I haven’t watched it yet, but lots of people have so please, keep your spoilers in here?
And tag them by episode if you can, for those dipping into the show and not binging it.
The Witcher – Netflix SPOILER discussion
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Episode 4 has a lovely little meta moment about some of the reactions to season one that really made me smile.
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Episode 4 has a lovely little meta moment about some of the reactions to season one that really made me smile.
I laughed so much at that entire sequence.
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Finished season 2 tonight.
It was ok overall, but feels like it missed that slightly trashy, schlocky vibe that made season one so enjoyable. I got the impression that they’re trying to push it from the monster-of-the-week style first season into becoming a Game of Thrones style epic with a broader canvas and more political intrigue. But it doesn’t really work as that side of things all feels quite half-baked.
Not sure to what extent that follows the books but it felt like a noticeable shift in tone here.
Still an ok watch, but not a fun romp like season one was.
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Yeah, that looked pretty cool. Based on that trailer, I’ll give it a watch.
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We started that new Witcher miniseries last night and completed it today, as it’s only four episodes – thankfully as it turns out.
It was kind of OK for what it was, but it was also pretty weak on the story side despite being strong in production values – the design, effects, costumes etc. were all pretty great, the writing and direction not so much.
The story took a while to get going and was ultimately pretty inconsequential feeling, beyond providing some origin information for the world of the Witcher. It only really became great when Michelle Yeoh was on the screen, because her natural charisma and presence lifted the whole thing.
So while this is perfectly watchable stuff, I wouldn’t rush to see it either.
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I agree here. The show’s gotten a lot of bad reviews, and I don’t necessarily think it’s bad, but it’s utterly inessential. Some decent action scenes and I’ll take the cod Irish of the Witcher’s elves over the usual cod Irish bullshit.
Dylan Moran was fun.
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I’ll take the cod Irish of the Witcher’s elves over the usual cod Irish bullshit.
If all else fails, at least they can line up a job on the next season of Rings Of Power.
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Dylan Moran was fun.
Loved it when he turned up. As soon as I saw him I said to my wife that I hoped he’d play him as Bernard Black, and then he basically did.
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Blood Origin is a fun enough way to spend a few hours. Will I remember it in a week? Probably not.
As usual, Jaskier’s song is the best thing in it.
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Gotta say, the combat scenes in Ep1 were ON POINT as usual… I wish there was more of that.
The action/fight scenes are generally pretty great. I wish there was more of that stuff.
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It was probably to series 1’s benefit that it was largely adapting stand-alone short stories, while series 2 and 3 are largely adapting full novels and as such characters can drop out for chunks here and there and it can be hard to naturally get them into every episode.
I imagine the book format probably means they can get more into the kind of meaningful characterisation for the large cast that a story like this needs, as well as a more complete explanation of what is going on politically in the story.
In terms of the TV version, there are lots of people coming and going and doing things where I barely know who they are or what they’re trying to achieve, let alone getting to know them as characters in any greater depth or understanding how their plot fits into the bigger picture.
I saw someone say recently that great TV should have simple plots and complicated characters, but that Witcher has the opposite. I feel like that’s a pretty good summation of the issues I have with the show.
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In terms of the TV version, there are lots of people coming and going and doing things where I barely know who they are or what they’re trying to achieve, let alone getting to know them as characters in any greater depth or understanding how their plot fits into the bigger picture.
That’s a good point. Like I know who Phillipa is primarily because a friend of mine who’s a YouTuber did a bunch of videos about the entire franchise a couple of years ago, and Dijkstra’s name has stuck in my head well enough, but I couldn’t tell you much about them aside from they’re schemers and they work for… a king. Notably Phillipa’s sexuality got shoehorned into the show pretty bluntly this time and even though she was in a couple of episodes of series 2 is there much indicator this year that she shapeshifts into the owl, Dijkstra was talking to and using to spy on people? I wouldn’t have put much of that together without my friend’s video about the computer game!
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Yeah, that kind of level of detail is completely absent for me. I’m just going by what I see on-screen.
It kind of reminds me of the Harry Potter movies where lots of quite important plot and character points were left out of the movies for time reasons, but viewers didn’t mind because most of them had some familiarity with the books and so could fill in the gaps.
With something a bit less universally known like Witcher, I think you probably need the adaptation to work in its own right as a standalone experience, rather than relying on that outside knowledge.
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Or at least provide an easily accessible primer to the world – a background video alongside the bestiaries and makings of they’ve already done that explains the conjucation of the spheres and who the major powers are, or a website like the old HBO one for Game of Thrones that had a history and family trees and the like.
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Yeah, something like that would be helpful.
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I’m three episodes in, and I do have the same problem, but I don’t really mind it. I mean, there’s like, fire hands guy and I remember him being bad, and there’s beard wizard guy and he’s a bad guy doing intrigue and I don’t remember if that woman he’s scheming with was in the show before, and also the elves are fighting in the form of, uh, I think she was in the last season but I don’t remember the Amell brother being in it but his character is clearly enough the hothead guy and everybody is somehow working for or against this king guy and I think he is The White Flame but I don’t know when he became such a silly character who is throwing knives at people for fun and telling ridiculous war stories and I remember the reveal that he’s supposed to be Ciri’s father but I have no idea how that’s supposed to fit into anything and apparently everybody wants to unite the continent but I don’t really know what that means and have forgotten who is fighting against whom in terms of armies and stuff.
Uh, all of which I don’t really care about. I feel like I could look all this up and understand what the hell is going on, but I don’t really need to – some of it will hopefully become clear at some point, but I am enjoying the ride regardless – the main characters’ motivations and struggles are clear enough, the dialogues are pretty sharp and the political maneuvering does provide some tension even if I have no idea who is doing what, exactly. And the action scenes are great. So… yeah, I mean, I am fine with this.
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and there’s beard wizard guy and he’s a bad guy doing intrigue and I don’t remember if that woman he’s scheming with was in the show before
And to illustrate the problem, there’s two beard scheming guys. The bald one one scheming with the woman isn’t a wizard, and the one who schemes on his own is one- he’s the one that Geralt encountered way back in episode 1 who was dissecting princesses, and has been showing up in the wizard conclaves ever since.
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Yeah, the characters aren’t that well delineated given that there are so many similar types.
The whole thing feels like what an AI chatbot would produce if you fed it exclusively on scripts from Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings. Recognisable bits, some parts that are pretty good, but overall a bit wonky and not quite coherent.
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I don’t know, the thing is that I feel like it is coherent, but just not properly explained. As if they, well, took a novel with a rich plot of intrigues and show us only little bits of those so that we have a bit of a clue of what’s going on, but it’s not enough to actually follow the plot.
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I finished the half that’s available and quite liked the last two episodes. It developed to a point where you understand, well, let’s say at least half of what’s going on and the last episode was quite cleverly constructed. And I find myself quite looking forward to what happens next.
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Yeah it definitely picked up in those last couple, I think.
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I watched the last three episodes of this season now that Netflix has released them.
Episode 6 is quite good fun and in a lot of ways feels like the finale episode for what was previously released of this third season. Lots of action, a few twists and some satisfying moments, even if the political machinations are as poorly conveyed as ever.
Then it really nosedives with episodes 7 and 8, a real damp squib ending to the season and a flat way for Cavill’s tenure to end. It didn’t feel climactic at all, more disjointed and choppy. Pretty disappointing.
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I feel kinda the opposite, with episode 6 being the one I cared the least for as it was a lot of the same stuff that I didn’t care for in the first half of the series – some great fights though, while 7 and 8 were focused more on Geralt, Yennefer and Ciri, which is where the show has shone so far.
The problem is that the action is rising at this point and Geralt has picked his side so we’ll be going into the next series ramping up the epic fantasy… and the show’s still not great at portraying that. Vilgefortz is a good example of this, like if you remember the end of series 1 he’s apparently up to no good because after he failed to take out Cahir he killed an allied soldier and vanished – so had he decided to work with Nilfgaard? Who Knows? Since then he’s just been scheming and there’s no indication until he actually goes for it that he’s got this particular agenda. There was nothing separating him from the other dozen scheming mages. Game of Thrones did this well by spending time with everyone and giving them personal drama, and the Witcher doesn’t do enough of that outside of the main three characters and a handful of others like Jaskier and Tisseia.
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And to provide further contrast, I thought the final episodes were all fine. Big climactic epic battle and stuff, and then more character-focus. I thought that worked fine in that order. And it was kind of nice to have everybody do their own thing and have their own adventures – bit like old times, I thought.
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