgivings about Jaskier's lengthy song, the hansa all loves it — including Regis, who suddenly appears out of the forest. Geralt begins to warn the vampire to leave, but Regis insists he's only stopped by long enough to tend to Jaskier's head wound. And give the group spices for their offensively bland soup. And make a suggestion for Jaskier's book, that "Half a Century of Poetry" might be a touch more poetic than the bard's working title, "50 Year of Poetry." You get the feeling Regis kind of wants to stick around.
Laurence Fishburne's appearance on the scene quickly gets the episode back on track. Regis dismisses some common myths about vampirism, like being allergic to garlic, before he insists on also tending to Geralt's leg, which means that the rest of the hansa finally gets to see just how bad it is. The uneasy dynamic between Geralt and Regis as beings who should be sworn enemies but like each other is very enjoyable to watch, and I think Hemsworth is often at his best acting opposite Fishburne.
Zoltan isn't as afraid of Regis as the rest of the group, and invites the vampire to stay and share his story. Which is The Witcher's cue to once more go fully off the rails.
The vampire's story
Regis is 428 years old, which means that his story requires a significant time jump. Unfortunately, The Witcher took this opportunity to show an earlier period on the Continent and totally squandered it by doing an animated sequence. Don't get me wrong, I love animation, even within The Witcher franchise like Sirens of the Deep. But there has never been an animated segment in the mothership show, and randomly tossing one in halfway through the penultimate season comes off as weirdly sloppy, rather than intentional.
It almost feels like The Witcher didn't want to spend the budget on creating a whole early-Continent setting just for Regis' flashbacks, so they went a cheaper route. But of course, they still spent whatever it took to do Jaskier's five-minute musical theater exercise, and a massive battle in Episode 306 that has no basis in the books whatsoever. It was a choice to cut corners on the flashback for the most intriguing member of Geralt's hansa, and a bad one in my opinion.
As for the actual information conveyed in Regis' flashback, it's all important stuff that informs why he's such a unique vampire who doesn't drink blood. In Sapkowski's books, Regis' vampirism is a very clear analogy for alcoholism, and this is something the show also leans into. He explains how in vampire society, to not partake of human blood is to risk becoming an outcast. He drank his fill as a young vampire, to the point where he gave in to all his worst impulses.
But then he accidentally fell down a well, and was saved the following morning by a human named Betháne. They fell in love and lived a better life, where Regis didn't consort with other vampires or drink blood. Betháne was an herbalist, which explains where Regis picked up so much of his knowledge. Unfortunately, his coven eventually killed Betháne to stop Regis from "playing with his food." He went on a bloody rampage, killing all the other vampires...which Betháne witnessed in her final moments, dying in terror of him.
Regis' rampage alerted the village to the presence of vampires, and a mob slaughtered him and any others they could find. In The Witcher world, vampires can regenerate from almost any wound, including being dismembered or stabbed with a wooden stake. It took Regis half a century to regenerate, all the while haunted by his terrible mistakes.
The story quiets some of the bad blood between Regis and Geralt, and the group finally feels like it's whole again as they settle down to eat together. While they do, we get a very brief glimpse at Percival's "quiet life" before the hansa, where he was cackling on top of a mountain of corpses, scimitar and goblet of wine in hand, draped in jewels. Was this just his imagination, or his actual life? We'll never know, because the show uses it more as a quick joke than serious interlude. Which is fine, because we have a juicier backstory to get to next: Cahir's.
The boy from Vicovaro
Cahir insists to his friends that he is not a Nilfgaardian, and now we find out why: he's from Vicovaro, a small country near Nilfgaard which was quickly taken into the fold. Cahir has never told his childhood story to anyone. But now he does, and thankfully, The Witcher commits to this one.
We see young Cahir, who's father is cruel to him following the death of his older brother at the hands of the usurper — the former king who stole Emhyr's throne, and was later deposed. Young Cahir runs into the forest, where he encounters Xarthisius. The mage enlists Cahir to leave food outside of a nearby cave, where he says a friend of his is recovering.
Cahir spent weeks making these food deliveries and never saw who was in the cave...until the day two bandits tried to steal the food and kill him. Then, the monster finally emerges: Emhyr, back when he was still cursed to look like a quill-faced monster, who Geralt recognizes from the story as Duny, the man whose curse he helped lift in the Episode 4 of season 1. Duny went on to marry Queen Calanthe of Cintra's daughter, Pavetta. Ciri's mother.
The flashback next shows Cahir as a young adult, who came into the service of Emperor Emhyr. Because of Cahir's story, Geralt finally realizes the truth: Emhyr is Ciri's father. And he wants to marry her, his own daughter, because Vilgefortz convinced Emhyr that he needed to fulfill Ithlinne's prophecy by producing an Elder Blood heir.
This is a huge revelation. It goes down quite differently in the books, where Emhyr's relationship to Ciri isn't known until the very end of the saga. Because of the nature of television as a visual medium, the show couldn't pull off the twist in the exact same way, so it's been doling out pieces of it. This particular bit I think was really well done. Cahir's flashback is easily my favorite of the episode, and actor Eamon Farren is riveting.
Despite everyone bearing their souls, Geralt resists the idea that Cahir and the rest of the hansa are just as invested in the quest as he is. He storms off into the woods, and has a flashback to when Ciri came with him to Kaer Morhen. It's a tender moment, where Geralt helps Ciri with her hair, and reveals that when he was a boy he dreamed of being a knight. No, Geralt of Rivia isn't a proper honorific; the witcher chose it himself to attract better contracts. It was a much better option than his first attempt at a knightly name: Geralt Roger Eric du Haute-Bellegard. That one earned a laugh from Ciri and Vesemir both.
The conversation turns into one about trust, and ends with Ciri playfully knighting the witcher as Sir Geralt Roger Eric du Haute-Bellegard. Commit this flashback to memory; it'll be relevant later in the season.
The next morning, everyone wakes well rested for the first time in weeks, and Geralt finally accepts the friendship of his hansa — including Regis, who got a loud cackle from me as he appeared suddenly next to Jaskier and scared the crap out of him. The episode ends for the hansa with Milva revealing that the river crossing was actually open just fine yesterday, but she lied about it being flooded to force everyone to take a night off.
This was an important moment for the hansa, where it stopped being a bunch of separate travelers and gelled into a real group of friends. While I do have large qualms with a few choices, like Jaskier and Regis' flashbacks, I'm glad we got this quiet time for the characters to bond. Too often in eight episode seasons, shows are loath to slow down enough to allow for contemplative episodes like this one. "The Joy of Cooking" is a good reminder of why they're so crucial to getting us invested in the characters before they dive head first into danger.
Redania
While we don't catch up with Ciri or Yennefer in this episode, we do get a few brief scenes elsewhere. Between episodes 4 and 5, Radovid's Redanian army has taken the city of Dillingen. Prisoners are being hanged their, until one of them claims he has information about wizards. Sassy Eva shows up out of nowhere to claim this info, which leads to an interrogation where the man recounts how he worked for the mage Rience. He reveals the druid and werewolf who were watching over fake Ciri were both killed, and he had a hand in kidnapping her.
The criminal says he kidnapped a girl with ashen hair and green eyes, but Radovid knows that wasn't Ciri, since he saw her on Thanedd at that time. The man then remembers who was employing Rience, but he no sooner utters Vilgefortz's name than his eyeballs explode, just like the rogue sorceress Yennefer was interrogating in the season premiere. But the information they got from him is enough to confirm for Radovid that the "Ciri" set to marry Emhyr in Nilfgaard is a fake.
Then we cut to a brothel, where the Redanian commander spilled the beans about Ciri being a fake to his prostitute. This information quickly passes to Stefan Skellen, who orders the commander be silenced to keep Ciri's absence a secret.
Nilfgaard
We get another scene with Skellen in this episode, where he goes to visit Teryn, the fake Ciri. Since Emhyr figured out her ruse, Teryn has taken to locking herself in her room in darkness, and resisting all lessons in courtly etiquette. Skellen gives her a great speech about acting, which is his not-so-subtle way of threatening her into the idea that she can either continue to act badly and die from letting the truth about her identity slip, or act like Cirilla and eventually become a queen in truth. It's a very solid scene especially for James Purefoy, who manages to be charming and earnest while also intimidating. And of course, it's very meta to hear an actor give a long speech about acting.
My one qualm with it is how is Skellen in both Dillingen, and the Nilfgaardian capital in the same episode? Geralt's storyline has established that the Redanian front is months away from Nilfgaard. Skellen has no magic, so unless he's getting a mage to portal him back and forth, the travel times don't make sense.
Stygga Castle
The episode ends with a very brief scene at Stygga castle, where Vilgefortz tortures Fringilla Vigo to get the location of Yennefer's hideout. Fringilla resists, tearing out her hair, before finally revealing it to be Montecalvo. Vilgefortz leave, smug that he broke her. But Fringilla quickly activates her magic earring, and alerts Yen that he's coming. It's hard to know whether she told him on purpose, which is on pont for the ever scheming Fringilla.
Verdict
"The Joy of Cooking" is my least favorite episode of The Witcher season 4, largely because of how incongruous the Jaskier and Regis flashbacks felt to everything around them. I've been generally enjoying The Witcher more than I expected this season, but here I was reminded that the show often can't help itself when it comes to giving in to ridiculous decisions that feel at odds with the dark fantasy world it's created. Regardless, I'm glad we had some quiet time with the hansa to build up all the relationships there.