I am now four episodes into Netflix’s The Witcher, and I just have to stop and say… What. Is. Happening?
I’m a huge fantasy fan, but I’m not a gamer, so my knowledge of The Witcher has always been always relegated to bits and pieces I’ve absorbed from friends and the internet over the years. (That is to say, all I really knew was that Geralt is a salty old monster hunter who nobody really likes, except there are also a lot of talented and hot ladies who are inexplicably really into him.) But then, after the Netflix series was announced, I found out that it was going to be pulling mostly from a book called The Last Wish.
“There are books?” I thought. “Wonderful! Now I can get my Witcher on.”
The thing is, though, that The Last Wish isn’t good. It has some enjoyable and interesting moments, but it drags impossibly in others. The book is also rampantly, painfully sexist—I went in expecting a fair amount and was still floored by it. Rape is so commonplace and treated so cavalierly it becomes the festive tapestry on The Last Wish’s dull, slightly moist castle wall, and if it weren’t for the occasional modern turn-of-phrase or curse word, I might have thought the books were written in the 1950s, when in fact The Last Wish was originally published in Poland in 1993. (The English version came out in 2007.)
The Witcher show is similarly behind its time. If it had come out in the early 90s, I probably would have been very impressed. The worst of the books’ sexist tropes have been updated, but not enough to meet the standards of 2019. The fun details about The Last Wish’s worldbuilding–like the balance between Chaos and magic, or how humans are settlers in this world, invaders who have taken over and driven elves and monsters from their homes–are still present, but the show doesn’t really do anything with them. And the timeline is almost impossible to track.
Buy the Book
Burn the Dark
The Witcher follows the events of The Last Wish pretty closely, with large swaths of dialogue lifted directly from the text, but it changes the order for some bizarre and inexplicable reason, and even having read the book didn’t make The Witcher’s timeline any easier to follow. Other reviewers have already tackled this problem, and even tried to sort through the mire and explain it all, so I won’t bother with that. What I will point out is that The Witcher needed to make its source material clearer, not obfuscate it.
In the book, all these seemingly disparate adventures (King Foltest’s incest-daughter-turned-striga, Jaskier and Geralt’s encounter with the sylvan and the elves at The Edge of the World, the whole thing with Renfri) are set within a framing story in which Geralt is recovering from injuries and chatting about his various adventures to one of his lovers. In The Witcher, this framing device has been removed and replaced by the story of Ciri, “the girl in the woods,” which means there’s no one to explain why we’re jumping about so randomly, or what timeline we’re in. Ciri is not in The Last Wish, although it does detail Geralt’s encounter with her family, with whom he invokes the Law of Surprise that will bind Ciri—not yet born—to him. Ciri and Geralt’s adventures are then the subject of the five books of the main Witcher Saga. Yennefer also has a standalone story in The Last Wish, but most of her background and adventures in the show are similarly drawn from the Saga.
I want to like Yennefer, and Ciri, and Geralt for that matter, but although a lot has happened to all of them in the space of four episodes, The Witcher doesn’t seem to know how to pull us into its characters. Granted, it does hit the nail on the head a few times. Jaskier the bard—whose name is Dandelion in the books—is a delight, not only because he because he brings some much-needed brevity to The Witcher, but because he gives Geralt something to play off of. Henry Cavill and Joey Batey have good on-screen chemistry; their duo hits that perfect sweet spot of the odd-couple friendship, the fool and the straight man, that is pretty much what I come to all stories for. Watching Geralt play off of someone else, not just be stoically sad or grimly dismissive at them but actually interact with them, actually lets us see something of who this man is.
The other time we get this is in the very first episode. Marilka, the macabre, sarcastic alderman’s daughter, is probably the best character in the show and drew me in immediately both as a person and as a key-in point for the kind of world Geralt inhabits. It’s worth noting that the show improved her character from basically nothing, giving her the role played by her father in The Last Wish. When she ordered Geralt to leave Blaviken and never return, I was more moved than I have been at anything else so far, even Ciri bidding farewell to her grandmother.
Another thing I love about this show is the fight work. Choreographer Vladimir Furdik does an excellent job of making Geralt’s fights look both rough and beautiful, and there’s lots of variety in the fight and stunt work that keeps things visually interesting. There was more of a complete and story in Geralt’s battle with Renfri than there was in any of the rest of their encounter (especially that sex/dream sequence which literally had me laughing aloud) and Cavil is amazing at the swordplay and hand-to-hand stuff, as long as he’s facing a real person and not a CGI monster. The costumes are also beautiful, which is not surprising since the costume designer is Tim Aslam.
But noting the beautiful costume work brings me back to my problem with The Witcher, because it gets me thinking about Aslam’s other work, such as Black Sails. On Black Sails, each character’s outfit told you instantly who they were, and costume changes often signaled a similar thematic or plot change within the story. But I’m not sure there was enough in the script of The Witcher for Aslam to pull that same trick, and it’s a pity. You see it in moments, like in the lion claws on Calanthe’s shoulders, or the gorgeous shape of Ciri’s plot-important blue cloak. Geralt’s outfit, honestly, I could take or leave. He looks best when he’s just running around in his shirtsleeves, anyway.
So I guess the thing that really baffles me about The Witcher is that it doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be.
But no, I take that back. I think The Witcher does know what it wants to be. It wants to be half easy fantasy romp that doesn’t require the audience to invest much brainpower in, and half gritty successor to HBO’s Game of Thrones. But The Witcher doesn’t have source material rich enough to be Game of Thrones, and the creators haven’t done the work to add that in. Without the complexity of the Game of Thrones world building, and with very little connection so far between any of the characters, the dark grittiness, or rather, grossness, of the Witcher is just that—gross. And without an infusion of real humor, it fails to be the enjoyable fantasy romp that it could have been.
In essence, The Witcher either needs to take itself more seriously, or much less. The show, like its source material, makes a half-hearted stab at tackling themes such as how difficult life for women is in its Medieval Times-esque world, and how humanity might be the true monsters after all. But it lacks the consistency to make those themes stick, or to tell us what it is trying to say about them, other than that they exist. It also has some fun moments from Geralt, whose world-weary sarcasm could be as enjoyable as that of the tired space dad Mandalorian or the hard-driving, oft-cussing, secretly-a-big-marshmallow Dean Winchester, if the show would just loosen up a little more and let the character be playful once in a while. Geralt and Jaskier are halfway there already, and while everyone wants this to be the next Game of Thrones, The Witcher would absolutely kill as a successor to shows like Hercules and Xena: Warrior Princess. There would still be room for the show’s more serious themes (for all its camp, Xena had a lot of intensely dark moments) and its sense of being unmoored from time and place wouldn’t matter so much.
Now, I’m aware that shows can take a while to find their feet, and that some of my complaints may be addressed further down the road. Perhaps when Ciri and Geralt finally meet, the show will let us know what its identity is really supposed to be, and why we should care about them. Perhaps the muddy question of humanity’s relationship to elves and monsters will become a clearer theme, with time. Perhaps we will spend less time throwing mud on naked ladies and pulling out their wombs (Honestly, what the hell was that? And we’re not even getting into the ethics and ableism around the portrayal of Yennefer, here.) and more time watching Dandelion rub chamomile on Geralt’s sore ass. But if the show was trying to hook me, it has failed. I’ll stay for the fights, and I’ll endure the gratuitous nudity the actresses are put through, but I hope that the show will allow itself to grow, to find a real identity. Otherwise, why not just play the video game? Or read the books?
But, like, you don’t really need to read the books though.
Sylas K Barrett is an actor, writer and regular contributor at Tor.com. You can read his other work here on the site, including his weekly column, Reading the Wheel of Time.
Finish watching the show. The timelines converge. All 3 main characters’ stories are being told in different timespans with their arcs being synced across by the editing (Think about how Dunkirk was structured). Also this features short stories from both The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny plus new material worked up from Yennefer’s backstory mentioned or implied in the books.
This comment likely won’t be “approved” but that is ok, it is really more for the blogger writing this anyway…
1. The showrunners said beforehand that season 1 would pull heavily from the short stories… Short stories are exactly that, a collection of short stories. “The Last Wish” the novel was a compilation of these short stories so… no, they do not flow into each other. ALSO… there are TWO books of short stories(woops research). Sword of Destiny accounts for about 40% of season 1, The Last Wish accounts for about 40%, and the remaining 20% is the showrunners own imagining of some events left out of canon text.
2. Medieval times were extremely sexist, chauvinistic, and all around male dominated. There was more rape, murder, incest, and all around “sinfulness” than has ever been portrait in ANY medium. Yes, sometimes even a Fantasy writer like to have authenticity, especially if trying to build a world even more bleak than the one that actually existed.
3. Geralt isn’t meant to be likable… that is who he was for most of his life. The fact that a few people can see through his gruff exterior to the heart that he tries to hide underneath and choose to be near him is part of the story. Geralt in the short stories is not the same person as Geralt after spending years with Yennefer, Jaskier, Cirilla, etc… Same goes for Yennefer… she is a bitch, has been for 100 years, Ciri changes them both. You can’t see that growth if the whole story isn’t told.
4. The whole reason the show jumps all over the place is because Geralt and Yennefer are about 100 years old… Ciri doesn’t join the story till the first main book, Yennefer doesn’t show up till the end of the 2nd book of short stories. You can make season 1 NOTHING but Geralt, so they had to improvise… which means jumping around in time. I personally thought they did it incredibly well, sorry you’re getting lost.
Essentially the path you have taken to this review is akin to me grabbing some random recluse, making them watch “Phantom Menace” and “The Last Skywalker” then asking them to review the Star Wars franchise for me…
My biggest complaints about the show are (1) way too much HBO-style pointless nudity (admittedly I prefer none at all) and (2) a needlessly confusing timeline.
At least the timeline slowly becomes clear as the season winds toward its end, but I would very much have appreciated some kind of “X Years Ago” or “X Months Ago” caption at the front of each scene.
The choreography was pleasantly surprising. I only saw a handful of lightsaber-sword moments with armor being worse than useless, and most plate-wearing casualties took hits to the throat or limbs (though there were more than a few helmets split by axe blows, which is more forgivable than a sword slash across a breastplate but should still be an exception rather than a rule).
The costuming was by-and-large too faux-medieval dark, especially when it came to peasants. There were hints of color, but the show relied too heavily on muted colors and dirt. In such a colorless world, Ciri’s cloak would have left her standing out far too starkly. “Armor” in the show was simply bad, though there were a number of practical-looking suits that seemed to make at least some sense (sadly Geralt’s armors were among the worst offenders, and the mass-produced bad-guy armor was terrible).
The battles were mostly horrible, especially the big one at the start. Two infantry lines simply charging through each other and devolving into a series of chaotic duels is bad enough, but the side with knights spreading them out in front of their infantry and charging deep into the enemy line swinging wildly with their weapons was down-right stupid (though at least the next time they came back to the battle it looked like every single mounted combatant had been forcibly dismounted, which is exactly what would happen if you tried to pull something like that in real life). //That said, some elements from the battle in the last episode worked reasonably well, though most of it was more foolishness.//
The biggest surprise for me was how effective Cavill was as Geralt. He does a much better job than I’d anticipated.
All in all, I can only cautiously recommend the show, and its ultimate success will depend heavily on season 2.
I have to say that the problems you mention didn’t really trouble my own watch-through; I found this particular programme pretty darned engaging from the off and can’t say that the jumps from place to place were an especially big problem for me, especially once it was made clear that YES these jumps took us through space AND time.
Quite frankly I’m eager to see more of the show, especially since the finale is clearly a portent of things to come (no spoilers, but one suspects that at least some of your reservations may yet be laid to rest in the back half of the season); Definitely agree that some episodes are more tasteful than others when it comes to matters sexual – the whiplash between one episode’s depictions of same and the next left we with a very sore neck, the transition seemed so abrupt – and also that Dandelion* is one of the shows MVP (I’d argue that Ms. Myanna Buring’s Rectoress of the local Sorceror’s Academy in another, as is Ms. Jodhi May as the Lioness of Cintra – a fascinatingly flawed Feudal Monarch & ‘Hot Grandma’).
*I know JUST enough about THE WITCHER universe to suspect that ridiculous nickname suits Our Hero much better than Jaskier (being a dandy AND surprisingly bold), but I have never yet read the novels and have no especial inclination to do so; quite frankly one doesn’t want to clutter up my enjoyment of the series that nagging little voice pinching at me with “That’s not what was in the books” for reasons made quite explicit in your own post.
In sum one can only say that THE WITCHER (Season 1) feels like a promising start with room to improve, once the show settles into its groove (also that Mr Henry Cavill confirms himself as the Superman best suited to play Batman on the side).
I enjoyed the Witcher and am about to do a rewatch. I’ll have to say, though, that it does feel like an extended backstory and it is choppy at first precisely because it is based on two (not one) collections of short stories. I loved Jaskier, am still singing Toss a Coin to your Witcher, and had zero problem following the 3 timelines. In fact, I found it exciting.
The good thing about the Witcher is that it gets progressively better. I liked the second half much better than the first. It was thrilling to see the timelines converge. It’s an uneven season, sure, but with an upward trajectory.
Count me as another who liked it. Yes, I was confused about the timing at first, but I figured it out in Ep. 4. I do plan to re-watch to make sure I caught everything.
The rest of the criticisms don’t seem particularly fair. A Medieval fantasy is bound to have elements that don’t match modern standards. You can’t just leave those out, though, if you want to maintain the fantasy. That’s certainly true for GoT, to which everyone seems to be (unfairly) comparing The Witcher — heck, HBO actually *reduced* the amount of graphic violence, rape, sex, and nudity found in the books.
“he brings some much-needed brevity”
Surely you meant “levity”. I hardly think Geralt needs more brevity.
I absolutely loved it but I also fully expected lots of reviews like this. I’m familiar enough with the story to know what was going on but I can’t see how anyone with little knowledge of the Witcher could possibly keep up with what was really happening. I feel like if they had just put in a notation saying something like “Present Day,” “Two Weeks Ago,” “Thirty Years Ago,” etc. it might have been much more clear. That being said, I still would have done the order completely different, probably would have cut most if not all of Yenefer’s origin story and would have had Ciri and Geralt meet much sooner, probably episode 3 or 4.
But despite my misgivings, I still loved it and have high hopes for the future now that all this backstory and setup is out of the way.
Also, does anyone else agree that the dress Yen wore in the final episode was the most amazing thing ever? I absolutely loved it and finally sold me on that actress as Yenefer.
Thank you so much for pointing out that the books are sexist! I read The Last Wish and Blood of Elves and gave up because I couldn’t stand the way the women were treated. Everyone I’ve encountered online seems to think the treatment of the women perfectly acceptable and that the books can do no wrong. I’ve only seen episode 1 of the TV series, so I can’t say too much about it yet, but your review seems pretty spot on so far.
@6, you think HBO toned down the sex from Martin’s books?! No… they put in far more sex and nudity than was in the novels.
My Witcher cred comes first from the games and then the three short story collections (Last Wish, Sword of Destiny, and Season of Storms). I’ll get to the novels before season 2. So being a somewhat educated fan, I thought the show was perfect in almost every way. In fact, the only things that really bothered me were the desert settings (I never pictured any of the stories taking place in deserts), and the goofy Nilfgardian armor and saw-blade swords. Casting is great, writing is great, pacing is great. I was never confused about the timeline but I can see non-readers being put off by it. Personally, I like shows and books that make you work a little for all of the answers (Malazan Book of the Fallen, anyone?) My only real criticism is the amount of nudity. Same complaint I have with all MA content in our streaming world. It is fine if done tastefully and for story-specific purposes, but too often shows throw it in simply to titillate. It cheapens the experience for me.
I read the books (many years ago) and loved them. I don’t like the new show.
The edition of short stories I read was just that – short stories. That framing story was added later and I still think it’s weird. One of the things I liked most about those stories was that each was basically a fairy-tale – but with a twist. It was much cooler back then, before Shrek movies!
Also, I don’t get the complaint about sexism. I don’t think that Geralt as a character is sexist; I don’t believe that author is sexist – he just created a world very much like medieval Europe. It is a criticism, not an approval of sexism.
Poor Jaskier has different name in every language! In Czech translation he is “Marigold,” which meant that Triss Merigold had to be renamed to Triss Ranuncul. All of those names are different kinds of yellow flowers, by the way.
I wonder if anybody remembers the original Witcher TV show from 2002. I’m rewatching it now. It’s far from perfect, the cgi is so bad it’s not even funny – but I still enjoy it more than the new one. Maybe it’s the amazing soundtrack.
Yeah, it’s not even close. There’s far more in the books. HBO changed the circumstances of a lot of the nudity and sex (more whorehouse scenes, for example), but actually reduced it, especially for major characters like Dany and Sansa.
Back to the OP, I had a chance to re-watch the first episode, and there are 2 major clues to the time switches:
1. Right after the banquet scene in the palace, where Ciri mentions that her grandmother won her first battle at 16, Renfri met Geralt and commented that Calanthe had “just won” her first battle.
2. Stregebor told Geralt about the girls born under the black sun and that Renfri was the last of them. But Mousesack told Ciri the same story as something that had happened long ago.
That was far too subtle for me as a first-time viewer, but the clues were there.
“But The Witcher doesn’t have source material rich enough to be Game of Thrones, and the creators haven’t done the work to add that in.”
If you’ve only watched four episodes and read just the first volume of short stories, this is a huge overstatement to make. Read the complete novel sequence, or at least watch this whole season before saying something like that.
Similarly, saying: “Rape is so commonplace and treated so cavalierly it becomes the festive tapestry on The Last Wish’s dull…” requires some explication. It’s again an overstatement. What’s excessively rapey about the batch of stories? What happens to the Snow White analogue, Renfri, is a reasonable extension of the fairy tale. A lone, inexperienced, very vulnerable girl in the woods being chased by a woodsman who chooses to horribly abuse her. It’s why she chooses to become a killer and get vengeance. Portraying a thing is not endorsing a thing.
Then: “The fun details about The Last Wish’s worldbuilding … are still present, but the show doesn’t really do anything with them. And the timeline is almost impossible to track.”
Again, watch the whole season before saying such conclusive things. The timeline is indeed confusing. It’s confusing to the characters themselves later in the novel series. There’re are reasons for that. The novels are actually quite ambitious. Maybe the TV series doesn’t have a perfect handle on that yet, but overall, they’ve done a good job.
I don’t agree with every adaptation choice. Ciri perhaps shouldn’t have been as foregrounded. Maybe have her meet Geralt at age 10 as in the original story, crying after him like “Shane! Shane!”, instead of as strangers after the Battle of Sodden. It would have sold the ideas of destiny and found family better.
I’m wrestling with The Last Wish now, partly because of the show, and the translation is kind of terrible. I hear that a different translator did the other books – I hope they were better done. I am not very far into the book yet. so can’t comment on it much.
I’ve seen all but a few episodes of the show and can say a lot more. It took me three episodes even to realize there were different timelines going on, so there was a lot of “wait – what?” while I figured it out. Flagging that issue for the audience would have been really helpful.
The show has a certain preoccupation with women’s bodies that gets seriously weird in some places, and there’s a big gap in the charecterization of Yennefer that means she currently makes no sense to me. I totally understand that she sacrificed her womb for the beauty she needed to acquire poitical power. I get that she’s stumbling around the world grappling with how little impact she’s actually able to have, and with the constraints that her teachers try to impose on her. I don’t at all understand why she wants to conceive a child. There’s some character development missing there.
I react with a certain amount of suspicion whenever men begin to tell physically intimate stories about women – they are often wildly inaccurate and poorly imagined. Yennefer’s hysterectomy, for example.
This, by the way, is one reason why I have so much trouble with the suggestion that rape has to be included in medieval fantasy settings, for the sake of accuracy. We can pretend that the uterus can just be ripped out through the nearest available orifice, even though that’s anatomically absurd. This fantasy is not particularly accurate about congenital kyphosis in a medieval setting, either. This fantasy includes a magical plastic surgeon capable of spinal reconstruction. Some people get turned into eels. A woman teleports herself to about six different locations to escape an assassin with a giant, knife-limbed spider. But putting less rape on the page, that would be too far from gritty medieval reality.
This is just plain accurate, though. The worldbuilding in The Witcher is solid, but the story is focused on a relatively small number of characters in relatively short novels (the longest Witcher novel is still considerably less than half the length of the shortest Martin or Robert Jordan novel). There aren’t even any official maps for the books.
90% of the rest of the worldbuilding and plot exposition comes through one or two characters (Djikstra and the various mage meetings) going over intelligence reports and that’s kind of it. It’s not a bad thing and that tight plot focus on Geralt, Yennefer and Ciri is generally a good thing. Sapkowski wanted to tell a much more character-focused fantasy than a sprawling, worldbuilding epic like Wheel of Time or A Song of Ice and Fire.
The real question is how the showrunner thinks they’re going to get seven seasons out of the eight relatively short books (they manage to address elements from four of the books in the first season alone, including adapting most of the first book and parts of the second and third) without wholesale inventing a whole ton of stuff.
@10: The absolutely massive Korath Desert borders the Northern Kingdoms to the south-east. Several episodes from the books take place there.
@15. Werthead: the statement I quoted is still wrong. The world is rich enough for a TV series, by far. In fact, it will definitely need to be pared down, as they already have.
Guess we should clarify the difference between Martin’s novels and the GoT show. There is a huge amount in the novels that did not make it into the show. The complex Westeros of the novels made it on screen as a pared down version. More so as the two arguably impatient showrunners started to race toward the end. We won’t know till future seasons, but hopefully the Witcher will go counter to that trend of diminishing returns.
I do agree that Hissrich and her design team should’ve clarified settings and times. Some of the dialogue supports time passing, like Yenn saying she’s been a sorceress for about 30 years at that point. A map would have been appreciated. It’s de rigueur these days with fantasy epics. Show us how big Brokilon Forest is and where it’s located in relation to the kingdoms mentioned. I had trouble keeping in my mind where various characters were in the books, too. Who’s on which bank of which river…
Episode titles would have been nice on screen. It’s weird that they released these titles in the runup to the premiere, but didn’t include them in their own graphics. And yes, rough dates on screen occasionally: early 13th century, later 13th century… We cover decades in the careers of Yenn and Geralt (they’re both 90+ years old), yet Ciri, a 14 year old, seems present for most of it.
Probably a good thing I didn’t read the book(s) first then, even though I got The Last Wish before the show came out. I didn’t have as much of a problem with all the jumping around in the timeline. I’m not terribly good at keeping the timeline straight in my head when it comes to non-linear story-telling, I had trouble with both the Westworld timeline and the Dunkirk timeline (which @1 mentioned), but for some reason I caught on pretty early with this show that the story isn’t happening chronologically (early for me is the middle of the season, episode 3 or 4).
I just did my own review on my blog and my general view is the show suffers whenever it tries to color outside the lines of Sapkowski’s stories. The short stories are grim in many places and have terrible values dissonance but are generally of a happier and more humorous lot than are shown in the books, which show the horrible aftereffects of war. I think that both Yennefer and Ciri’s plots also are attempts to give more of a feminine voice to the show but, ironically, detract from the women in the universe–including Calanthe as well as Tissaia.
1. Yennefer in the books wants a child because…she wants a child. She’s a decisive woman who has a frustrated maternal instinct the same way that Geralt has a frustrated chivalric side. She was also sterilized against her will in the books because that’s done to all sorceresses. “I want a choice!” implies she’s not fully aware of her own wishes and that’s a disservice to Yennefer who always knows what she wants.
2. Tissaia is responsible for sterilizing women in the books because she’s a woman who believes that family is a distraction from a monofocus on magic above all. She’s done this in part as a reaction to the way women are treated in society but also developed her own misogynist streak. Motherhood is feminine to her and thus weak. She also would never have joined the Battle of Sodden because she’s neutral in all things because the idea of mages having nationalist sentiments (or families or religions) is ridiculous to her. It shows she’s deeply out of touch with reality but a fascinating character.
3. Ciri’s story is hurt because she’s treated as a generic child wandering through the woods. Ciri is a brat as a child and her treatment in this story undermines the fact she’s a very interesting child. I feel like the removal of Geralt and her meeting in Broklion forest undermines their relationship and her character. She’s always been a spirited young woman and exceptionally aware of her surroundings. Here, she’s painfully generic because they don’t seem willing to maker her a little dislikable.
4. Calanthe is now a hated tyrant who exterminated thousands of innocent people in pogroms? Why? They also removed a lot of her humor (though the actress would have been perfect for it–Eva Green too if they could have cast her). We also lost a lot of great moments between her and Geralt where she points out the Witchers steal children this way and he had to have known what he was doing.
5. Additional evil from Fringila is also weird. Now the Nilfgaard are religious? What?
@CT Phipps: somewhat disagree with you about coloring outside the lines. The Yenn-centric episode was one of the better ones and it created new events for the show while consolidating details about Yenn scattered across the novels.
One new bit that was bizarre had to do with Tissaia turning some of the novices into eels. We’re not told if this is a temporary condition. Yenn is told they are Conduits for magic and she smiles while they are released into the pool. Transformations is a thing for these magic users. But still, they may have just wiped out some young women for more power.
I’m enjoying the show thus far, although I have reservations. It is a massive improvement on the books, and I’m not bothered by the ambiguous chronology. I kind of like piecing things together.
That being said, I feel a little exasperated that, of all the fantasy properties available, it’s Sapkowski’s work that’s getting made into television. “The Last Wish” is honestly some of the most virulently misogynistic fantasy fiction I’ve read — although I confess I quit halfway through. Maybe it does a 180! I highly doubt it!
And I get that it’s easy to dismiss this kind of assertion, especially because the show feels very different to the book. So I’m going to pick a few random quotes from “The Last Wish” and contextualise them.
“Their outright insane tendency to cruelty, aggression, sudden bursts of anger and an unbridled temperament were noted.”
“You can say that about any woman,” sneered Geralt. (pg 84).
This is Stregobor talking to Geralt in his Garden of Naked Women. I think it’s supposed to be humorous? If so, the reader is being invited to agree with our badass protagonist that women are cruel, aggressive, and incapable of controlling their emotions. Hah ha.
“Women don’t have a say in my house.” (pg 77)
Spoken by alderman Caldemeyn (transformed into Marilka in the show), when Geralt points out that Caldemeyn’s wife – Libushe – will not be pleased with him staying over. Libushe is the epitome of the nagging wife who spoils her husband and Geralt’s fun. She is permitted one line of dialogue: “I told you! I said he only brings trouble!”, to which Caldemeyn responds “Silence, woman!”(pg 106). Even allowing the slim possibility that Caldemeyn is being mocked by the author and Libushe is truly in charge of the household, the point remains that he would be mocked for being subservient to a woman.
“She hasn’t changed a bit,” he said cheerfully. “She still can’t take a joke.” (158)
Dandelion (Jaskier in the show) with regards to his ongoing sexual harassment the priestess Nenneke. This is justified by the fact that she was possessed with a “cute little bottom” that would have “been a sin not to pinch.”(158). Jaskier is clearly supposed to be likeable, to be funny. We are supposed to be on his side.
This is just the surface level stuff, and there is much more where it comes from — sexism is so casually rife in Geralt’s everyday interactions that it’s possible to flick to just about any conversation in the book and find someone making a joke at a woman’s expense. The show is, in this regard, a 1000x better.
But never mind the treatment of rape, or Yennefer’s womb removal, or the fact that so many of the monsters are women-gone-wrong — why do we need fantasy stories where completely unnecessary sexism is deemed ‘authentic’? Why do we need to continually defend it? Oh, women were treated worse back then? Yes, back in yonder years when there were literal elves roaming Poland.
As far as I can tell, Sapkowski was never trying to say anything profound about the mistreatment of women; he just wrote a pretty typical fantasy novel and liberally sprinkled it with misogyny — for a ‘bleak’ atmosphere, for jokes, for opportunities to make Geralt look heroic.
While I’m always happy for more fantasy TV, I just feel there are so many other books with much more to offer.
We’re at the same point in the series you are. So far there’s nothing wrong with it that a True Detective-type motif (character looks back at past from present) couldn’t have cured.
Oh: And to complain about this show being sexist in the era of Game of Thrones is quaint, at best.
-An Anonymous Nerd
“Jaskier the bard—whose name is Dandelion in the books—is a delight, not only because he because he brings some much-needed brevity to The Witcher”
Brevity? From a bard? How is that even possible?
I also didn’t realize for the first one or two episodes that we were seeing separate timelines; I don’t remember seeing any signs of aging in any of the characters, or of differences in fashion, to help clue me in. Going in, I had heard of the video games but had no idea about the plot or characters so I’m still somewhat confused as to exactly what a witcher is, what powers they have, and how they can be recognized.
As far as rape goes, I think the show handles it just fine. As of episode six, I don’t recall seeing any on screen so far, and in a society where it seems you must take what you want any way that you can, I could not believe that men wouldn’t rape women. And Geralt himself treats just about everyone with respect for their personhood.
I haven’t read any of the stories/books yet but was able to follow the timelines fine. It clicked around ep 3 or 4, whenever I saw the brother and sister as kids at the ball. After that it was interesting to see how everything lined up.
I’m seeing GoT mentioned everywhere and I guess it’s a natural impulse to compare, but they’re such different properties. I don’t want another GoT!! So far, Witcher’s giving me magic, witches galore, gruesome lady monsters (I prefer over Sexy Lady Monsters), warrior queens, warrior women of the woods, and creepy womb stuff. There are excess breasts, fine, but oddly chaste, references to rape (twice that I caught? One being a guess?) but without depicting any on screen. Ticking my boxes so far!
@Sunspear I think the assumption is that the women are turned into eels permanently and it’s a sign of how awful and dangerous being a mage is. It’s why Yennefer feels extra confused and betrayed that women are being taught “magic” who can’t use magic at all–because the situation has changed 30 years later.
@KH I think it’s the case of “depiction vs. endorsement” there as the society of the Continent is misogynist, racist, and utterly brutal. However, the major characters are primarily women with the exception of Geralt and Dandelion. It’s also one of the rare fantasy books with a queer protagonist (Ciri) at the time period it was written. It really depends on what you think of grimdark fiction ala George R.R. Martin, Anna Smith Sparks, or Joe Abercrombie I think. The idea of a story being about our heroes traveling through monstrously terrible societies and not softpedaling how awful Medieval life could be.
@KH: The short answer is that, yes, it does get better. But do you really want the ending explained now as the saga is just getting started? This is why I was annoyed at the article writer’s dismissiveness: “But, like, you don’t really need to read the books though.” Pfffft.
It should be evident from the elements introduced so far in this first season why it changes. Geralt is a brute with few saving graces. He’s quite monstrous in the early stories, often described as having a “hideous” smile, which may be an artifact of a overly literal translation, or may be a specific Polish idiom, or… he’s simply hideous and scary to look at.
Meeting Jaskier/Dandelion gains him a friend and companion, even though he sometimes causes more trouble than he’s worth. Meeting Yennefer humanizes him; it’s a bumpy road, an on again/off again/on again relationship where they strain against the bond supposedly cast on them by Geralt’s final wish to the djinn. One theory holds that he wished to have a child with her, which presupposes he knows about the infertility of sorceresses and therefore saves her life by asking the impossible. Another theory is that he offered his life in exchange for hers and, since a djinn cannot kill it’s master, it had to leave, again saving Yenn.
Last, but not least, Ciri cements the found family theme, with Geralt and Yenn becoming surrogate parents. There are some readers who complain that Geralt isn’t even the main character once Ciri’s story gets rolling. There are a lot of powerful women in the novels, including a Council of Sorceresses.
One thing we’re not likely to get in the filmed series is an eloquent, articulate Geralt. The novels have him talking quite a bit at times, especially once he meets the elder vampire. Some of the other characters also talk a lot, sometimes debating anachronistic subjects like evolution and genetics. The magic users are also scholars. There’s even a scene where a king uses a small wand to change images on a tapestry, like a remote and a big screen TV.
There are lots of interesting things in the books. Hopefully this article doesn’t dissuade anyone from reading.
Thank you, Sylas, for your opinion. While I greatly enjoy your commentary on The Wheel of Time, here I agree with those commenters that liked The Witcher. I watched it with my sisters (who are both self-described feminists), and we all felt that while there is room to improve, overall the show was quite enjoyable. Disclosure: we have all read the books.
From time to time, I felt that the tone was jarring: Jaskiel’s modern-ish music and some of the dialogue sometimes hindered my immersion in the medieval setting. I also didn’t always like the coloring. The color palette was tilted towards grey/brown and the picture “tinted” too often for my taste.
As 12 – Sophist has pointed out, there were clues as to the timeline. Knowing that Yennefer’s education and the Renfri storyline take place way before the fall of Cintra, we noticed that there were different timelines from the very beginning. On top of the clues Sophist mentioned, there were several other references (most often to Cintra, either to Ciri’s great-grandfather or to her grandmother, or to the events in Nilfgaard). As far as I can remember, every single story had some of those references to outside events. It still took us some thinking to put everything in order, but I felt this was engaging rather than a hindrance. However, I can understand that somebody not familiar with the source material would feel overwhelmed.
I am slightly saddened by all the comments on the confusing timelines. I have not read any of the books or played any of the games. I found the timeline jumps to be fairly linear for each main character and it was very explicit in the third episode with the incestuous king showing the old king with geralt and the young king with yennifer.
I guess people expect stories spoonfed to them these days.
I’ve only read “The Last Wish” I’ve had absolutely no trouble following it is so far (Ep 5). Do people just not pay attention? Movies and TV are too obvious and straightforward as it is so let’s not encourage them to make it worse.
My husband and I are experienced watchers and readers of sff, and had no idea how to follow the timelines (note that so far we’ve only watched through episode 5). After episode 4 we had to go online and find primers for what we were seeing. If we’d known there were just three timelines that would have helped a lot. As it was, we had no idea if there were three or thirty and didn’t know what to make of any of it. I see no reason that they couldn’t have mentioned relative times when they jumped from one person’s story to another. It serves no purpose to disguise this and simply confuse watchers who are unfamiliar with the story.
The misogyny in the first book made it unreadable to me. I understand that it’s part of the universe, but I simply don’t want to read it. But Poland when these were written was a bit behind the times with that (am Polish), so it doesn’t surprise me. I appreciate that the show is trying to change this somewhat.
Oh, and I saw Yennefer wanting to have a child as related to the baby she was unable to save? It made sense to me.
I thought it was fine. Not as terrible as some critics say, but not as amazing as some fans believe. Full disclosure: I liked the games (even the ones before Wild Hunt), but I haven’t read the books yet.
The Game of Thrones comparisons are unavoidable. That’s something every new fantasy show is going to have to deal with now. That’s the high bar GOT has set, regardless of how uneven the final season was. And sadly, The Witcher doesn’t measure up. It doesn’t even come close.
Netflix tries, but HBO just seems miles ahead of the competition for some reason. I’ve seen a lot of terrible shows on Netflix, but even the bad HBO shows are still amazing by comparison (I’m no fan of Watchmen or His Dark Materials, but they look great).
Production values aside, the main problem I found was how little I cared for these people. With few exceptions (Queen Calanthe steals every scene, and Jaskier was delightful), everyone feels forgettable. Even the main characters, sadly. Ciri was the biggest offender. She lacks any agency whatsoever, just being dragged along whatever path others tell her to go.
And yes, the fragmented way the showrunner decided to tell the story didn’t help at all. I only noticed something was odd with the timeline when I saw a young Foltest playing with his sister (gotta meet that incest quota). Hopefully, she’ll choose a less confusing way next season.
Which is not to say it wasn’t enjoyable. Few shows start off as great as they can be, and I’m willing to hope that The Witcher can become much better than its first season.
@31. Lands: “but even the bad HBO shows are still amazing by comparison (I’m no fan of Watchmen or His Dark Materials, but they look great)”
Watchmen is by no means a bad show. One if the best of the year, actually.
Agree with you about giving Ciri equal weight to the other two main characters. There’s plenty of time for that once her main story goes into gear. Should’ve just been her at age ten in Brokilon meeting Geralt. Then fleeing the Black Knight after the fall of Cintra, then Geralt finding her at the end. That’s it. And that last meeting should’ve occurred like in the books: as a surprise. Ciri runs to him because she’s already met him. Would’ve been more touching.
Four episodes in, and this show makes no freaking sense. I haven’t read any of the books and I can’t follow half of the storylines. The show doesn’t even bother to explain anything. What’s worse is I can’t catch 75% of the names spoken.
@austin: subtitles?
@34 – I don’t like subtitles. I find them too distracting. Anyways, that’s the least of the issues I have with the show. As someone who is only vaguely familiar with the show’s world, having play a little bit of the video games, I find it absolutely baffling that the show makes no attempt to fill you in. It just name drops everything and expects you to understand as though it were the modern world. It’s akin to pulling someone from 100 years ago and showing them memes and giving them absolutely no context to what they are looking at. 4 episodes in and I have no idea what Yennefer’s storyline was about. The only thing that I understood was that she was at a magic school of some kind. Don’t understand the thing with that guy who hides out in a cave or something. Don’t understand why some students were turned into eels. Don’t understand the whole transformation thing. Did she graduate? I don’t get it.
Just finished episode 4 last night and it was all about something called the “Law of Surprise.” Ah yes, the Law of Surprise! Of course! Oh look, the two people are floating up in the air for some reason! And now the Queen has changed her mind suddenly because her daughter caused a wind storm and started floating. And now the porcupine guy’s curse, which is never explained, is lifted! And now the Witcher casually asks for this Law of Surprise thing, too, and now everyone is super shocked, including the newlywed princess who suddenly threw up and now everyone is looking at the Witcher.
@35 Yeah that’s exactly what I was afraid of. I loved it but I’m already familiar with it and despite that, there were some parts that were confusing. The good news is, it gets a bit less confusing as it goes so if you liked anything about it, stick with it and see if it clicks for you. Now that all this backstory is over, I’m hopeful that the next season can be amazing.
Not knowing the books I can say I enjoyed it with one BIG exception.
Yes it had confusing timelines, dodgy fight scenes, the occasional wobbly CGI etc. All of which I can live with except one thing. Ciri’s Hair!!
How did she she keep it so clean and wavy in EVERY scene. Even after she spent a night sleeping on snow covered ground (best night sleep ever – not!) or even after she specifically put mud in it (still not too sure why she did that!) but next scene POW! Looked liked she was in a commercial for “longer, shinier hair”. It got so bad I waited for each episode to see what style she had that day. Totally took me out of it.
Everyone else looks a bit muckier but never Ciri. Dam just had a thought , I wonder if that is one of her powers??
@austin: “4 episodes in and I have no idea what Yennefer’s storyline was about. The only thing that I understood was that she was at a magic school of some kind.”
That’s exactly what it was about: her training. I’ll give you the eels thing, still weird. But she clearly underwent a magical change in order to gain the position she wanted. There was clearly a graduation reception, which she crashed. She then goes to a king’s court and fails to save the queen and her daughter from the rogue mage attack. If you’re stumbling there… I dunno, it’s not that hard to grasp. If you’re getting stuck on names, same would be true when reading the books. Subtitles are just an aid, especially for anyone having trouble understanding dialogue.
” the porcupine guy’s curse”
This character and what happens to Ciri later on is hugely important to the main story. Do you and others complaining really want it all spelled out on a platter now? Pull an example from elsewhere: would you really expect Martin in his books or the GoT show to just come out and blatantly explain John Snow’s parentage? Pick any other example of a mystery or surprise and you’ll see the ludicrousness of asking for everything to be resolved upfront in a first book or first season of a series.
@IanS: Ciri is a Source, which is potentially the most powerful kind of magic user. The other sorceresses all use glamours, mirages, and actual physical changes to appear perennially attractive.
@38 – Thanks for the condescension. Nicely done. You say there was “clearly” a graduation reception, even though nobody ever mentions what the party is for? I only understood there was a graduation because that guy, who the show hasn’t explained, told Yennefer that she just skipped her graduation. Say what? Yennefer keeps mentioning an “ascension” though nobody bothers to explain what that is. There’s several mentions of an “enchantment” but again, nobody explains what that is. There’s the tailor guy but nobody explains what he does. Even though Yennefer skips her graduation, she asks him for a transformation. He says the council would be against it (not exactly sure what happened here. Did she not graduate? What’s her status right now?) but he does it anyways. It looks like he took out her womb or something, but again, nothing is explained. Nothing is ever explained on this show.
I would like to know what’s going on when I’m watching. Knowing who Jon Snow’s real parents are is not a mystery that will prevent me from understanding what I’m watching. Watching the whole porcupine guy scene was just baffling to me. I don’t know what the Law of Surprise is, I don’t know who porcupine guy is, I don’t know how he was cursed, I don’t know why the princess caused a tornado, or why she started floating with him, or why the Queen changed her mind suddenly or why that freed porcupine guy from the curse, or why everyone is looking at the Witcher like he’s an idiot. None of that screams out “Mystery to be solved later!” That screams out “Sorry you haven’t read the books!”
@austin: one of the main forms of magic in this world is Chaos. Both Ciri and her mom Pavetta are natural Sources of it. Neither is trained in how to control it, hence why it explodes out of Pavetta when she thinks Duny, her intended, is in harm’s way. These things will be key later on. Again, it won’t be laid out plainly on the first go round. One of the main subjects of the upcoming story is how the politically powerful recognize the potential of Ciri and her powers. You get a taste of that in the display during the banquet scene and what her mom could do unleashed.
This show isn’t perfect in the choices it made about how to present the material. But neither do I want a show that flat out explains everything. That’s not good storytelling.
At least finish the season. If it’s still too much confusion, I’d suggest reading the first two volumes of short stories setting up this world.
@@@@@ Austin
I agree with a lot of what are you saying but I can tell you that it all comes together in the final episodes. The Witcher is a show that needs to be watched in full to be truly appreciated and is well worth it but it could have been done better IMO. The whole first season is like one very long first episode, you almost need to binge watch the whole thing. I couldn’t imagine watching this one episode a week like the Mandalorian or like old school television shows.
I have been talking to several people about the show, all of us savvy SFF genre veterans, and everyone has questioned the wonky timeline. Hell, a friend of mine who has read the books told me he wants to re-edit the show in chronological order, lol. I think at least part of the problem is that everyone looks exactly the same, except Yennifer pre transformation, no matter where they are in the timeline. There should have been stronger visual clues to let us know that what was happening was in the past or the present. I’ll use the first season of True Detective as an example here. It was easier to tell whether the story is taking place in the present or past because the characters looked different in each timeline. Mathew McConaughey has long hair and a moustache then we are in present time but if he is clean cut then we must be in the past. Geralt looks exactly the same through out though.
All in all I really liked the show and thought it came together beautifully in the end but the journey to get there was indeed kind of bumpy.
For the record, that is exactly how most hysterectomies are performed. They cut around the cervix and pull everything out through the vagina. It’s all connected and it just slides out. I know because that is how mine was done, granted it was in a hospital with robotic assistance and anesthesia. And just to be clear, I was walking around a few hours later, no magic needed.
@@@@@18. C.T Phipps
Yennefer wasn’t sterilised against her will and Tissaia isn’t responsible for the sterilizing all sorceresses. This is something Tissaia thinks should be done but that’s just her opinion. The reason why most mages are sterile is in the same part though:
We also learn that Yennefer can’t have children because her ovaries have atrophied and as much as magic can do it can’t restore gland function. No one did hysterectomy on her. It’s just a side effect of being sorceress. But she keeps trying even though everyone keeps telling her it’s impossible because if it can grow her eyes back why not her ovaries. She hopes that somewhere, somehow there is magic that can. The only reason people try to discourage her from that is because she’s wasting lot’s of money on quackery
A lot of other changes in the story bothered me too. I agree with all you say about Ciri and Calanthe. The final meeting of Geralt and Ciri would be so much more impactful if they let them meet in Brokilon in one of the early timelines like in the books. By not allowing Geralt to meet Ciri earlier it also remove the choice from destiny part. It matters that Geralt refuses to take her twice and wants her to have her family and normal life. Destiny can bring them together but they have to chose what to do with that. Same goes for Geralt and Yennefer. We miss most of the on/off of their relationship (if you don’t pay attention to couple off hand lines you won’t realise the djinn and dragon stories aren’t the only two times they met) and the “something more” than just destiny they need for it to last. Until Ciri they are unwilling to commit and change their lives for each other so they end up just hurting each other over and over again.
And why make Calanthe into frat bro queen who comes to her own ball covered in blood boasting about pogroms she did? Why does Cintra hate mages and everyone else? Is Nilfgaard really evil because other countries made fun of them? Why are the some mages fighting Nilfgaard on their own to defend Aretuza? Why is Nilfgaard a cult that murders everyone?
I’d like to point out to those who complain about the sexism in the books (and no I didn’t read them yet) that you are bringing your 2019 American sensibilities to judge an Eastern European works from the early 1990s. In 1990s Poland just came out of repression from Iron Curtain, internet did not exist so modern Western and American works did not spread out yet, the status of Fantasy and SciFi work there was equivalent to US 1960s, with Asimov and Tolkien books considered to be the hottest things ever there. So dont compare American/British works of 1990s with Polish/Russian works of 1990s in terms of gender equality and etc.
I wanted to like it, but it just isn’t very good (4 episodes in). The dialogues are clunky and so is a lot of the acting. And although they seem to have spent quite a bit of money it still comes off as cheap.
I hadn’t even realized about the timelines, just thinking they all take place at the same time.
While I would like to know what is going to happen I’m not sure I want to spend more time on this show.
@45
Understandable but you are right at the point that it starts getting a lot better. I’m not telling you what to do or anything but if you find yourself bored with nothing new to watch sometime, maybe try another couple episodes
@Nina: “And although they seem to have spent quite a bit of money it still comes off as cheap.”
The production values are actually quite good. Not sure what “cheap” means in this context. If you’d said bad design in some cases, I’d agree. For example, Nilfgaardian armor is ridiculous looking. It should be black/dark plate armor, yet it looks wrinkled. Some idiot doing a Youtube review (who said he liked the show because it had low SJW content) claimed it was meant to look like a ballsack. Whatever the intent, it’s a bad choice. Same for the lack of large wings on Cahir’s helmet. That’s his defining characteristic in the books and a large part of Ciri’s nightmares.
Yeah, the ballsack armour… Of course it wasn’t intended to look like such but it does look like it. And combined with those helmets- it’s beyond belief…
It was fairly important to do the Nilfgaardian armour well- I liked the other nations’ shown so far (Cintra, Aedirn, Temeria). The showrunner practically admited the cockup (no pun intended) and tried some contemptibly feeble excuse for it- Nilfgaard’s army at this sage was supposed to be like militia and it’s soldiers were wearing whatever crap, etc. Obviously nonsense since it was styled like uniform and all of them, including the commanders were wearing the same thing. Hopefully her statement on the matter means that they’ll change it.
Anyway, despite some of its issues I think it was a solid start and it promises well for the future. I am looking forward to it. The messed up timelines are over now, all that set up, etc. They can get into the main story learning from any mistakes made so far and a little extra budget maybe.
I believe someone already announced that the Nilfgaard armor would be changed for next season but don’t know where I saw that. The biggest complaint I’m hearing beside the ballsack armor is the gold dragon. I hate that people keep comparing this show to game of thrones, they are very different stories but if you have dragons and they look that bad, people will make the comparison and it’s not a good one. All other effects, costumes and set design I thought was quite excellent.
@49. wingracer: I have to agree about the golden dragon too. It’s supposed to be absolutely beautiful. It’s what the two warrior women who guard him mean when they say “He’s beautiful” and Jaskier makes a disbelieving face looking at the human avatar.
The dragon was indeed one of the misses among the many hits of the generally pleasing job the show the in that regard. This is subjective so it depends on the individual viewers but overall most people who saw it are positive about it. It looked good in general. The monsters are good overall.
The wrong bits are mostly cliches that are in every such show- bleak, drab, bare castles and residences, kamikadze style battles, cheap looking mass fighting scenes without the SGI (the Nilfgaard soldiers in Sodden, E8), pirouettes during the fights, etc.
Or maybe I had set mty expectations sufficiently low… Though I remember being underwhelmed by the look and sets of GoT S1 and the general feeling never truly left me. Westeros and the Witcher’s Continent are far grander and more complicated places in the books than the TV shows were and will be able to recreate in most instances. In some they were/will surpass the books, in others they did/will match them, and the visual medium was/is more vivid and visceral, but the TV shows face practicalities which mean we should be realistic in our expectations.
And still point out the unnecessary screw ups like the Nilfgaard armour so they fix them. Constructive criticism ftw
Sylas – would appreciate your thoughts on whether your views changed after seeing the complete season. I figured the timeline issue out in Episode 4(?) when they held Pavetta’s wedding dinner and then was able to work backwards and see more clues (such as Price Foltest and his sister as children at Yennifer’s “graduation” party and other spoken references to the then-current Cintran leadership). I liked the out of order structure that was required to avoid four episodes of Yennifer only, three and a half episodes of Yennifer and Geralt, and one half episode of all three – or ditching Ciri entirely until the second season. (But, then again, I loved Westworld too.)
I liked the season quite a bit despite a few weak points, namely (1) there’s not much to the Ciri plot line but that likely will be remedied in future seasons, (2) the process from teaching to “graduation” at the sorceress academy was under-explained to the point of confusion, and (3) the Pavetta pregnancy would have made more clear with a line acknowledging the couple had been meeting in secret over the preceding months versus having it be a spontaneous magical event.
I still haven’t gotten through the full series, I’m at the end of episode 4 too. I can understand a lot of your complaints about the material; most of which are also true of the original source material.
However, I have played all of the games and read the last wish previously so the timelines weren’t such an issue for me when I clocked early on that the different timelines weren’t in sync.
Trelos1337 is 100% accurate. It sounds like this blogger did minimal, if any, research prior to writing this article. I certainly don’t think you have to like it but you should be fair with your critics. I mean you didn’t even finish the series…
“But The Witcher doesn’t have source material rich enough to be Game of Thrones…”
Hmm…I’ve read all of the Witcher books and managed to get about half way through the Game of Thrones books before getting terminally bored. GOT is a series of old school historical novels with magic thrown in, a huge cast of stock characters, and great naming. It’s strictly entertainment. Martin is good at entertainment. His whole career has been focused on that. There are some things you can think about but you can get nearly everything if you look at it as a dynastic conflict adventure story. The Witcher books are a bit more demanding. They work as entertainment but you can think about them too.
@52. Rob: I second that. This is an incomplete review and as such, not exactly fair to the series. It’s not anywhere near as bad as some have been elsewhere, though. For a day or two it almost seemed like there was a concerted effort to bash the series, or it’d become a stupid meme. One idiot critic at EW actually admitted skipping to the fifth episode, then accused the show of not making sense, giving it an F grade. Aren’t editors supposed to call foul on that type of dishonesty? Like, go back an do what you were paid to do.
@55. Joel: Agreed about GoT, or rather ASoIaF. It’s massive and detailed, but doesn’t go below a surface level very often. When Martin tried for a more lasting legacy than story level shocks in Vol 4, some fans revolted. They didn’t want philosophizing about the impact of war on the small folk. Or too many girls invading the PoVs.
The Witcher novels, on the other hand, offer discourses on topics like heredity, colonization, evolution, and a better take on climate change. The portrayal of political power is arguably more complex, with more players involved. Ciri is sometimes more a central character than Geralt himself. (To the point that some of the Gamergate types started a meme about Geralt not being the main character; no girl cooties for them.) It remains to be seen how that will be developed in future seasons. As we saw with how the last couple GoT seasons turned out, all the complexity got super streamlined and time compressed. Hope Hissrich and Co. get the chance to do the books justice.
The author might’ve misread the books. The majority of the Last Wish, Geralt isn’t conversing, more reminiscing and its not with a former lover, it’s with Nenneke, a healer and friend. The series very loosely followed the short stories, but changed so much within them in some cases as to be unrecognizable (Brokilon for instance). As to the rape or other perceived misogyny, the setting is Medieval, so not so unusual for that setting. Netflix did include a lot of minorities, sometimes painfully (I’m looking at you Daro), which would be fine, had they not also completely changed a lot of the book characters, and not in minor ways, but major ones. Even, if you haven’t read the books or played the games, or are not bothered by the lore changes, I think the show was fun enough to watch.
I never read the books before wathching the show, and I found it great. So, I do not agree with anything the reviewer wrote.
The mixed timelines where a brilliant way to keep the watcher interested and to make me wonder about what was really going on. During the first two episodes I had some issues with the continuity, then ‘got it’ and enjoyed it immensely.
Also liked the gritty world, even if the magical transformation of Yennefer was too gory even for me.
Now I’ll start reading book one, I hope they keep up the good job in season two.
I find it amusing that people complain about the nudity a lot, it’s no more nudity that we see on commercial TV.
I’m from Western Europe, I don’t consider offensive in any way the kind of nudity displayed, my kids won’t even blink twice if they see some breasts on TV.
It’s natural, nothing to be ashamed off and no one cares (Europe again).
As for the portrait of women, etc. If this is medieval times it’s the portrait of the time, most people love to gloss over Medieval times and all like to pretend they are knights, queens, kings and other nobles.
The reality of Medieval times is that most of the population was poor, famished, had no security, didn’t know how to read/write and basically had no rights.
Everyone was treated as garbage by the ruling classes and women unfortunately had the short end of the stick most of the times.
Yes it’s bad, it was highly unfair and awful but it was true for the time.
We have improved a lot since those dark ages but remember that there are still men and women being treated like that across the world, just because we pretend not to care or ignore due to “cultural differences” doesn’t make it right.
The show itself is great and I rather have it handling things like it does than to White Wash everything and going politically correct.
It’s not a current time show, it’s not a future show. It’s medieval, lean to accept that the past was dirty, grity and dark.
There is a reason why we called it the Dark Ages…
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I enjoyed the series and would like to see a more complete review. While I largely agree with the criticisms of the first half of the series, they are less applicable to the second half.
I’m amused it hews to the recent trend to have a guy that the show is named after supported by a cast of mostly women. It’s a largely relaxing show without over reliance on the idiot ball.
I have a quibble about the battle in the last episode as the best way to stop an enemy from crossing a bridge is to blow up the bridge.
@64 well yes, in a post explosives world. I would say this is a pre explosive world but there are explosives in the game and the show’s mages had some sort of magical explosive. I can’t remember if there are any in the books or not. Either way, it’s still really tough to blow up a well built bridge with something like gunpowder which is a low explosive. You really need high explosives like dynamite and TNT to make bridge blowing an easy and common thing. Nitroglycerin didn’t come around until the 1860s.
@65 Point. “Blow up” is possibly not within their capabilities. They should still have magic enough to remove the bridge. Shenanigans with portals should be able to do it. Though there’s not much point in arguing for why a TV show should have avoided an epic set piece battle.
Netflix released a very cool and interactive map where you can see event both chronologically and by location. Starting from ancient history to the events at the end of episode 8. Link below, very worth checking out.
https://www.witchernetflix.com/en-gb
https://www.witchernetflix.com/en-gb
Tor is my go to for reviews. Because of this review I decided not to bother with this show. Last week, I realized that I had seen enough positive buzz that I wanted to give it a shot. Finished episode 5 last night. So far I am really enjoying it.
I regret taking this review seriously.
I have no previous experience with the stories, so I missed the hints about the timelines until they became obvious with the brother and sister. I still didn’t have an “ah ha” moment until Ciri’s mom was introduced. I enjoyed finally figuring out how it all fit together and am looking forward to seeing how it all wraps up.
I don’t find the show particularly confusing. So far my only real complaint would be Yennefer’s story arc. She ends up in magic school, but she fails every test and task. She’s obviously powerful, but something is holding her back. But then suddenly she’s ready for graduation and is trained well enough to be assigned to court. How did she break her block? Where was her turning point? Where is the scene that shows that she has begun to master all the things that stymied her before?
I also have a bit a a hard time with the “woman is a crazy monster because she can’t have a baby” plot line, but I am hoping that there will be more to her character.