We're in the home stretch of The Witcher season 4, and things are about to get bloody. "Twilight of the Wolf" serves as the climax of the season for Yennefer and her sorceress sisters, and centers almost entirely on an immense battle at the castle of Montecalvo. This is probably the biggest battle sequence The Witcher has done to date, with special effects galore as mages and witchers duke it out around the stronghold.
We also catch up with Ciri and the Rats near the end, but make no mistake: this episode is all about the mage battle, for better and worse. FULL SPOILERS ahead for The Witcher season 4 Episode 6, "Twilight of the Wolf."
The Battle of Montecalvo
Since nearly this entire episode is a battle sequence, I'm not going to recap it beat-for-beat. You can watch the show if you want to track every single mage Yennefer downs, or the exact order of events. Instead, I want to zoom out and talk about the episode in a broader perspective, until we get down to the really important stuff near the end.
There's no denying that "Twilight of the Wolf" is one of the most visually spectacular episodes The Witcher has ever done in terms of special effects. It's a multi-stage siege, with Vilgefortz clashing with a magical shield erected by the Aretuza novices, before the rogue mages portal into Montecalvo like Death Eaters from Harry Potter to wreak havoc. From there, the battle spans parapets, hallways, courtyards and more, with numerous casualties and so many inventive deaths that it's hard to keep up. The choreography, camera work, and score are all top notch as well, helping this episode stand as a huge achievement for the series. It's also an all-timer for Anya Chalotra, who does some really incredible acting as Yen sways between emotional devastation and animalistic fury.
And perhaps that's part of the problem. It seems very clear that the The Witcher team wanted to one-up the Thanedd coup with another big magical showdown that gave all its mage actors something important to do this season, and this is how they decided to do it. The problems is that this battle at Montecalvo is not drawn from Andrzej Sapkowski's books, and trying to one-upping Thanedd with a similar magical battle is a fool's errand. It is arguably the most iconic battle of Sapkowski's entire book series for a reason. There are so many different factions and emotionally charged clashes that had been brewing over time that it's hard to replicate that particular alchemy without a lot of set up, which Montecalvo does not have.
That's not to say The Witcher show can't still have great scenes on the level of Thanedd. This season does have one, which happens during the finale, that is as good as anything the show has ever done. But that scene works not because it tried to beat an already great moment at doing the same thing, but because it's very, very different yet equally effective in its own way.
Another large issue I have with this episode is that it very clearly tried to take beats from The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt video game's siege of Kaer Morhen, where the witchers lured a dangerous foe who was pursuing Ciri to their home turf, to face it with all their assembled allies. Vesemir dies during the siege of Kaer Morhen just like he dies in "Twilight of the Wolf," making a heroic stand against a major villain. It's a standout part of the game for a number of reasons, but the Montecalvo battle falls well short because it lacks a comparable emotional core.
All that said, I like this episode much more on the rewatch, because I was able to appreciate it more for what it was than what it wasn't. I still don't love the fact that The Witcher committed so much to this Montecalvo battle at the expense of other material, but there's no denying that it's a spectacularly filmed episode which gives closure to a number of different characters.
The casualties of Montecalvo
Much of the early part of the battle is wall-to-wall action, but around halfway through important characters start dropping like flies. The first is Margarita (Rochelle Rose), the headmistress of novices from Aretuza. Vilgefortz's lieutenant Jocephus of Muroc (Edmund Kingsley) spears her with a sword as she's trying to lead her charges to safety.
The next of note is that Yennefer doesn't kill Vilgefortz when she has the chance. After the leader of the rogues enters the fray, Yen lures him to a secluded room, where she uses illusion magic to impersonate his former lover Tissaia (MyAnna Buring) to throw him off guard. It was nice to see Buring again, if only for a moment; she was always one of the strongest actors on the show. But when Philippa helps Yen subdue Vilgefortz, she stupidly chooses to try and root around in his head for information about what he wanted to do with Ciri, rather than immediately kill him. If he's dead, why does she need to know what he wanted?
It's hard to emphasize what an aggravating move this is. Vilgefortz is so powerful that it's rare for any character to have even the slightest chance of injuring him, let alone taking his life. He is the big bad of the series. So for Yen to squander this opportunity reeks of plot armor for Vilgefortz, and makes Yen look like a fool.
The visions he shows Yennefer are horrifying as well. She sees herself, naked, bloody, and chained to a floor. She also sees Ciri in rags, strapped to a table in Vilgefortz's castle as he does grisly experiments on her. It's horrific, and hopefully none of it will come to pass.
The next major casualties are Jocephus — who Yen stabs to death to save the novices — and Vesemir (Peter Mullan), Geralt's witcher foster father. Vesemir's death is set up as a big loss for the episode, but for me it fell sadly flat. From the moment he announced he was going to kill Vilgefortz, it was obvious this was the way it was going to go down. It doesn't help that Vesemir was recast this season, which means they brought him back after he stayed off screen for season 3 just to kill him off.
*Game Spoiler Alert*
It's hard not to see the parallel for Vesemir's death in the show and video games. In the books, Vesemir simply stays off screen after Geralt and Ciri's stay at Kaer Morhen, and we never see him again. But both the game and show decided to give him a big dramatic exit, which will surely impact characters like Geralt and Ciri.
In the game, Vesemir is one of many characters fighting the Wild Hunt at Kaer Morhen. He doesn't set out to do a suicidal last stand, but is instead caught out as the lone defender of Ciri when she's immobilized. Rather than flee and leave her to the enemy, he stands his ground against a fighter he's unlikely to beat, and dies before Ciri's eyes.
In the show, Vesemir's death rings hollow because no one who was even that close with him is there to witness his death, unless you want to count Triss. He also dies because of a suicidal crusade where he attacked someone he was all but certain to lose to, as opposed to making a last stand to defend someone else. It's a stark contrast.
The battle reaches its height after Vesemir's death, when the remaining sorceresses face off against Vilgefortz and his mages in the courtyard. The rogues try to melt the sorceresses with forbidden fire magic, and all they can do is hold out as long as they can; first for Philippa to fix the water tower, since she's the only one who can reach it with her polymorphy; and then for Istredd to destroy the monolith Vilgefortz is using to control portals.
It's a harrowing moment, where people melt from overusing their magic right next to important characters like Francesca and Yen. But ultimately, they hold out long enough. Philippa frees up the water tower, and Yen uses the geyser to smash the rogues and break their concentration. Then she and Vilgefortz go toe-to-toe like they're in Dragon Ball Z, blasting magic at each other until Yen hears from Fringilla that Istredd has succeeded in destroying the monolith at Stygga castle.
With access to portals restores, the sorceresses pull off a brutal counterattack that lets them slaughter every rogue mage in Montecalvo, except for Vilgefortz. He flees back to Stygga, just as the monolith crumbles and Fringilla escapes with Istredd.
I'm glad that Istredd and Fringilla are out of Vilgefortz's clutches, and even gladder that Istredd is finally dead, if I'm being honest. He appears in a single short story in Sapkowski's written works, so he has long overstayed his usefulness in the show. He dies in Yennefer's arms, twisting the knife for the final big loss of the episode.
The final scene with the sorceresses is them burning the book of monoliths, a tome which goes all the way back to The Witcher: Blood Origin. Then, with portals back, Yenneer teleports directly into the heart of Nilfgaard to get Ciri back, not knowing Emhyr doesn't even have her.
One last gripe for the road about this battle: I really dislike that Vilgefortz loses. He is the most overwhelmingly powerful and threatening character in the book series, and having him take a somewhat superficial loss in season 4 just to give the rest of our beloved characters something to do is going to make him much less scary in season 5, when he's supposed to be the unbeatable big bad who has to lose for real so that our heroes can win the day. We'll see how the show handles that complication it just made for itself.
"We serve no master!"
After the battle at Montecalvo, we catch up with the Rats down near Nilfgaard right as they're abducting a noble kid for ransom. They run into some guards in an alley, and a fight breaks out. The noble tries to convince Ciri to let him go, but he misjudges the situation when he says the other Rats probably deserve to die. Ciri punches him out, and then tears through the guards to save her friends. Freya Allan has some really good fight choreography this season. But Ciri is also clearly suffering, stabbing a corpse over and over and screaming.
Back in their hideout, the Rats raise a glass to Falka, and they party like crazy. Ciri does Fisstech for the first time, shouting about how she's a Rat and has embraced freedom. But Mistle is torn about this descent for her lover. Ciri, though, calls MIstle calls out Mistle for wanting to shape and mold her like a little doll, while Mistle shoots back by pointing out Ciri's darkness is growing. I like this conversation because both things are true. The show has made their romance fuller than the novels, but it is still laced with toxicity. And it is sad to see what Ciri's hatred is doing to her.
But the noose is tightening for the Rats. After their party, we see that Leo Bonhart is still on their trail. He gets into it with some of the soldiers they had just fought, and ends up murdering them after torturing them for information. Sharlto Copley is still an absolute standout every single time he's on screen. There's no other actor in the show right now that I get so excited by whenever they enter a scene, except perhaps Laurence Fishburne.
As he's dying, one of the guards tells Bonhart to find Hotspurn. It's pretty funny how exasperated Bonhart gets when the people he brutalizes die before he's done talking to them. He ends the episode by taking a Falka doll from a little girl, and setting out in search of this Hotspurn who can supposedly lead him to her.
At this point I can safely say that Ciri, the Rats, and Bonhart are my favorite of the main plotlines this season. I sit up a little straighter any time the focus shifts to them, and with the insanely dangerous Bonhart slowly closing in, there's a feeling of real danger that isn't necessarily there for characters like Yennefer or Geralt. I'm both looking forward to and dreading watching what happens next.
Verdict
"Twilight of the Wolf" is an interesting episode of The Witcher. On the one hand, it is as spectacular a battle as the show has ever done, with major losses and some outstanding scenes. On the other, it feels like the show tried to copy a much more inspired sequence from the video game, to much worse effect. We'll give it some extra points for some great scenes with Ciri and Bonhart, though.