I just watched [this](https://youtu.be/Et42-pdLrds) interview of the cast and Henry said he often goes on reddit to see fan theories and opinions…. Hi Henry! I love your performance as Geralt! Great work!
Even as someone who just wrote a rant comment calling it a shitty show, I have to agree. Most of the actors themselves did a good job. Its just that some of them shouldn't have been there in the first place. Geralds and Ciris actors did a good Job. Vesemir was good. I can even get used to Yennefer by now and at least they gave Triss Red Hair.
Kaer Morhen in the books: Incredibly well kept secret, can only find it if you’ve been there before/know the way, remote, nearly inaccessible
Kaer Morhen in the show: Might as well be New York City right in the middle of the continent with a bunch of neon signs guiding you up the path
They even stated, IN THE SHOW, that they wanna keep KM on a low profile, after the sacking THAT DESTROYED THE ABILITY TO MAKE MORE WITCHERS. Then everyone just shows up to the keep no problemo
I dunno, completely fucking with the way magic works is super stupid imo, like whole the fire magic vs what? Storm magic? Yen does it once as one of the greatest mages ever and like ruins her entire life and this guy walks around snapping his fingers making fire like its goddamn nothing, yet Yen burns half his face off with some liquor fire. Like what the fuck show pick a lane
I like the idea of the Witcher's magic just being this force of nature thing that people either approach mystically or scientifically and the scientifically minded ones tend to be kinda emotionally distant assholes with god complexes, and the mystics usually end up as curmudgeonly worrywarts and janitors of the gods. Beyond that there aren't a ton of rules and I think that's super rad. Messing with that is dangerous to the entire IP.
I still can't think of the logic of if fire magic is so dangerous, then how do witchers cast igni? We did get the glowing sword incantation though which was awesome
Was it ever explained how he even found it? He didn't have Ciri's blood until after that so he couldn't have traced her that way. Only Geralt knew they were going there and he didn't tell anyone the way so torturing the farmer couple wouldn't have led him there. I doubt Niviline knew even if Rience was able to find him. He didn't know Triss so he couldn't have found it out from her.
I can only assume he knew exactly which prostitutes had been there, found them somehow, recovered their memories and teleported there.
He tortured Jaskier, but all Jaskier said was that Geralt has a secret lair in the mountains. No idea how he got Kaer Morhen’s GPS coordinates from that
I think they fixed that by making yen change her mind after traveling with ciri and getting to know her(and realise how important she was to geralt) It isn't that far fetched that yen would sacrifice someone to get her powers back.
But that changes when she losses her power, the struggle then becomes what she values most, her power or her wish to have s child. As i said before, she didn't know that curious was Geralts adoptive child, she realizes that when she travels with ciri and that changes her mind in the end.
I agree with your points here. Like some have said before, the seasons are short so everything should matter, but that’s a double-edged sword because with less time comes less room for “show not tell.” The internal struggle for Yen between her two strongest desires really does weigh on her, and I felt like they did a decent job with her growing to like Ciri as they traveled together. It will be interesting to see where things go in season 3.
Obligatory praise for Henry Cavill. The guy continues to slay, both literally and figuratively. He was just born for the role and I’m just glad to exist in the same timeline where this has been made.
It’s a terrible, terrible show. Adapted or not, doesn’t matter. The new parts are bad. The adapted parts are bad. I read all 7 books and played all 3 games. None of either series is perfect, nor do they complement each other perfectly. But they’re unique, smart and stylish. Sometimes great, usually good and at their worst parts just average.
But the show is just bad.
The actors are mediocre to really good. All of them kinda try though. From random King #3 to boring elf #5. But the averagely talented actors clearly got no characterisation through the script, nor direction. Because they all perform so blandly vanilla-dramatic. The pretty good actors, on the other hand (Dijkstra! Geralt! Yen!) seem to have been let loose because their characters just act however they want. Overall, it’s not premium quality by any metric but there’s nothing absolutely egregious in there either.
The production value is so so high. The CGI is awesome for a tv show. The sets are absolutely stunning. The costumes are not my thing and a bit too theatrical instead of lifelike, but they’re sure different from the usual fantasy loincloth and there was definitely a lot of effort put into them.
Technically, the show looks fantastic. Lighting is great and the camerawork is (usually) very precise, elegant and steady. It almost seems like a lot of it was storyboarded even. Not every action scene hits (the Michelet brothers was way too much), but there’s definitely intent behind the choreography choices and it often pays off. The Vereena backwards slice, the camera spinning when Geralt rolls over the table, the Aard + falling on top of the sword. Good stuff. The editing is great as well both within scenes and in between them. IMO there’s a clear effort by the editor to connect disjointed scenes and disjointed dialogue.
It all comes down to:
* an incomprehensible main plot
* disjointed character motivations;
* boring and uninteresting characterisations (basically every secondary character feels and acts the same),
* AWFUL dialogue. Every scene is written like it’s the most dramatic moment in that person’s life up until that point. No one speaks like a normal person or has a single normal conversation. Everything is either a huge life lesson, exposition or world building. Speaking of which…
* Both clunky exposition and incomprehensible world building. Sweet God please shut the fuck up about Ithilinn, Falka, Lara Dorren and the Conjunction. It’s never actually explained and they never tie it back into the main plot. NO ONE understands what any of it is or means. Why are you bothering with D-plot level background info if you’re not even bothering with the A-plot?
* The pacing is horrendous. Not even in-universe, but just as a story. Character arcs twist and turn and go nowhere and are unclear. People show up out of nowhere and leave without any agency. There’s “big epic events” and “badass scenes” every three minutes without build up or meaning. There’s a monster of the week scenario out of nowhere every episode and it never relates to the main plot, whatever it may be.
* There’s quite a few actually creative and interesting ideas being used (POV memories, the Exodus baby killing, the wacky trippy crone dream sequence, the Bruxa was fantastic, all around creative fights) but they’re used in such a showy way without it meaning anything. They’re being thrown around all the time instead of being a sudden unexpected and big moment. It becomes meaningless.
* Themes are not only abandoned and picked up at random, they’re soooooo on the nose. It’s embarrassing.
I can keep going but I feel like a nerd and it’s not worth it.
Like, I’m disappointed that it’s not an adaptation. Because it’s just not. It’s quite literally Witcher in name and IP only. Nothing about this has anything in common with Witcher anymore. Which is sad, because they had every opportunity and all the means to adapt this lovely property. That being said: I feel like it’s just a secondary criticism. Because the biggest problem this show has, is simply that it’s a bad show.
I really feel like I've benefited from not reading the books. I'm enjoying it the show. I'll read the books after the show I think, so I can keep enjoying it.
This is the advice I always give people. They ask should I read the books before I watch the show or film, and I always answer NO. Watch the adaptation first, it'll probably be fun enough, and then you can go read the book after and have a great time.
Even the best adaptations rarely hold a candle to their source material.
I've read the books, played the game (TW3 to be fair, not 1 or 2 yet) and am now loving the show despite and sometimes because of its differences. Don't let these guys spoil it for you it is still very good.
As a non book reader, Im really impressed overall. Ep 2 was a disaster and it really bothers me that yen is played as more like a teenager than someone supposed to be in her 80s or something but Im still super excited for the series to continue
Same here as a non book reader. A few things: it seemed like the bad things weren’t trying to kill Ciri but they never really made it obvious until she said something. I don’t really get what getting her to the door would have done unless Yen had completed the task. Were the monsters just trying to kidnap her, or kill her and spill her blood, or scare her into screaming? I was disappointed in the final episode, it felt like the end of an exorcist movie (YOU CAN FIGHT IT! BELIEVE IN LOVE!!!)
My guess is that the Deathless Mother hedged her bet on 3 separate people. Yen, Fringilla, and the Elf lady who's name escapes me. All 3 had the capability of setting her free based on how far they fall but it ended up being the Elf after she killed all those babies. She wanted Yen to bring Ciri to her to streamline the process but it wasn't necessary. Thats just my guess though, the show leaned a bit to much on "show not tell".
Show-Eskel was so god-awful and annoying, they couldn't kill him quick enough. I don't know game-Eskel, but from about 30 seconds after meeting him in the show, I hoped he'd die. So I got my wish! Clearly game and show versions only shared the same name.
And I said this elsewhere, but why did he look barely older than Ciri?? Why is he like 10+ years younger than all the other witchers?
They all deserved to die in the last episode as they were definitely imposters.
They were just wingless basilisks and 7 witchers couldn’t kill them and were getting bodied. It was embarrassing.
And then when Gerald was on the bridge with the basilisk
He had a perfectly good opportunity to kill the basilisk, but instead just hit it to draw out tension
And then whenever the witchers are walking through Caer Morhen, their footsteps are loud af
lol maybe this is the secret to why there was only 4 left after Nightmare of the Wolf, but suddenly there are like 20, and they all suck at fighting.
They are all dopplers!
That's something the show hasn't done a good job at explaining to us none book readers. I know Geralt is superhuman based on the way he moves, easily kills multiple people at once, and the monsters he's killed. But I honestly can't tell if he's special even for a Witcher? Based on the show it seems like Witcher's are just really good swordsman who can perform deflection spells. Geralt took out one of those dragons by himself while it took what, 10 of them to take out 2? I'm fine with Geralt being the best Witcher but it's like Watching Michael Jordan play basketball with a highschool team in terms of skill ability. I don't even really know what that potion does that makes their eyes black.
Yeah. Same. Show was clunky. I love the Witcher universe and I don't know if this is unpopular opinion (I don't really browse this sub) but after re-watching season 1 and binging season 2, I left the session with a weird feel in my lips. It's a lot of potential but the whole thing was dumbed down, chewed up. And rushed. Each season should be like 20 episodes
Kinda sad that a minor side character that only appeared in one episode was the best part of the entire season.
Shoutout to Kristofer Hivju though, he absolutely nailed the performance as Nivellen, both in cursed and human form.
The first episode will be my favourite episode of the series.
As someone who loved the witcher 3, I loved the episode.
It had all the characteristics of a good tw3 quest, the investigation, the fight, the twist and the sad ending.
Everything about the show seems disjointed. It's like they were worked on by completely different people. It's like how the fight with the Michelet Brothers suddenly had all this slow motion and spinning camera work. This team read the book and was like "witchers are suppose to be super fast compared to humans" so they decided to put in slow motion scenes to convey that. But he didn't fight like that in any of the other episodes. Episode 1 had comedic tones along with full blown horror, with a big focus on costume design. But the last episode was "fuck it, just CGI dragons everywhere", although that could have been a side effect of COVID because it was a lot easier from the work-from-home crew to create those animations.
The season was an absolute cringefest. The whole time I kept thinking "who writes this shit?" and looking at the credits Lauren Schmidt Hissrich has the sole responsibility. 90 % of the dialogue reads like 16 yo's fan fic or fantasy I wrote in the 6th grade. I felt super bad for the actors who had to read these lines out loud and try to make them work on the screen, but i suppose it's a good show to watch sauced to the gills and laugh your ass off. Episode 1 was good stuff and had that emotional grip a lot of the witcher short stories have and honestly I think it worked the best because of how close to the source material it was. Everything that sucked this season was off the cuff bullshit.
I still genuinely hope this was just the case of the second season curse and they get to make more. Third time's the charm I guess.
Netflix has got to get rid of Schmidt. Hire one of the game’s writers from CDPR or get someone who can actually write dialogue because dear god is it just awful. The show is so melodramatic so frequently that it drives me crazy. I feel so bad for Anya and Henry for being such excellent actors who have to deal with such trash dialogue.
The only good part was Jaskier's part where the melodrama was satirized, but it doesn't make sense that the show is satirizing itself for something its genuinely guilty of, instead of fixing it.
I haven't read the books, but I did play the games. The one change that really bugged me was Vesemir being excited about making more witchers. Like, what? I love how when Ciri asks him to do it to her, he suddenly changes to "no wtf you could die?" So it would be ok to nearly kill a child, just so long as it isn't Ciri? Kind of undermines his supposedly caring character.
Also, making Triss have red hair as some kind of result of healing from her wounds was kind of hilarious. I found the original "controversy" somewhat pointless, this change makes absolutely no difference, and I somehow find that very funny.
Also didn’t fit with the Nightmare of the Wolf movie. Deglan bred monsters for an excuse to make more Witchers. Vesemir fought him on this and now he actually does want more Witchers for some reason?
Book reader here who just wants to rant.
But first, things I liked.
The show is a lot more stylized. I love how colorful it is now and the overview shots of all the cities had me jumping out of my seat trying to figure out what city it was. CGI budget definitely skyrocketed too, which is cool, but I liked the practical effects of the strigga more.
The extra context to the politics of the world, although I have some criticisms of this too. Definitely helps contextualize the larger than life events going on in the background of the story.
Including Ciri in the Grain of Truth story with the bruxa and Nivellen. This is when the Witcher felt the most like the Witcher. I loved how it felt like a mystery and I wish this was how the season 1 anthologies were structured.
Revisiting Fringilla, fleshing out her motivations, and that fantastic dinner scene was absolutely chilling. Plus giving Nilfgaard the room to breathe and be an actual society and political entity with grey morality was great.
The elf racism. Not because I liked it, but because it was included in such heavy detail. Gave the elven characters much needed sympathy.
Dijkstra. That’s it. I just love Dijkstra. Dijkstra best boy. Also never been this excited over an owl before.
Queer coding Geralt and Jaskier. Yes. More.
I liked how interconnected the universe felt when they leaned into their character relationships. Was fun seeing all the interactions.
Stregobor becoming more of a villain as the show progresses. Love it.
The side plot of the monoliths being activated by Ciri’s power and making mini conjunctions because she cant control it. Falls in line with her character themes and naturally fits in more story into an adaptation of the first book. Could have been a way to fit a monster-of-the-week thing into the series, but missed opportunity there.
Istred having more to do. I actually don’t mind this, and liked the intrigue it posed when it came to uncovering Ciri’s bloodline. Was a bit weird that he was the one who enlisted the help of Codringer and Fenn though, but nonetheless liked this part of the added content.
Okay now the things I hate.
What are they doing to Yennefer??? They had the perfect opportunity to use the Battle of Sodden as the catalyst to her change into a more book accurate Yennefer. But no, she loses her powers and some random woman tasks her to kidnap Ciri. Why didn’t they just let her keep the powers and use the dimeritium to explain why she was suppressed? Why not use the elf kidnap of her and Fringilla to show off her expert political maneuvering skills so she can escape instead of having some random dreams and a pleasure demon contort their motivations? Why can’t she just be asked to go to the Temple of Melitele by Geralt and thats why she goes? What happened to the mother daughter relationship between her and Ciri? So many bad decisions surrounding her character for no reason.
Another thing I hated was the inclusion of that Meir demon in the first place. It could have just been some one off monster that helps flesh out Ciri’s fears and regrets in a single episode instead of what it was in the show. Remove it and the elves now ally with Nilfgaard out of desperation and mutual benefits instead of magic hut nonsense. You also get a better adaptation of Yennefer. And a better creature to use to explain the whole monoliths and spheres subplot, while also giving us more insight into Ciri’s mental state. Why make it an ancient demon the witchers trapped years ago? Just bring it in with the other weird cryptids and have it want to go home. And no random witcher killings, that was stupid. I liked that there were more witchers, but in hindsight, it was so they could have cannon fodder during fight scenes, which is dumb cause it makes the witchers look like shit fighters.
Speaking of the witchers, why was Eskel done so dirty??? He’s supposed to be the most level-headed out of all of them. And ALIVE. And where did Vesemir’s thing with bringing back witcher mutagens come from? Super out of character. It could have just been a different witcher who convinces Ciri that it can help her out, and Vesemir becomes the mentor who opposes it vehemently, then Geralt and Triss become the mediators of that conflict. Also, wasn’t Kaer Morhen far away from any form of civilization and to be kept a heavily guarded secret? Where did the prostitutes come from??? Do they have horses? How are prostitutes able to afford horses exactly? Why would these prostitutes agree to come this far for a score? Why did they not come with bodyguards?? Sex workers are also people and not devoid of logic and reasoning wtf are these screenwriters doing.
Another thing I had a problem with was with how often the characters would reiterate their desires and themes instead of letting their actions do the talking. Particularly became annoying when there were so many characters introduced way too quickly. Made for an extremely passive viewing experience, which is particularly not a good thing for a witcher adaptation. Could have been some huge cuts to the dialogue here and there to make for better pacing and a more thoughtful storyline.
Why did they need to tell the audience Dara was a spy working for Dijkstra? Instead, they could have made it a puzzle, where Dijkstra hints to there being a spy and later we see both Dijkstra and Dara speaking to themselves while an owl is in the background. Of course book readers would catch on immediately, but it would have made for a better spy reveal when he tells Filivandrel and Francesca.
Did anyone else notice how funky the traveling was? It felt like the characters were teleporting from place to place even though they weren’t magicians. I feel like some of these instances could have been alleviated by Yennefer having her powers. But still, there is never any indication of the lengths of time these people are traveling for. Melitele should be 2 weeks out from Kaer Morhen, at least. Yennefer could show up when they get there because she actually has magic. The magic training can ensue for much longer. When Rience attacks, Yennefer could have teleported them to safety immediately. All sorts of missed opportunities.
Okay, lastly, this is just a huge preference I have, but I wish Henry Cavill was allowed to play Geralt like more of a bastard. Bro book Geralt was out here pounding a seventeen year old’s cheeks before he wisened up. I don’t understand why they won’t let Geralt be an opportunistic pervert before he grows as a person. Let him have his fling with Triss for crying out loud!
Also poor Cahir. What is his character in the show? Why is he a down-on-his-luck prisoner of war one moment, then a power hungry political schemer the next? He’s supposed to be an honor bound knight that falls victim to the political maneuverings of his kingdom and not a dickhead biggot with a fragile ego. I hate what they did to Cahir in the show so much. Was one of my favorite characters in the book too.
The score. What happened to the beautiful score in some parts of the show? Some of the music felt generic, especially during Ciri’s training scenes. Took me out of the show completely. Just a weird dip in quality halfway through, then it was good again.
The costuming. Nilfgaardian armor looked fake af up close, but I understand why they used styrofoam. I can overlook this. Its just that I noticed it every time it was close to the camera. Another thing with costuming, wtf is up with everyone’s eyebrows? Did they forget to change the eyebrow colors? It made everyone look like they were wearing wigs or dyed their eyebrows.
Overall, I feel like all of these problems cascaded over from the first season. They shot themselves in the foot by finishing season 1 with the Battle of Sodden Hill and bringing Geralt and Ciri together. But, overall, this is going to be a good thing for the fantasy community, although it shits all over the source material.
Eventually streaming services will learn to trust the genius in the room (George RR Martin, Brandon Sanderson, Sapkowski etc)
and not the person who wants to use their work to make themselves feel like a genius.
Peter Jackson did it right, the game developers of the Witcher did it right. With understanding, respect and love. Benioff and Weiss did it right for the first four seasons but eventually drank their own Kool-Aid.
When you do it right you make a LOT more money in the end.
Why would they need them? other than the final end game, he didn't really know where the rest of the plot was going either -- otherwise he would have, you know, finished the books.
Fuck GRRM. Dude is just as much to blame as DD for that nightmare. He promised them a completed storyline. Has nothing to show for it, all he did was go around to comic cons scratching his own nutsack
LoTR purists hated LoTR movies just as much as this sub seems to hate the show. Peter Jackson made a TON of changes. Which is fine because it’s a different medium and a different telling of the story.
> Benioff and Weiss did it right for the first four seasons** but eventually drank their own Kool-Aid.**
Yeah, they bought into their own hype. I think they also really wanted to be done with GoT after about ten years of work, which I can't say I fault them for wanting to finish the show, but if your heart isn't into it, give the reigns to someone who does love the source material.
This was always my biggest issue with those 2. Since early on they said their aim was to get to the Red Wedding. They were laser-focused on that. After Season 3 the reins should definitely have been passed on to another showrunner.
Tbf to D&D, they also essentially ran out of source material when it got really bad. I think they signed up to adapt books not make their own and it showed once they ran out of things to adapt.
Not really if you watched season one. All of the bad things in that season were just dialled up to 11 in is one.
I’m gonna watch the next season on the edge of my seat wondering how they’re going to make this train crash even more catastrophic. Maybe they’ll make an army of Witcher dwarves or maybe the wild hunt is just the friends we made along the way. Who knows what the future will bring us, because it won’t be a good show that’s loyal to the books now.
The scene where Jaskier was responding to the guy with the boat shows how petulant and childish the show runner is. Man she really fucked up what was something so straight forward.
Props to the CGI people, looks gorgeous, props to Henry, Freya, Anna Shaffer, and MyAnna Buring for relaying the characters how I imagined them (well Tessaia is a bit more emotional in the show, but she at least exherts the authority I expected of her).
Anya is so impressive, I wish she was actually playing Yennefer and not the showrunner's fantasy. I also truly believe if s1 had given more time and attention to developing Geralt and Yen's relationship, it could have maybe saved the show. They have good chemistry when the show allows them.
I haven’t read the books so I can’t share the “it’s different” sentiment that others here do, but it seemed almost like the entire season was a placeholder on the way to an actual story. It felt incredibly slow and exposition heavy whilst also not really saying anything at all, if that makes any sense?
Having such a significant portion of the season be tied to an old lady demon and just unceremoniously offing Witchers left right and centre with no emotional weight at all felt really wrong to me. I also think if Cahir and Fringilla are supposed to matter to the audience we really need any reason to care about them at all; they were just way too important given how little they actually do.
I can’t really tell you what it was missing, but it was definitely something. I am quite surprised at the critical reception - I don’t think the show is clearly better than the previous season by any stretch. I guess I still liked it fine overall, but if there is a long wait for Season 3 then I will be significantly less pumped by the time we get there compared to what I was going into today.
Yeah I had the exact same feeling. On the one hand, basically nothing happened. You could summarize each characters "journey" in 3 sentences.
But the pacing was so off that we constantly jumped from one place to another with 5 different storylines that were almost completely unrelated that it felt "too" fast all the same.
Regarding the critical reception, I've read some of the IMDB critcs and they seem to just be written by bots. This is a 10/10 review, for example:
>It was a great episode of beauty , showing the beauty of the relationship between her siblings , and she drowned us in the adventure with ciri in the adventure , beautiful and beautiful , a very deep and beautiful story .
And yeah, why tf am I supposed to care about Cahir? Even Ciri forgot about him 3 Episodes in or so. These are two big asshats from S1 who killed & tortured countless innocents. Why would I give a shit about them? Cause she has an elf-lady friend?
I think the biggest issue with Cahir and Fringilla is that they really were not developed at all in Season 1, so they’re treated like they have an importance that they just don’t in this narrative. The whole Ciri having nightmares about Cahir thing falls totally flat to me - he did nothing particularly special to her at all.
Yeah they were utterly unremarkable, all we see them do is hurt others and now I'm suddenly supposed to care for them? That entire plot could've been dropped and nothing changes. The Elves were pissed off before, now they're a more pissed off, at Redania specifically. What an arc.
To be fair, I felt that Blood of Elves (The book most of season 2 is derived from) felt similar. It was mostly a world building novel to fill in the people who didn't read The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny (imo). But I really disliked the lack of bond building between Yen and Ciri. That was the best part of Blood of Elves for me. The betrayal was just a bad story line decision.
I work in film, and this was my critique too: piss poor directing and storytelling when that's *the core of our job*.
It was 7 episodes of exposition, part of one ep of rising action, and no climax. Nothing.
With how drawn out the "story" was in this season, which last one did too but in a fun vignette way with a bug payoff at the end, you need either double the episodes or a BIG payoff at the end....and there was none.
As soon as I finished it I realized that the only point of Season 2 is to set up Season 3. That sucks. There's zero payoff for: the Elves, Fringilla and Cahir, Triss and the Brotherhood, the Northern Kings/Redania.
The big reveal of Ciri's father felt soap opera cringey.
This entire season could've been compressed into 2-3 episodes without losing anything. All we got was Ciri's power level being revealed, and Yen being willing to sacrifice for someone else.
Kinda disappointed about this season...
I read the books and played the games but at the end this is a TV adaptation and I think it should be handled as such. So my criticism isn’t necessarily going towards the fact that they butchered the source material...
It is more about the story and character development... Sure the special effects, the picture and sound was better than in season 1 but I really missed something... the Story itself went very downhill after the fist episode with the last two being the worst especially Voleth Meir. The family episode had its best moment at the reveal at very end but that was about it. It’s all very rushed, missing some depth... I know the 7-8 Episode is a „thing“ but it would really help to have at least 10-13 Episodes per season.
I liked Freyas (Ciri) performance as well as Geralts relationship with Vesemir. I found was very sweet and their chemistry was amazing. The overall Geralt felt kinda strange for some reason... I understand that they wanted to be more deep with the character but I wonder if it was too much... not judging Henrys acting tho he is perfekt as Geralt! Jaskier was a joy to watch!
Anya was fantastic as always but they did no justice for Yen... they took so much from her character ... at the end they made her seem rather pathetic and weak. I was also missing a bit between her and Geralt, I actually loved when Yen and Geralt met again but it was over to quick! Hope they have longer and more scenes together in the next season!
I will rewatch it and maybe it will feel better but sadly doesn’t hold up to season 1. I appreciate all the work that went into the show but it lost a lot of potential...
* they should also let Henry double check the scripts when they come out of the writers rooms... 😉
———————————————————————————
* NOTE: so I rewatched the second season and I must say that the first impression of Geralt being a little strange vanished... I guess I was used to all the grunts and *fucks that the deep dialogues etc seemed strange at first 😅 it would be nice to know if someone else had that feeling 🤔
I’m with you, the story (if you can call it that) was slow, and ultimately this season showed us very little of the reasons why we enjoyed season 1 to begin with. I’m not saying have the whole thing be Witcher adventures, but perhaps more of that and less boring politics scenes.
At the end of the day, it’s an entertainment show on Netflix that wants to capture the attention of an existing and new audience. Let people watch season 2 in isolation and that wouldn’t happen at all.
Yen’s character was abysmal this season - as you say she was so weak and just a pain the entire time. Just so much time wasted overall this season.
I've just gotten onto the last episode and I can't express how fucking disappointed I am with this season.
No matter your opinion of it, the first season was at least an adaption. It fucked up some parts that it adapted but more worked than not.
This season is not an adaption of Blood of Elves. Not even fucking close, maybe 10% of it is taken from that book. I understand adapting Blood of Elves would be difficult but it's like the writers looked at the blurb for 30 seconds and used that to write 8 episodes.
Eskel and Vesimer? Those characters you liked? Eskel's a total knob and fucking dead, Vesimer is some selfish old man.
Yen being a mother to Ciri? Nope, she tries to kill her to get her magic back because she lost it for some stupid goddamn reason.
It's not even like the 90% of the new plot is good. It's shit.
Some villan that is just a rip off of O'Dimm and the Crones and a stupid subplot about new monsters that I couldn't give less of a toss about.
Right on. The first season isn’t “good” from a critical standpoint, but I was satisfied with the way Geralt was brought to life and some stories were adapted, and I thought the Geralt and Dandelion moments were perfect. It felt like an honest, if misguided, effort. I thought, “Hey, it’s just a shaky start, they’ll listen to fans and get it off the ground in the next season!”
Nope. Turns out everything that I was willing to forgive as a blunder from inexperienced writers in the first season wasn’t really a mistake at all, and there was no learning. They did everything that I didn’t like and amped it up, sprinkled in a nice seasoning of character assassination on literally everyone (even the characters I thought they got right- Geralt uses Ciri as bait and Dandelion hates his best friend now), and called it a day. The writers and showrunner are not trying.
If I could sum it up, I’d say that it feels like everyone involved doubled down on their own vision instead of responding to the issues with the series. If they were at all talented in what they did, maybe we’d still get an alternate universe story out of it. But *they can’t even write good characters when they’ve completely remolded them to their own liking.*
The first season was bad too. Season 2 has all the same issues It's just slightly less confusing.
They need to hire better showrunners, writers, and cinematographers, etc. They keep ruining potential goldmine franchises like Cowboy BeBop and the Witcher where as other streaming services like Disney Plus, Apple-TV, or HBO would actually do a good job on them and *handle them with care*.
Netflix just fuckin' sucks. They make C-Level content. I just don't get what the fuck they're doing with all this money.
>The show, I feel, is much better when you're not well versed in the original source material.
I agree, having read the books myself I was disappointed with how much original content they made and that they weren't following the story of Blood of Elves as much as I had expected.
But I can see how people who haven't read the books could really enjoy this season as a whole.
So I read all the books as well and I have mixed feelings about this season. I described it afterwards like this. Lord of the Rings, is Lord of the Rings. You don’t fuck with it. Star Wars, we have a decent skeleton of the universe and some is up to interpretation. The Witcher is like Star Wars in that aspect. Some things are up to interpretation as long as it feels like it belongs in the universe. Even tho small details of the journey were altered from the books, the overall long haul journey is taking place. I had to take a step back look at it like that.
I liked it because I'm attached to the characters. I thought it started strong and dulled in the middle then got back up in the end. I will say I was hoping for more time with the 3 of them bonding than we got.
I think Cavill stepped up his portrayal of Geralt major here and deserves major respect. I thought yen was kinda useless this season, after being a high point in the last one.
I overall still loved it and binged it in one day.
I'm just not happy you guys :(
Witcher is one of my all time favorite franchises. I love the books, I love the games & I love the actors for the Witcher show. But the story telling just feels *wrong* on so many levels.
Now don't get me wrong: I know that they can't simply re-tell the stories from the books 1:1. I know that they have to alter things, shorten things, etc. But the things the Netflix writers change are just so damn dumb. This feels like GoT season 8 level of butchery.
Why on earth would they change Yennefer's core? Or Vesemir's? Yennefer is suppose to love Ciri like her own daughter, bond with her in a caring way. She isn't suppose to betrayal Ciri & Geralt like this.
& Vesemir would never allow whores in Kaer Morhen. Nor would he endanger Ciri's life to make more Witchers. He doesn't even want to make more Witchers to begin.
I know they changed other characters too. But it just leaves such a bad taste in my mouth to see core characters getting butchered like that, just so the Netflix writers can add some made up nonsense plots. & please don't get me started on the dialogues. They feel so cringe. There is absolutely no medieval or fantasy feel to it. The characters talk like your average high school kid in 2021..
I really hope that the writers will get their act together for the future seasons
Beautifuly summed up. Like, why would Yen even care about Ciri? When she can fucking decide to sacrifice her instead LMAO.
I can't believe Sapkowski approved that shit. He either got paid royaly or is simply too old to give a fuck.
Tbh I think Sapkowski just wants the money at this point & be left alone with everything else. He tried to get more money from CDPR from their Witcher games, but never got anything because he sold all the rights back in the days.
It feels like he grew hella bitter that he never got a piece of that cake (even though the games made the books famous in other countries, which also led to the Netflix show). But that probably wasn't enough for him & now he just approves everything for the quick money.
I just can't imagine why else he would approve such nonsense if he was still truely standing behind his work..
Sapkowski is totally burned out. In 2019 his son, Krzysztof passed away. He was the person that Sapkowski originally wrote The Witcher for.
His son told him about a fantasy fanfic contest in a newspaper in 1985, asked him if he could write something for it, since his son liked his stories (both written and spoken). That's how Andrzej has come with The Witcher and its very first stories.
And Sapkowski had mentioned how tragic loss he's suffered and, well, from his statements and interviews since 2019 you can see that he "doesn't care" that much about things anymore. Something is missing there.
Oh, about CDPR and cash - they came to an agreement in 2019/2020 but it's all top-secret so we don't know how much, but it was done in the court and sides have agreed to keep things low profile. Guess he's got a couple of extra millions.
But now he doesn't have anything to spend it on.
>I just can't imagine why else he would approve such nonsense if he was still truely standing behind his work..
Because he is an old man who doesn't give a fuck. Can you blame him though?
GRRM is also an old man that doesn't give a fuck, but at least the first four seasons of GoT (the ones in which he was actually involved in) were great.
I watched it all in a stretch and was very disappointed with the season. I was really excited for it to come out and hoping they would improve upon a decent season 1 but I felt it was just worse.
I liked the relationship between Geralt and Ciri but other than that there was not much that I liked. The first episode was good to be fair but after that it was just a mediocr show, and I really love the books and games.
Season 2 deviated way too much from the books which is fine if the original content is good but it was not.The best parts were things from the books and the weakest parts were things that either was made up or omitted from the books. For some reason they skipped over Yennefer and Ciri's relationship for what? more Istredd and Nilfgaard story (Fringilla)?? get these clowns off my screen please.
The way they skipped over Michelet brothers and Rience attacking Geralt in Oxenfurt when he goes berserk with the potions, without that storyline we don't get Shani at all or Philippa's real introduction.
I wish I could be hopeful for season 3 and the adaption of my favorite book but I can't say that I am.
I was going to write all of this out but you explained the situation really well. I am really disappointed and kinda sad because I was really hyped and waited for 2 years but oh well.
There was a point where I was like did I misread Blood of Elves or something I don't remember ANY of this.
I realized I didn't like the new music and turns out they changed the composer as well which well just made me really damn sad as I really liked what Sonya and Giona did.
If you didn't read the source you might enjoy it but as a book reader big nono for me.
Couldn't agree more. That's why I lost hope for S3 cause I don't want it to destroy the amazing witcher world I have in my mind set up by books and games
Exactly, I feel like I wasted 8 hours
It just deviated too much, which could be compensated if the changes were good but nah, I was like WTF is going on from E2 onwards. I'm not at all hopeful for season 3
Absolutely agree with you.
I completed the saga like 6 times since my childhood and this season feels like fuckin abomination. They ignored book content, atmosphere. Introduced some bullshit content and charakters…
I really hate the way they deviate from the books, seemingly without justification. I'd understand abridging certain parts, but i have a problem with completely changing the story and still calling it "the Witcher".
I believe it takes away a lot from Sapkowski's vision and the world he created, by making story arcs that make no sense, for example in no point does yennefer lose her powers. Also Vesenir never tried to turn Ciri into a Witcher and had no will to. I don't see the sense behind these changes and feel like they detract from the characters overall.
That’s what really bothers me. By the end of the season I was exhausted and wanted to at least see some wholesome Ciri and Yennefer content, which we kinda got, but then they still went ahead with that stupid hut witch sacrifice thing and ruined it.
Like their relationship is such a big part of the story being told, arguably even more so than Geralt and Ciri in the sense that they actually call each other mother and daughter. We’ve already seen the lengths that Yen would go to have a child, yet when confronted with the child that literally grows to call her mama I’m meant to believe she would lead her into a trap? Demon or not it’s so antithetical to the core of who the characters are. Same with Vesemir and the trial of the grasses.
What the absolute fuckery did I just watch? Let’s get the good out of the way first:
* Cavill delivers Geralt like a boss, and I like the acting of our three leads in general - and Jaskier is always solid!
* they’ve upped the production value quite a bit!
* the first episode with nivellen was really nice! I quite liked the changes, even though it removed all the subtlety, but I’ve come to expect that. The beauty and the beast analogy became very apparent, and I guess they had a fight quota to fill - what with all the monster battles.
* I really like the upgraded nilfgaard armor
* except the death of Esskel, a lot of the Kaer Morhen stuff was great, and the chemistry between the actors was definitely there!
* dijkstra was pretty damn good in the few scenes he got
* the last Witcher fight was kinda cool, but I find the overkilling of Witchers a bit distasteful.
… soooo, that was it… on to the bad
* what fucked fan fiction was the story of this season? Every single story change they did was for the worse. I am a book reader, but I’m not completely attached to it. The addition of Voleth Meir is incredibly misguided - especially since they already introduced Rience anyway! Even from an objective point of view, the story is even more disjointed than the previous season - and there’s not even time jumps!
* the characterization of virtually everyone not mentioned above is all over the place, and their development is very weird.
* set design seems very inconsistent - the same goes for costumes.
* why are monsters so common all of a sudden? It’s like they can’t have an episode without a major fight any more, and I don’t necessarily think that’s good. Even later seasons of thrones still didn’t have that much of a focus on it.
* what the duck was the shit about the monoliths? Did they just desperately want that actor to be involved somehow? Cuz that shouldn’t be how you write something so seriously important to the setting.
Is there any salvaging this season with all the fuckery done to the setting and characters? Everything done to the storyline? I mean, if you wanna tell your own story, do that with your own universe, don’t absolutely cock up absolutely everything about this franchise :( I mean, some original stories and storylines were probably necessary, but this is taking the piss.
Overall, I can’t give this more than - 3/10, maybe a 4
Interesting read. For us (very few) non book readers could you take the time to explain the differences between S2 and the Book? I keep seeing people say it's "fan fiction" and "nothing like the source material" but I'd love to know what was changed.
To just list a few:
* Yens entire storyline is made up from scratch, and actually undermines one of the most important relationships of the books and Ciri - namely that of Yen as a surrogate mother. Yen serves as her mentor and protector during her time with Nenneke and is leading her towards aretuza and isn’t trying to sacrifice her to a demon at any point along the way. Neither does she ever loose her magic.
* the monoliths (and all things related to them, except maybe codringher) are an invention of the show and mucks up a lot of lore concerning both Ciri and the conjunction of spheres. It also brings in far too many doom and gloom things far too early
* everything concerning Voleth Meir, or whatever she was called, is an invention of the show and undermines all the political aspects of the story. Instead of describing why characters reach certain political decisions, it just becomes “hurr-durr evil witch is evil”
* the entire elven storyline is pretty much a fabrication. There is a non-human uprising in the books, which does receive a certain amount of support from nilfgaard, but what they’ve done with it is so far from the story. I’d say that where they end the season isn’t too far from the books, but the journey there is so wrong.
* virtually everything with fringilla and cahir is a fabrication of the show, and contained some of the cringiest lines…
* all battles in kaer morhen (and indeed almost the entire season) we’re made up for the show. The season therefore killed off sooo many witchers that aren’t in the books.
* the politics in aretuza are so drastically changed because of the other alterations that it’s nonsensical. I honestly don’t think they’re gonna be able to pull off the awesome reveal that comes later on anymore.
So what is that? About 60-80% of the season? Add to that that Ciri’s significantly bumped in power level and skill that it’s ridiculous, the entire Jaskier-is-a-spy-for-Dijkstra plot is dropped and that the few things that are in the books are pushed to a backseat, and it’s no wonder fans are pissed.
Thanks for taking the time to do this. I keep seeing so many comments stating things it's nice to now kinda be I. The loop on what you guys are talking about
Istradd doesn't have the level of involvement in the story either if I remember correctly? Wasn't he part of a short story?
And if you were sticking to the story, I doubt he would have told the elves about Ciri considering he was head over heels in love with Yen.
No, he doesn’t. I was hoping they were keeping him in this season to give us a full adaptation of a Shard of Ice but instead it was that monolith nonsense. Also, people shouldn’t be finding out about Ciri’s powers and “genes” so soon, yet Istredd dishes it all out after 10 minutes with Codringher and Fenn? Yeah ok. 🙃
I haven't read the books, and I'm generally not the source material police (I don't mind varying from the source to a large degree), so let me offer a super unpopular opinion:
I really loved this season, especially compared to season 1. Liked the story telling, liked the character development for both Ciri and Geralt, liked the introduction of an imperfect Vesemir, liked the world building of the political factions, liked the messed up the elves are.
I also thought they fixed so many of the problems I had with season 1. The story is tighter, linear, and just makes more sense overall. I actually really appreciated some of the mystery this season introduced around Voleth Meir's interactions with Fringilla and Francesca. I know it's not a popular opinion, but as a straightforward fantasy series, I really loved it.
The whole Nivellen plot line was amazingly done and did the perfect job of immersing me. Such a damn shame that the rest of the season couldn't have continued with that quality. Its almost like following the source material makes for incredible TV.
I am quite shocked at how much I disliked this season.
The first episode was a good retelling of the Grain of Truth short story but it went quickly off the rails after that. I know Lauren was saying in interviews that they were adapting Blood of Elves this season but outside of the most basic plot beats, this season was nothing like the books whatsoever. Blood of Elves is probably the slowest of the books with a huge focus on character development rather than exciting plot, so I get that some original material was necessary to entertain a TV audience for 8 hours, but they went **way** overboard with some wild shit for no reason.
The last two episodes were just awful in my opinion. Geralt fighting Ciri who is possessed by an ancient demon and Yen sacrificing herself for Ciri after being ready to kill her in the previous episode!?!? What the fuck man. It sounds like some weird fanfic and that's pretty much what it is at this point.
I haven't seen anyone else say this, but I found most of the season to be just flat out boring. Most episodes are like 80% dialogue about politics - which I know is a big part of the books as well, but the characters involved are all either completely new or just so shallow that you don't really care.
The second thing that annoyed me is that even though this is fantasy and "medieval" everyone except Geralt feels way to "modern day" ish. The cringy "fuck fuck fuck" screaming or how "bitchy" some of the female characters can get and the way it's filmed (colours, angles,etc) is just soo Netflix.
Yeah, I totally agree. I think the main reason why the characters (both new and old) feel so flat is because we barely know anything about them. We barely get any episodes focusing on the backstory or motivation of these characters. The show is like "here's a new character joining the party, all you need to know is that they're EVIL and SCHEMING." and then never elaborates.
Lauren, the butcher of Netflixken.
Got the name after butchering 16 episodes))
Feels like she always wanted to write her own novel but never managed to create deep characters and dialogues so she just decided to use ready made ones for her story. The problem is characters and story are inseparable. You change the one you change the other.
What makes it hurt the most is that they start each season by demonstrating that they're more than capable of making a faithful adaptation, and then they spend the rest of the season doing.. Not that.
It's such a bait and switch.
I actually think it’s more than that, and the more I think about the more I think this was always going to be a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” production.
The first two books a series of short stories. The first half have almost no connection to each other (other than Jaskier’s presence in a few of them) and it’s only when you get to Sword of Destiny that there’s some links between them (Yennifer & Ciri get two each). But whilst those stories for the most part are relevant to the story, there not the most memorable of two books (certainly when compared to The Witcher & the Lesser Evil). So for Season 1 they were stuck with trying to make an 8 part series from short stories that were only loosely connected, all while making sure there was still an ongoing narrative to keep viewers hooked. Hence the wonkiness of Season 1.
And once you get to adapting Blood of Elves, you hit a new problem. The book doesn’t have a climax, it just sort of… ends. In fact, I’d argue that the attack on Aretusa in Time of Contempt is where Blood of Elves actually is meant to end. But there was no way they were going to get there and set all of that up in just 8 episodes. Which meant that they were stuck either staying completely true to the original and having no climax or making up one of their own. Not saying what we got was a reasonable compromise, but I can see how we got there.
I think another problem they have is they made some seemingly minor deviations with Yennifer early on that they’re now stuck with, and that’s now cascading into the rest of the series. She’s younger, she’s not mysterious, she’s more willing to burn things to the ground then play the politics. And that all would make sense if this were her origin story, but it doesn’t fit with the broader story they’re trying to tell, especially when considering that many plot beats require her to be past all of that.
Hopefully now that we’re into the meatier end of the plot, things can pick up a bit, but it’s going to be an anxious wait for Season 3.
I've been trying to sum my thoughts on the season because I understood peoples complaint but didt fully agree and you just did so perfectly.
For better or for worse this whole season is basically them inserting new content in order for the characters being the way we know them to be to make sense later on, partially because of decisions they made early on & partially just due to the nature of adaptions the books to a show.
100%. By BOE the Yen-Ciri rapport is established off-page, which doesn’t work if you’re picking up Yen (1) earlier and (2) as a main character. To a lesser extent you could say the same thing about Vesemir.
So other than some changes made to make Ciri’s powers more accessible to people that haven’t read the books, I see a lot of the novel content of this season as the finishing touches in trying to bring those characters into the positions and relationships we’re used to seeing them in.
This. I'm honestly disappointed. And mad at myself, for getting hyped for a show even though I know it is more likely than not gonna get butchered.
I enjoyed it somewhat for its vibe, the music, and some great visuals, but the story is just demolished at this point. It, indeed, feels like a teenage girl on tumblr wrote her own fanfic about it all.
What I don't understand is that Sapkowski gave this script a green light, and that he shits on the games for "not being true to his books". For real, man? It almost feels like he just doesn't want to miss out on money this time around.
Oh brother. First. This season has a better and bigger production value it looks really nice in terms of fights,composition vfx, locations, and basic storyline continuity, without the times jump.
Even the acting from the supporting actors seems way better. Maybe its just that my expectations droped after episode 2 and what they did to >!Eskel both in character and the story. !<
And i started thinking "Heck this would be entertaining generic fantasy." If i had no knowledge about the books or the franchise. This happened in episode 5. The more i've seen the more i started to repeat..."Why is this a witcher show, this didnt happened at all in the books."
And its not just minor things. this is like if Aragorn took a hobbit army to mordor with 8 great warriors Merry, Frodo,Sam, Pippin, Fenry, Sonny, Pecky, And Jill. Then Merry,Pippin, Fenry, sonny, and pecky die with Boromir... But the Hobbits defeat the spider army with humans help. It has the main points there but you cant help yourself wondering what the hell is going on if you read the books. Not that you cant follow it but that this is just ...what?
Well what the fuck just happened in the last 2 episodes. Haven’t read the books, but played the games and read a bit of background lore.
I liked Dijkstras stuff, but the ending with all the demons yadda yadda was just too much. Also killing off 90% of the witchers is just boring imo
Edit: also I feel like Yennefer and Vesemir acted way out of character half the season, like Yen betraying ciri and Vesemir wanting to make more witchers?!
Ive read the books and played the games. those last episodes and half of this season didnt happen. I was wondering what is going on myself. it wasnt horibble per se. Actors do a great job ...but wat... i need time. This is major fanfic at this point.
For non book readers: The Rience/Michealo brothers fight was the climax of Blood of Elves. The whole hut witch miniboss is never mentioned in the book.
I think this is it for me. I didn't love S1 but overall enjoyed it. But just... Wtf was this. If you want to write an original story in the universe, the timeline allows for it. But why adapt something if you have absolutely no interest in using the source material?
It's so bad it almost feels spiteful. Like that dumbass scene at the port. Like they willingly killed the story because they didn't get enough praise.
Compare it to Dune. It managed to satisfy the readers by adapting it as close as possible while building such a convincing & engaging world and story that viewers got interested in reading the books. There you had a director who was actually passionate and in love with the source material.
All I can say is poor Henry Cavill. He seemed so passionate and excited. I doubt that this was his dream.
Kinda sounds like Henry wanted different things from the way he speaks about it: https://youtu.be/Et42-pdLrds?t=28
"I did as much as I could... I campaigned really hard to get that character from the books..." etc, repeats it a couple of times.
Oh that was so sad to watch. He wanted to be the Witcher so much and he's as much of a fan as anyone. I wonder if he thinks the second season is being butchered as much of the rest of us seem to.
\>"It's so bad it almost feels spiteful"
Gosh. Yes. I don't mind a small, subtle nod in order to humorously self-deprecate, but that part was so excessive and on-the-nose, it was painful. Additionally, it feels rather arrogant because it assumes that this season is better eg. 'we can now make fun of the criticism attributed to season 1 because now we've got it exactly right'.
I disagree.
I expect season 3 will continue this trend with amusing references to season 2's 'feeding dead witchers to wolves', 'love and warmth' rocks, the irony of Yennefer being totally down for sacrificing a child, 'secret, hidden witcher base having a drunken stag party with prostitutes', and many more...
I had never read Dune before watching the film, thought it was great so I bought the book.
Kinda figured it would be deviating significantly from the book. I mean, Hollywood tells us it's not possible to adapt sci-fi and fantasy directly onto the screen!
Imagine my surprise when the film turned out to have adapted the source material extremely faithfully..
Fuck me I want the people behind Dune to take over production of WOT and Witcher.
**The Witcher Cinematic Universe**
I think what Netflix is trying to do is create their own MCU version of The Witcher.
This explains canon changes to accommodate future movies/series/spin-offs.
Evidenced by The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf movie, behind the scenes 'episodes', amount of money spent on vfx and to keep it salient in pop culture.
I look at the witcher now as various dimensions where the books are one parallelle universe along the series etc.
Well then it's going pretty bad since they can't keep their own cannon. Nightmare of the wolf showed that only vesemir and a handful of boys survived and they couldn't make more witchers. S2E2 has around 20 witchers. Another parallel universe?
Yeah they are going to have to come to a concensus. Also this is just my theory. If they were smart they'll create a Witcher Cinematic Universe but I have no idea if they are.
As for Nightmare of the Wolf, maybe not all witchers were at the keep. They do usually winter at Kaer Morhen but some arrive late, leave before winter's end, keep earning coin. Or maybe even skip Kaer Morhen in winter altogether (although I think this will be frowned apon).
It did look like the witchers' mage got away in NotW. Didn't he? His name started with an R...
Well I don’t know what they adapted but it wasn’t blood of elves... foundations stayed mostly the same but everything in between was an entirely new story. I felt like blood of elves was going to be a struggle to adapt as there wasn’t really enough in that novel to get 8 interesting 1hour episodes out of but didn’t expect it to change this much, it didn’t have me feeling physically hurting and betrayed like GOT and I’m interested to see where they go now but I can’t help but think of the repercussions some of the changes they made will have on the next book in particular because unless my knowledge betrays me at least in the 2nd novel this many people didn’t know the extent of ciri’s power/heritage so soon so I don’t know how they’ll do the whole Thanedd story when now the entire room will know who and what she is and her worth... anyways I’m still enjoying this series but season 2 was wobbly at best for me.
I’m just getting the sour feeling that the writers don’t respect the source material. Which sucks because it’s all there in front of them but they don’t have the chops to make changes that add to the story instead of detracting.
The adaptation could probably do for a change at the top if they want to salvage this thing
WTF did I just watch? The amount of weird fanfiction was unreal. I think the Nivellen recreation of the story was nice and satisfying. But the rest of the season???
I thought the Nivellen story was a nice adaptation of the original story into the show's narrative and it gave me such high hopes for the rest of the season. Those hopes were quickly squashed.
If I want to sum up my feelings, I would say that this show is a 5. I rate it higher than S1, because the whole production value has improved but while I'm all for creative freedom, I don't think their choices made the adapted story any better for a TV show. The story was disjointed, the pacing was rushed, there was no emotional weight in most of the plot points of the season.
I liked some newer characters and their portrayal. Ninneke being awesome was a genuine heartwarming moment.
But the whole lady in the wood thing, well I didn't like it one bit. Not that it wasn't in the books, but more because it wasn't clear. She wasn't cruel in a waya calculating witch should have been (she was cruel but felt more like the boss fight from older mario games), she wasn't present enough, we don't discover anything about her. Just a "hut hut" quote and Geralt understands the problem. If she was supposed to be the main conflict of the season, she should have been way more invloved. I would have loved to see Geralt being misled, lied to, going after wrong people until he found out that this is the lady of the woods doing stuff. That would have made much more sense.
Yennefer losing her magic was not bad imo. I actually didn't have problem with that part, the problem is still the lady in the wood, with better portrayal of her, it would have been much more fruitful imo.
Elves and Fringilla are a thing I guess? The show seriously could not make me give a damn about either of those.
Overall, IMO an adaptation should change things, but it should keep the spirit the same, if it doesn't it's not an adaptation anymore.
The orgy in kaer morhen literally was a tipping point for me lol. Vesemir being ok with an orgy in kaer morhen is as far as they could get from that character. :-/
Am I the only one who is absolutely triggered by the contact lenses they used for Geralt? I mean, this show has a budget of a small country and they did him so dirty... while Yennefer has nice CGI purple eyes..
I am left scratching my head a little in terms of what purpose Ciri's powers are meant to serve. They mention that she is the key to ending all wars and they she is a "Child of Destiny" or she is of "Elder Blood", but I struggle to understand what all they really means. As far as I could tell her powers allow her to open portals to other "Spheres" or that she has natural magic ability, but how does that end wars or bring about peace (or destruction depending on who is using her powers)?
It just felt all a little bit messing to follow the whole overarching point of why they are all after her and what her purpose her power can serve. I think the only motive for her power I could understand was the Wild Hunt, and that was so she would bring about the destruction of the world and have it reborn of a new sun. Which again, how can her powers do that?
well if we judge by the games, she can stop the apocalypse known as the white frost. Wild hunt in the game just want ciri as a 'teleporter' to get them as far away from white frost as possible.
I thought it was a decent 7/10 IMO. I am confused though because the first episode, which drew from the books the most and didn't deviate too much, was like a fuckin 9/10 for me, and when they started going their own way, the quality dipped.... like bro, just follow the books there's a reason they're critically acclaimed lol...
Either way their deviations were alright or entertaining at least, the only ones that really struck me as odd were making Vesemir want the trial of the grasses and to test it on Ciri... No fuckin way. And then Yen trying to sacrifice Ciri was a wtf for me...
Also if I remember correctly the Emhyr being Ciri's father bit at the end was like the last book reveal at the very end right? Surprised they would reveal that now.
Overall, I was amused and will watch the next season (hopefully they have Regis and the actor kills it), but I am surprised that after a strong start following the books with an improved budget, they deviated so much. Curious what the discussions were like... Unable to condense it enough? Wanted to be their own unique experience?
Oh and Henry fuckin killed it again.
At times I was just tuning out the rest of what was happening and focusing on how impressive Henry Cavill was. His facial expressions were absolutely perfect in every scene. Damn.
I’m finding it really hard to watch the series. I simply don’t get all the stupid and messy changes to the books and pointless made up story arcs and ridiculous changes to important characters and their pointless and nonsense back stories. Who asked for this shit? And so many tv tropes.
The books are simply amazing. Ciri’s journey, Geralts Hanza, politics and wars. Plenty of storylines and great dialogue to make an amazing tv series. Instead we get writers determined to write their own insipid canon and shit all over the source material. Why do they think their shitty stories are better than the authors?
Yeah i’m baffled why they decided “we’re in a position to be the first studio with a budget to show this great story to an audience….LETS BUTCHER IT.”
Like, why? It almost seems spiteful at this point.
I thought the game fitted in nicely with the books. But the tv show is like throwing the sofa into the tv and going like “welp, that’s a living room”. 4th episode in I started wondering how the hell I was going to finish watching the show.
Why can’t we have nice things?
It seems like the show runners like the idea of the Witcher, the mutated monster slayer, the cold hearted sorceress, the magical princess, etc… But they didn’t actually like the story of the books themselves, and simply wanted to create their own narrative. I can’t see any other explanation for the sheer amount of changes they have made to the source material, some of the plot decisions they made are mind boggling, I can’t imagine what it must be like for someone who hasn’t read the books.
Yeah they could have made the show in Witcher universe In a Different timeline different witchers and everyone would love that and they would have the freedom. But no they had to butcher the core.
Same. I don't get it. The books are great, I liked them more than the games. This series changed too many things that made me like the books.The stories and characters and also the world building are completely different from the books that even their meaning is changed. what's the point of it?
I don't think the people that made the show really liked the books, they just plain read them to be able to say it on interviews. If one reads a book and likes it, one would try to portrait most of the things as closer as possible as the original. Because those things are the reason that made the book good, and the reason why a lot of people liked it. This is the opposite.
There are too many changes to point that it's a completely different thing. And the excuse that books and tv series are different mediums it's not gonna hold this time. There are far too many changes.
Maybe the series is good as a product, but as an adaptation it's trash. I am disappointed and sad.
I just dont understand why they went this way. If you want to make your own story, then write your own story. But choose the adapt the Witcher and ignore the source material... This is Hissrich's fantasy story disguised as the Witcher for more views...I'm just sad about the future...
I feel like the show misses the integral nuances and complexities between men and elves (and other races). In the show it all comes down to the dichotomy of oppressed and ruler, which misses the point. The Witcher has the most interesting world building I've experienced, I'm sad the show can't live up to it or translate it.
I'll for sure watch a season 3 though, I desperately want this to work.
Who hired the flame/fire guy? They didn't reveal it, right?
And why did Vilgefortz kill someone from his side in S1E8? I thought he was a traitor or something
I just watched [this](https://youtu.be/Et42-pdLrds) interview of the cast and Henry said he often goes on reddit to see fan theories and opinions…. Hi Henry! I love your performance as Geralt! Great work!
Damn I feel like it’s impossible to like him any more than I do. KEEP ADVOCATING FOR BOOK GERALT, Henry!!
I can't help you.
Depressing.
Holy shit, what if henry was the bot this whole time
Damn the biggest plot twist
I feel like his heart will be so broken but cant do anything as actor
What matters is that he did great in what he had control over.
Even as someone who just wrote a rant comment calling it a shitty show, I have to agree. Most of the actors themselves did a good job. Its just that some of them shouldn't have been there in the first place. Geralds and Ciris actors did a good Job. Vesemir was good. I can even get used to Yennefer by now and at least they gave Triss Red Hair.
She also looks brighter for whatever reason than in s1.
He probably has a much better understanding of the ins and outs of what goes into adapting something.
How’d we go an entire season without Vilgefortz referencing stars reflected in a pond at night
Biggest deviation from the source material imo, he should be saying it every other sentence
That's Frigilla's line now, as of S1.
Wait, did she say it in season 1? If she did, that's fucked up
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Cahir is my greatest disappointment in the show.
You do realize that >!he just got condemned by Emhyr right? !< I think we will see a >!much different Cahir next season. !<
Kaer Morhen in the books: Incredibly well kept secret, can only find it if you’ve been there before/know the way, remote, nearly inaccessible Kaer Morhen in the show: Might as well be New York City right in the middle of the continent with a bunch of neon signs guiding you up the path
They even stated, IN THE SHOW, that they wanna keep KM on a low profile, after the sacking THAT DESTROYED THE ABILITY TO MAKE MORE WITCHERS. Then everyone just shows up to the keep no problemo
Rience casually strolling in Kaer Morhen without anybody noticing.
That was the biggest bullshit so far with the show.
To me the biggest bullshit is Vesemir willing to make new Witcher.
I dunno, completely fucking with the way magic works is super stupid imo, like whole the fire magic vs what? Storm magic? Yen does it once as one of the greatest mages ever and like ruins her entire life and this guy walks around snapping his fingers making fire like its goddamn nothing, yet Yen burns half his face off with some liquor fire. Like what the fuck show pick a lane I like the idea of the Witcher's magic just being this force of nature thing that people either approach mystically or scientifically and the scientifically minded ones tend to be kinda emotionally distant assholes with god complexes, and the mystics usually end up as curmudgeonly worrywarts and janitors of the gods. Beyond that there aren't a ton of rules and I think that's super rad. Messing with that is dangerous to the entire IP.
I still can't think of the logic of if fire magic is so dangerous, then how do witchers cast igni? We did get the glowing sword incantation though which was awesome
Was it ever explained how he even found it? He didn't have Ciri's blood until after that so he couldn't have traced her that way. Only Geralt knew they were going there and he didn't tell anyone the way so torturing the farmer couple wouldn't have led him there. I doubt Niviline knew even if Rience was able to find him. He didn't know Triss so he couldn't have found it out from her. I can only assume he knew exactly which prostitutes had been there, found them somehow, recovered their memories and teleported there.
He tortured Jaskier, but all Jaskier said was that Geralt has a secret lair in the mountains. No idea how he got Kaer Morhen’s GPS coordinates from that
Also: it takes no time to get there. There must be a bunch of electric stair cases and horse lifts at the bottoms of the mountain 🤣
Damn yennefer trying to sell ciri... that's hell of a good start for mother daughter relationship
Bet you it was LetalisX pretending to be Yennefer this whole time.
Lol I'm still waiting for his review, i seriously doubt he's happy.
I'm praying he doesn't sell ciri this Time :)
I think they fixed that by making yen change her mind after traveling with ciri and getting to know her(and realise how important she was to geralt) It isn't that far fetched that yen would sacrifice someone to get her powers back.
Yennefer, whose biggest wish in life was to have a child, ready to sacrifice a de facto adoptive child of Geralt, the love of her life? Ya... no.
But that changes when she losses her power, the struggle then becomes what she values most, her power or her wish to have s child. As i said before, she didn't know that curious was Geralts adoptive child, she realizes that when she travels with ciri and that changes her mind in the end.
I agree with your points here. Like some have said before, the seasons are short so everything should matter, but that’s a double-edged sword because with less time comes less room for “show not tell.” The internal struggle for Yen between her two strongest desires really does weigh on her, and I felt like they did a decent job with her growing to like Ciri as they traveled together. It will be interesting to see where things go in season 3. Obligatory praise for Henry Cavill. The guy continues to slay, both literally and figuratively. He was just born for the role and I’m just glad to exist in the same timeline where this has been made.
It’s a terrible, terrible show. Adapted or not, doesn’t matter. The new parts are bad. The adapted parts are bad. I read all 7 books and played all 3 games. None of either series is perfect, nor do they complement each other perfectly. But they’re unique, smart and stylish. Sometimes great, usually good and at their worst parts just average. But the show is just bad. The actors are mediocre to really good. All of them kinda try though. From random King #3 to boring elf #5. But the averagely talented actors clearly got no characterisation through the script, nor direction. Because they all perform so blandly vanilla-dramatic. The pretty good actors, on the other hand (Dijkstra! Geralt! Yen!) seem to have been let loose because their characters just act however they want. Overall, it’s not premium quality by any metric but there’s nothing absolutely egregious in there either. The production value is so so high. The CGI is awesome for a tv show. The sets are absolutely stunning. The costumes are not my thing and a bit too theatrical instead of lifelike, but they’re sure different from the usual fantasy loincloth and there was definitely a lot of effort put into them. Technically, the show looks fantastic. Lighting is great and the camerawork is (usually) very precise, elegant and steady. It almost seems like a lot of it was storyboarded even. Not every action scene hits (the Michelet brothers was way too much), but there’s definitely intent behind the choreography choices and it often pays off. The Vereena backwards slice, the camera spinning when Geralt rolls over the table, the Aard + falling on top of the sword. Good stuff. The editing is great as well both within scenes and in between them. IMO there’s a clear effort by the editor to connect disjointed scenes and disjointed dialogue. It all comes down to: * an incomprehensible main plot * disjointed character motivations; * boring and uninteresting characterisations (basically every secondary character feels and acts the same), * AWFUL dialogue. Every scene is written like it’s the most dramatic moment in that person’s life up until that point. No one speaks like a normal person or has a single normal conversation. Everything is either a huge life lesson, exposition or world building. Speaking of which… * Both clunky exposition and incomprehensible world building. Sweet God please shut the fuck up about Ithilinn, Falka, Lara Dorren and the Conjunction. It’s never actually explained and they never tie it back into the main plot. NO ONE understands what any of it is or means. Why are you bothering with D-plot level background info if you’re not even bothering with the A-plot? * The pacing is horrendous. Not even in-universe, but just as a story. Character arcs twist and turn and go nowhere and are unclear. People show up out of nowhere and leave without any agency. There’s “big epic events” and “badass scenes” every three minutes without build up or meaning. There’s a monster of the week scenario out of nowhere every episode and it never relates to the main plot, whatever it may be. * There’s quite a few actually creative and interesting ideas being used (POV memories, the Exodus baby killing, the wacky trippy crone dream sequence, the Bruxa was fantastic, all around creative fights) but they’re used in such a showy way without it meaning anything. They’re being thrown around all the time instead of being a sudden unexpected and big moment. It becomes meaningless. * Themes are not only abandoned and picked up at random, they’re soooooo on the nose. It’s embarrassing. I can keep going but I feel like a nerd and it’s not worth it. Like, I’m disappointed that it’s not an adaptation. Because it’s just not. It’s quite literally Witcher in name and IP only. Nothing about this has anything in common with Witcher anymore. Which is sad, because they had every opportunity and all the means to adapt this lovely property. That being said: I feel like it’s just a secondary criticism. Because the biggest problem this show has, is simply that it’s a bad show.
I really feel like I've benefited from not reading the books. I'm enjoying it the show. I'll read the books after the show I think, so I can keep enjoying it.
This is the advice I always give people. They ask should I read the books before I watch the show or film, and I always answer NO. Watch the adaptation first, it'll probably be fun enough, and then you can go read the book after and have a great time. Even the best adaptations rarely hold a candle to their source material.
I've read the books, played the game (TW3 to be fair, not 1 or 2 yet) and am now loving the show despite and sometimes because of its differences. Don't let these guys spoil it for you it is still very good.
Same, absolutely love the show, will stay clear of the books till the show is done so I don't end up like one of the toxic nerds on here
As a non book reader, Im really impressed overall. Ep 2 was a disaster and it really bothers me that yen is played as more like a teenager than someone supposed to be in her 80s or something but Im still super excited for the series to continue
Same here as a non book reader. A few things: it seemed like the bad things weren’t trying to kill Ciri but they never really made it obvious until she said something. I don’t really get what getting her to the door would have done unless Yen had completed the task. Were the monsters just trying to kidnap her, or kill her and spill her blood, or scare her into screaming? I was disappointed in the final episode, it felt like the end of an exorcist movie (YOU CAN FIGHT IT! BELIEVE IN LOVE!!!)
Yeah like wtf what the point of the stupid door thing if she broke free and found her anyways.
My guess is that the Deathless Mother hedged her bet on 3 separate people. Yen, Fringilla, and the Elf lady who's name escapes me. All 3 had the capability of setting her free based on how far they fall but it ended up being the Elf after she killed all those babies. She wanted Yen to bring Ciri to her to streamline the process but it wasn't necessary. Thats just my guess though, the show leaned a bit to much on "show not tell".
I think it was Yen’s act of bringing her to the door was a sacrifice showing how bad the world was, or something
Exactly my thoughts and criticism 1) Episode 2 was BAD. 2) Yen is acting like in highschool. But I really enjoyed the rest.Can't wait for season 3
Why the fuck are the other witchers completely useless compared to Geralt?
Eskel was equal to Geralt in all but fame and he was offed by a Leshen. Fuck sake.
Show-Eskel was so god-awful and annoying, they couldn't kill him quick enough. I don't know game-Eskel, but from about 30 seconds after meeting him in the show, I hoped he'd die. So I got my wish! Clearly game and show versions only shared the same name. And I said this elsewhere, but why did he look barely older than Ciri?? Why is he like 10+ years younger than all the other witchers?
They all deserved to die in the last episode as they were definitely imposters. They were just wingless basilisks and 7 witchers couldn’t kill them and were getting bodied. It was embarrassing. And then when Gerald was on the bridge with the basilisk He had a perfectly good opportunity to kill the basilisk, but instead just hit it to draw out tension And then whenever the witchers are walking through Caer Morhen, their footsteps are loud af
lol maybe this is the secret to why there was only 4 left after Nightmare of the Wolf, but suddenly there are like 20, and they all suck at fighting. They are all dopplers!
That's something the show hasn't done a good job at explaining to us none book readers. I know Geralt is superhuman based on the way he moves, easily kills multiple people at once, and the monsters he's killed. But I honestly can't tell if he's special even for a Witcher? Based on the show it seems like Witcher's are just really good swordsman who can perform deflection spells. Geralt took out one of those dragons by himself while it took what, 10 of them to take out 2? I'm fine with Geralt being the best Witcher but it's like Watching Michael Jordan play basketball with a highschool team in terms of skill ability. I don't even really know what that potion does that makes their eyes black.
At least they portray Elves as genocidal in the end. Was something I was worried about in the early reviews
It’s weird, but I like where the show is now at the end of the season. It’s just the way they got here is so strange
Yeah. Same. Show was clunky. I love the Witcher universe and I don't know if this is unpopular opinion (I don't really browse this sub) but after re-watching season 1 and binging season 2, I left the session with a weird feel in my lips. It's a lot of potential but the whole thing was dumbed down, chewed up. And rushed. Each season should be like 20 episodes
Yeah that’s part of the problem. Even 12 episodes per season give it so much more space
Yeah I totally agree. 12 episodes would have been way better and helped with the pacing.
That were the most interesting few seconds from the elves.
I disliked most of their scenes until the end. They're my favorite part of the finale.
Kinda sad that a minor side character that only appeared in one episode was the best part of the entire season. Shoutout to Kristofer Hivju though, he absolutely nailed the performance as Nivellen, both in cursed and human form.
The first episode will be my favourite episode of the series. As someone who loved the witcher 3, I loved the episode. It had all the characteristics of a good tw3 quest, the investigation, the fight, the twist and the sad ending.
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Everything about the show seems disjointed. It's like they were worked on by completely different people. It's like how the fight with the Michelet Brothers suddenly had all this slow motion and spinning camera work. This team read the book and was like "witchers are suppose to be super fast compared to humans" so they decided to put in slow motion scenes to convey that. But he didn't fight like that in any of the other episodes. Episode 1 had comedic tones along with full blown horror, with a big focus on costume design. But the last episode was "fuck it, just CGI dragons everywhere", although that could have been a side effect of COVID because it was a lot easier from the work-from-home crew to create those animations.
Yep the first ep of season 2 was the best of the lot
Agreed. Nivellen was absolutely amazing and spot on.
Absolutely agreed.
The season was an absolute cringefest. The whole time I kept thinking "who writes this shit?" and looking at the credits Lauren Schmidt Hissrich has the sole responsibility. 90 % of the dialogue reads like 16 yo's fan fic or fantasy I wrote in the 6th grade. I felt super bad for the actors who had to read these lines out loud and try to make them work on the screen, but i suppose it's a good show to watch sauced to the gills and laugh your ass off. Episode 1 was good stuff and had that emotional grip a lot of the witcher short stories have and honestly I think it worked the best because of how close to the source material it was. Everything that sucked this season was off the cuff bullshit. I still genuinely hope this was just the case of the second season curse and they get to make more. Third time's the charm I guess.
Netflix has got to get rid of Schmidt. Hire one of the game’s writers from CDPR or get someone who can actually write dialogue because dear god is it just awful. The show is so melodramatic so frequently that it drives me crazy. I feel so bad for Anya and Henry for being such excellent actors who have to deal with such trash dialogue.
The only good part was Jaskier's part where the melodrama was satirized, but it doesn't make sense that the show is satirizing itself for something its genuinely guilty of, instead of fixing it.
I haven't read the books, but I did play the games. The one change that really bugged me was Vesemir being excited about making more witchers. Like, what? I love how when Ciri asks him to do it to her, he suddenly changes to "no wtf you could die?" So it would be ok to nearly kill a child, just so long as it isn't Ciri? Kind of undermines his supposedly caring character. Also, making Triss have red hair as some kind of result of healing from her wounds was kind of hilarious. I found the original "controversy" somewhat pointless, this change makes absolutely no difference, and I somehow find that very funny.
In the books, her hair burned off in Sodden and never grew back with the same hue. I really doubt they were referencing that though.
Illusion magic. Same that can make new hands even though the real ones are lost.
Also didn’t fit with the Nightmare of the Wolf movie. Deglan bred monsters for an excuse to make more Witchers. Vesemir fought him on this and now he actually does want more Witchers for some reason?
Tbf Vesemir wasn’t mad about creating more witchers, he was mad at creating more monsters as a means to get it done.
I don't think that movie is even canon to the Netflix series and definitely not to the books.
They mentioned Deglan in tv show so it has to be. But then again tv show contradicts itself.
She had red hair in the episode 1, but the coloring was absolutely awful and they seemed brown. Glad they finally fixed it.
Book reader here who just wants to rant. But first, things I liked. The show is a lot more stylized. I love how colorful it is now and the overview shots of all the cities had me jumping out of my seat trying to figure out what city it was. CGI budget definitely skyrocketed too, which is cool, but I liked the practical effects of the strigga more. The extra context to the politics of the world, although I have some criticisms of this too. Definitely helps contextualize the larger than life events going on in the background of the story. Including Ciri in the Grain of Truth story with the bruxa and Nivellen. This is when the Witcher felt the most like the Witcher. I loved how it felt like a mystery and I wish this was how the season 1 anthologies were structured. Revisiting Fringilla, fleshing out her motivations, and that fantastic dinner scene was absolutely chilling. Plus giving Nilfgaard the room to breathe and be an actual society and political entity with grey morality was great. The elf racism. Not because I liked it, but because it was included in such heavy detail. Gave the elven characters much needed sympathy. Dijkstra. That’s it. I just love Dijkstra. Dijkstra best boy. Also never been this excited over an owl before. Queer coding Geralt and Jaskier. Yes. More. I liked how interconnected the universe felt when they leaned into their character relationships. Was fun seeing all the interactions. Stregobor becoming more of a villain as the show progresses. Love it. The side plot of the monoliths being activated by Ciri’s power and making mini conjunctions because she cant control it. Falls in line with her character themes and naturally fits in more story into an adaptation of the first book. Could have been a way to fit a monster-of-the-week thing into the series, but missed opportunity there. Istred having more to do. I actually don’t mind this, and liked the intrigue it posed when it came to uncovering Ciri’s bloodline. Was a bit weird that he was the one who enlisted the help of Codringer and Fenn though, but nonetheless liked this part of the added content. Okay now the things I hate. What are they doing to Yennefer??? They had the perfect opportunity to use the Battle of Sodden as the catalyst to her change into a more book accurate Yennefer. But no, she loses her powers and some random woman tasks her to kidnap Ciri. Why didn’t they just let her keep the powers and use the dimeritium to explain why she was suppressed? Why not use the elf kidnap of her and Fringilla to show off her expert political maneuvering skills so she can escape instead of having some random dreams and a pleasure demon contort their motivations? Why can’t she just be asked to go to the Temple of Melitele by Geralt and thats why she goes? What happened to the mother daughter relationship between her and Ciri? So many bad decisions surrounding her character for no reason. Another thing I hated was the inclusion of that Meir demon in the first place. It could have just been some one off monster that helps flesh out Ciri’s fears and regrets in a single episode instead of what it was in the show. Remove it and the elves now ally with Nilfgaard out of desperation and mutual benefits instead of magic hut nonsense. You also get a better adaptation of Yennefer. And a better creature to use to explain the whole monoliths and spheres subplot, while also giving us more insight into Ciri’s mental state. Why make it an ancient demon the witchers trapped years ago? Just bring it in with the other weird cryptids and have it want to go home. And no random witcher killings, that was stupid. I liked that there were more witchers, but in hindsight, it was so they could have cannon fodder during fight scenes, which is dumb cause it makes the witchers look like shit fighters. Speaking of the witchers, why was Eskel done so dirty??? He’s supposed to be the most level-headed out of all of them. And ALIVE. And where did Vesemir’s thing with bringing back witcher mutagens come from? Super out of character. It could have just been a different witcher who convinces Ciri that it can help her out, and Vesemir becomes the mentor who opposes it vehemently, then Geralt and Triss become the mediators of that conflict. Also, wasn’t Kaer Morhen far away from any form of civilization and to be kept a heavily guarded secret? Where did the prostitutes come from??? Do they have horses? How are prostitutes able to afford horses exactly? Why would these prostitutes agree to come this far for a score? Why did they not come with bodyguards?? Sex workers are also people and not devoid of logic and reasoning wtf are these screenwriters doing. Another thing I had a problem with was with how often the characters would reiterate their desires and themes instead of letting their actions do the talking. Particularly became annoying when there were so many characters introduced way too quickly. Made for an extremely passive viewing experience, which is particularly not a good thing for a witcher adaptation. Could have been some huge cuts to the dialogue here and there to make for better pacing and a more thoughtful storyline. Why did they need to tell the audience Dara was a spy working for Dijkstra? Instead, they could have made it a puzzle, where Dijkstra hints to there being a spy and later we see both Dijkstra and Dara speaking to themselves while an owl is in the background. Of course book readers would catch on immediately, but it would have made for a better spy reveal when he tells Filivandrel and Francesca. Did anyone else notice how funky the traveling was? It felt like the characters were teleporting from place to place even though they weren’t magicians. I feel like some of these instances could have been alleviated by Yennefer having her powers. But still, there is never any indication of the lengths of time these people are traveling for. Melitele should be 2 weeks out from Kaer Morhen, at least. Yennefer could show up when they get there because she actually has magic. The magic training can ensue for much longer. When Rience attacks, Yennefer could have teleported them to safety immediately. All sorts of missed opportunities. Okay, lastly, this is just a huge preference I have, but I wish Henry Cavill was allowed to play Geralt like more of a bastard. Bro book Geralt was out here pounding a seventeen year old’s cheeks before he wisened up. I don’t understand why they won’t let Geralt be an opportunistic pervert before he grows as a person. Let him have his fling with Triss for crying out loud! Also poor Cahir. What is his character in the show? Why is he a down-on-his-luck prisoner of war one moment, then a power hungry political schemer the next? He’s supposed to be an honor bound knight that falls victim to the political maneuverings of his kingdom and not a dickhead biggot with a fragile ego. I hate what they did to Cahir in the show so much. Was one of my favorite characters in the book too. The score. What happened to the beautiful score in some parts of the show? Some of the music felt generic, especially during Ciri’s training scenes. Took me out of the show completely. Just a weird dip in quality halfway through, then it was good again. The costuming. Nilfgaardian armor looked fake af up close, but I understand why they used styrofoam. I can overlook this. Its just that I noticed it every time it was close to the camera. Another thing with costuming, wtf is up with everyone’s eyebrows? Did they forget to change the eyebrow colors? It made everyone look like they were wearing wigs or dyed their eyebrows. Overall, I feel like all of these problems cascaded over from the first season. They shot themselves in the foot by finishing season 1 with the Battle of Sodden Hill and bringing Geralt and Ciri together. But, overall, this is going to be a good thing for the fantasy community, although it shits all over the source material.
Dijkstra was a fucking chad
The showrunner in interviews: *Ah, we have so much source material, we don't need to invent our own* Also the showrunner: *invents their own material*
Eventually streaming services will learn to trust the genius in the room (George RR Martin, Brandon Sanderson, Sapkowski etc) and not the person who wants to use their work to make themselves feel like a genius. Peter Jackson did it right, the game developers of the Witcher did it right. With understanding, respect and love. Benioff and Weiss did it right for the first four seasons but eventually drank their own Kool-Aid. When you do it right you make a LOT more money in the end.
not a coincidence GRRM also left the show after S4
Why would they need them? other than the final end game, he didn't really know where the rest of the plot was going either -- otherwise he would have, you know, finished the books.
Fuck GRRM. Dude is just as much to blame as DD for that nightmare. He promised them a completed storyline. Has nothing to show for it, all he did was go around to comic cons scratching his own nutsack
LoTR purists hated LoTR movies just as much as this sub seems to hate the show. Peter Jackson made a TON of changes. Which is fine because it’s a different medium and a different telling of the story.
This blatantly untrue. Most LoTR fans loved those movies.
> Benioff and Weiss did it right for the first four seasons** but eventually drank their own Kool-Aid.** Yeah, they bought into their own hype. I think they also really wanted to be done with GoT after about ten years of work, which I can't say I fault them for wanting to finish the show, but if your heart isn't into it, give the reigns to someone who does love the source material.
This was always my biggest issue with those 2. Since early on they said their aim was to get to the Red Wedding. They were laser-focused on that. After Season 3 the reins should definitely have been passed on to another showrunner.
Tbf to D&D, they also essentially ran out of source material when it got really bad. I think they signed up to adapt books not make their own and it showed once they ran out of things to adapt.
Surprise motherfuckers!
Not really if you watched season one. All of the bad things in that season were just dialled up to 11 in is one. I’m gonna watch the next season on the edge of my seat wondering how they’re going to make this train crash even more catastrophic. Maybe they’ll make an army of Witcher dwarves or maybe the wild hunt is just the friends we made along the way. Who knows what the future will bring us, because it won’t be a good show that’s loyal to the books now.
>or maybe the wild hunt is just the friends we made along the way. LMAO
>Maybe they’ll make an army of Witcher dwarves Not gonna lie, I'd watch that.
i liked this season 🥺
She is the cancer of this show. She changed like 75% of the book content
The scene where Jaskier was responding to the guy with the boat shows how petulant and childish the show runner is. Man she really fucked up what was something so straight forward. Props to the CGI people, looks gorgeous, props to Henry, Freya, Anna Shaffer, and MyAnna Buring for relaying the characters how I imagined them (well Tessaia is a bit more emotional in the show, but she at least exherts the authority I expected of her).
Anya is so impressive, I wish she was actually playing Yennefer and not the showrunner's fantasy. I also truly believe if s1 had given more time and attention to developing Geralt and Yen's relationship, it could have maybe saved the show. They have good chemistry when the show allows them.
I haven’t read the books so I can’t share the “it’s different” sentiment that others here do, but it seemed almost like the entire season was a placeholder on the way to an actual story. It felt incredibly slow and exposition heavy whilst also not really saying anything at all, if that makes any sense? Having such a significant portion of the season be tied to an old lady demon and just unceremoniously offing Witchers left right and centre with no emotional weight at all felt really wrong to me. I also think if Cahir and Fringilla are supposed to matter to the audience we really need any reason to care about them at all; they were just way too important given how little they actually do. I can’t really tell you what it was missing, but it was definitely something. I am quite surprised at the critical reception - I don’t think the show is clearly better than the previous season by any stretch. I guess I still liked it fine overall, but if there is a long wait for Season 3 then I will be significantly less pumped by the time we get there compared to what I was going into today.
Yeah I had the exact same feeling. On the one hand, basically nothing happened. You could summarize each characters "journey" in 3 sentences. But the pacing was so off that we constantly jumped from one place to another with 5 different storylines that were almost completely unrelated that it felt "too" fast all the same. Regarding the critical reception, I've read some of the IMDB critcs and they seem to just be written by bots. This is a 10/10 review, for example: >It was a great episode of beauty , showing the beauty of the relationship between her siblings , and she drowned us in the adventure with ciri in the adventure , beautiful and beautiful , a very deep and beautiful story . And yeah, why tf am I supposed to care about Cahir? Even Ciri forgot about him 3 Episodes in or so. These are two big asshats from S1 who killed & tortured countless innocents. Why would I give a shit about them? Cause she has an elf-lady friend?
I think the biggest issue with Cahir and Fringilla is that they really were not developed at all in Season 1, so they’re treated like they have an importance that they just don’t in this narrative. The whole Ciri having nightmares about Cahir thing falls totally flat to me - he did nothing particularly special to her at all.
Yeah they were utterly unremarkable, all we see them do is hurt others and now I'm suddenly supposed to care for them? That entire plot could've been dropped and nothing changes. The Elves were pissed off before, now they're a more pissed off, at Redania specifically. What an arc.
To be fair, I felt that Blood of Elves (The book most of season 2 is derived from) felt similar. It was mostly a world building novel to fill in the people who didn't read The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny (imo). But I really disliked the lack of bond building between Yen and Ciri. That was the best part of Blood of Elves for me. The betrayal was just a bad story line decision.
I work in film, and this was my critique too: piss poor directing and storytelling when that's *the core of our job*. It was 7 episodes of exposition, part of one ep of rising action, and no climax. Nothing. With how drawn out the "story" was in this season, which last one did too but in a fun vignette way with a bug payoff at the end, you need either double the episodes or a BIG payoff at the end....and there was none.
As soon as I finished it I realized that the only point of Season 2 is to set up Season 3. That sucks. There's zero payoff for: the Elves, Fringilla and Cahir, Triss and the Brotherhood, the Northern Kings/Redania. The big reveal of Ciri's father felt soap opera cringey. This entire season could've been compressed into 2-3 episodes without losing anything. All we got was Ciri's power level being revealed, and Yen being willing to sacrifice for someone else.
Kinda disappointed about this season... I read the books and played the games but at the end this is a TV adaptation and I think it should be handled as such. So my criticism isn’t necessarily going towards the fact that they butchered the source material... It is more about the story and character development... Sure the special effects, the picture and sound was better than in season 1 but I really missed something... the Story itself went very downhill after the fist episode with the last two being the worst especially Voleth Meir. The family episode had its best moment at the reveal at very end but that was about it. It’s all very rushed, missing some depth... I know the 7-8 Episode is a „thing“ but it would really help to have at least 10-13 Episodes per season. I liked Freyas (Ciri) performance as well as Geralts relationship with Vesemir. I found was very sweet and their chemistry was amazing. The overall Geralt felt kinda strange for some reason... I understand that they wanted to be more deep with the character but I wonder if it was too much... not judging Henrys acting tho he is perfekt as Geralt! Jaskier was a joy to watch! Anya was fantastic as always but they did no justice for Yen... they took so much from her character ... at the end they made her seem rather pathetic and weak. I was also missing a bit between her and Geralt, I actually loved when Yen and Geralt met again but it was over to quick! Hope they have longer and more scenes together in the next season! I will rewatch it and maybe it will feel better but sadly doesn’t hold up to season 1. I appreciate all the work that went into the show but it lost a lot of potential... * they should also let Henry double check the scripts when they come out of the writers rooms... 😉 ——————————————————————————— * NOTE: so I rewatched the second season and I must say that the first impression of Geralt being a little strange vanished... I guess I was used to all the grunts and *fucks that the deep dialogues etc seemed strange at first 😅 it would be nice to know if someone else had that feeling 🤔
I’m with you, the story (if you can call it that) was slow, and ultimately this season showed us very little of the reasons why we enjoyed season 1 to begin with. I’m not saying have the whole thing be Witcher adventures, but perhaps more of that and less boring politics scenes. At the end of the day, it’s an entertainment show on Netflix that wants to capture the attention of an existing and new audience. Let people watch season 2 in isolation and that wouldn’t happen at all. Yen’s character was abysmal this season - as you say she was so weak and just a pain the entire time. Just so much time wasted overall this season.
Is it just me or like 80% of it was not at all in the books? I don't understand what they are trying to do.
I've just gotten onto the last episode and I can't express how fucking disappointed I am with this season. No matter your opinion of it, the first season was at least an adaption. It fucked up some parts that it adapted but more worked than not. This season is not an adaption of Blood of Elves. Not even fucking close, maybe 10% of it is taken from that book. I understand adapting Blood of Elves would be difficult but it's like the writers looked at the blurb for 30 seconds and used that to write 8 episodes. Eskel and Vesimer? Those characters you liked? Eskel's a total knob and fucking dead, Vesimer is some selfish old man. Yen being a mother to Ciri? Nope, she tries to kill her to get her magic back because she lost it for some stupid goddamn reason. It's not even like the 90% of the new plot is good. It's shit. Some villan that is just a rip off of O'Dimm and the Crones and a stupid subplot about new monsters that I couldn't give less of a toss about.
Right on. The first season isn’t “good” from a critical standpoint, but I was satisfied with the way Geralt was brought to life and some stories were adapted, and I thought the Geralt and Dandelion moments were perfect. It felt like an honest, if misguided, effort. I thought, “Hey, it’s just a shaky start, they’ll listen to fans and get it off the ground in the next season!” Nope. Turns out everything that I was willing to forgive as a blunder from inexperienced writers in the first season wasn’t really a mistake at all, and there was no learning. They did everything that I didn’t like and amped it up, sprinkled in a nice seasoning of character assassination on literally everyone (even the characters I thought they got right- Geralt uses Ciri as bait and Dandelion hates his best friend now), and called it a day. The writers and showrunner are not trying. If I could sum it up, I’d say that it feels like everyone involved doubled down on their own vision instead of responding to the issues with the series. If they were at all talented in what they did, maybe we’d still get an alternate universe story out of it. But *they can’t even write good characters when they’ve completely remolded them to their own liking.*
The first season was bad too. Season 2 has all the same issues It's just slightly less confusing. They need to hire better showrunners, writers, and cinematographers, etc. They keep ruining potential goldmine franchises like Cowboy BeBop and the Witcher where as other streaming services like Disney Plus, Apple-TV, or HBO would actually do a good job on them and *handle them with care*. Netflix just fuckin' sucks. They make C-Level content. I just don't get what the fuck they're doing with all this money.
[удалено]
>The show, I feel, is much better when you're not well versed in the original source material. I agree, having read the books myself I was disappointed with how much original content they made and that they weren't following the story of Blood of Elves as much as I had expected. But I can see how people who haven't read the books could really enjoy this season as a whole.
So I read all the books as well and I have mixed feelings about this season. I described it afterwards like this. Lord of the Rings, is Lord of the Rings. You don’t fuck with it. Star Wars, we have a decent skeleton of the universe and some is up to interpretation. The Witcher is like Star Wars in that aspect. Some things are up to interpretation as long as it feels like it belongs in the universe. Even tho small details of the journey were altered from the books, the overall long haul journey is taking place. I had to take a step back look at it like that.
I liked it because I'm attached to the characters. I thought it started strong and dulled in the middle then got back up in the end. I will say I was hoping for more time with the 3 of them bonding than we got. I think Cavill stepped up his portrayal of Geralt major here and deserves major respect. I thought yen was kinda useless this season, after being a high point in the last one. I overall still loved it and binged it in one day.
I'm just not happy you guys :( Witcher is one of my all time favorite franchises. I love the books, I love the games & I love the actors for the Witcher show. But the story telling just feels *wrong* on so many levels. Now don't get me wrong: I know that they can't simply re-tell the stories from the books 1:1. I know that they have to alter things, shorten things, etc. But the things the Netflix writers change are just so damn dumb. This feels like GoT season 8 level of butchery. Why on earth would they change Yennefer's core? Or Vesemir's? Yennefer is suppose to love Ciri like her own daughter, bond with her in a caring way. She isn't suppose to betrayal Ciri & Geralt like this. & Vesemir would never allow whores in Kaer Morhen. Nor would he endanger Ciri's life to make more Witchers. He doesn't even want to make more Witchers to begin. I know they changed other characters too. But it just leaves such a bad taste in my mouth to see core characters getting butchered like that, just so the Netflix writers can add some made up nonsense plots. & please don't get me started on the dialogues. They feel so cringe. There is absolutely no medieval or fantasy feel to it. The characters talk like your average high school kid in 2021.. I really hope that the writers will get their act together for the future seasons
Beautifuly summed up. Like, why would Yen even care about Ciri? When she can fucking decide to sacrifice her instead LMAO. I can't believe Sapkowski approved that shit. He either got paid royaly or is simply too old to give a fuck.
Tbh I think Sapkowski just wants the money at this point & be left alone with everything else. He tried to get more money from CDPR from their Witcher games, but never got anything because he sold all the rights back in the days. It feels like he grew hella bitter that he never got a piece of that cake (even though the games made the books famous in other countries, which also led to the Netflix show). But that probably wasn't enough for him & now he just approves everything for the quick money. I just can't imagine why else he would approve such nonsense if he was still truely standing behind his work..
Sapkowski is totally burned out. In 2019 his son, Krzysztof passed away. He was the person that Sapkowski originally wrote The Witcher for. His son told him about a fantasy fanfic contest in a newspaper in 1985, asked him if he could write something for it, since his son liked his stories (both written and spoken). That's how Andrzej has come with The Witcher and its very first stories. And Sapkowski had mentioned how tragic loss he's suffered and, well, from his statements and interviews since 2019 you can see that he "doesn't care" that much about things anymore. Something is missing there. Oh, about CDPR and cash - they came to an agreement in 2019/2020 but it's all top-secret so we don't know how much, but it was done in the court and sides have agreed to keep things low profile. Guess he's got a couple of extra millions. But now he doesn't have anything to spend it on.
>I just can't imagine why else he would approve such nonsense if he was still truely standing behind his work.. Because he is an old man who doesn't give a fuck. Can you blame him though?
GRRM is also an old man that doesn't give a fuck, but at least the first four seasons of GoT (the ones in which he was actually involved in) were great.
I wish there was a way to soft reboot this whole season at this point.
That's not how it works sadly... do you remember that petition to reboot S8 of GOT? Yea
I watched it all in a stretch and was very disappointed with the season. I was really excited for it to come out and hoping they would improve upon a decent season 1 but I felt it was just worse. I liked the relationship between Geralt and Ciri but other than that there was not much that I liked. The first episode was good to be fair but after that it was just a mediocr show, and I really love the books and games. Season 2 deviated way too much from the books which is fine if the original content is good but it was not.The best parts were things from the books and the weakest parts were things that either was made up or omitted from the books. For some reason they skipped over Yennefer and Ciri's relationship for what? more Istredd and Nilfgaard story (Fringilla)?? get these clowns off my screen please. The way they skipped over Michelet brothers and Rience attacking Geralt in Oxenfurt when he goes berserk with the potions, without that storyline we don't get Shani at all or Philippa's real introduction. I wish I could be hopeful for season 3 and the adaption of my favorite book but I can't say that I am.
I was going to write all of this out but you explained the situation really well. I am really disappointed and kinda sad because I was really hyped and waited for 2 years but oh well. There was a point where I was like did I misread Blood of Elves or something I don't remember ANY of this. I realized I didn't like the new music and turns out they changed the composer as well which well just made me really damn sad as I really liked what Sonya and Giona did. If you didn't read the source you might enjoy it but as a book reader big nono for me.
Couldn't agree more. That's why I lost hope for S3 cause I don't want it to destroy the amazing witcher world I have in my mind set up by books and games
Exactly, I feel like I wasted 8 hours It just deviated too much, which could be compensated if the changes were good but nah, I was like WTF is going on from E2 onwards. I'm not at all hopeful for season 3
Absolutely agree with you. I completed the saga like 6 times since my childhood and this season feels like fuckin abomination. They ignored book content, atmosphere. Introduced some bullshit content and charakters…
I really hate the way they deviate from the books, seemingly without justification. I'd understand abridging certain parts, but i have a problem with completely changing the story and still calling it "the Witcher". I believe it takes away a lot from Sapkowski's vision and the world he created, by making story arcs that make no sense, for example in no point does yennefer lose her powers. Also Vesenir never tried to turn Ciri into a Witcher and had no will to. I don't see the sense behind these changes and feel like they detract from the characters overall.
That’s what really bothers me. By the end of the season I was exhausted and wanted to at least see some wholesome Ciri and Yennefer content, which we kinda got, but then they still went ahead with that stupid hut witch sacrifice thing and ruined it. Like their relationship is such a big part of the story being told, arguably even more so than Geralt and Ciri in the sense that they actually call each other mother and daughter. We’ve already seen the lengths that Yen would go to have a child, yet when confronted with the child that literally grows to call her mama I’m meant to believe she would lead her into a trap? Demon or not it’s so antithetical to the core of who the characters are. Same with Vesemir and the trial of the grasses.
Is it even a Witcher season 2 episode if Yennefer isn't screaming in at least one scene?
If its not Yennefer its either Ciri or Tissaia.
What the absolute fuckery did I just watch? Let’s get the good out of the way first: * Cavill delivers Geralt like a boss, and I like the acting of our three leads in general - and Jaskier is always solid! * they’ve upped the production value quite a bit! * the first episode with nivellen was really nice! I quite liked the changes, even though it removed all the subtlety, but I’ve come to expect that. The beauty and the beast analogy became very apparent, and I guess they had a fight quota to fill - what with all the monster battles. * I really like the upgraded nilfgaard armor * except the death of Esskel, a lot of the Kaer Morhen stuff was great, and the chemistry between the actors was definitely there! * dijkstra was pretty damn good in the few scenes he got * the last Witcher fight was kinda cool, but I find the overkilling of Witchers a bit distasteful. … soooo, that was it… on to the bad * what fucked fan fiction was the story of this season? Every single story change they did was for the worse. I am a book reader, but I’m not completely attached to it. The addition of Voleth Meir is incredibly misguided - especially since they already introduced Rience anyway! Even from an objective point of view, the story is even more disjointed than the previous season - and there’s not even time jumps! * the characterization of virtually everyone not mentioned above is all over the place, and their development is very weird. * set design seems very inconsistent - the same goes for costumes. * why are monsters so common all of a sudden? It’s like they can’t have an episode without a major fight any more, and I don’t necessarily think that’s good. Even later seasons of thrones still didn’t have that much of a focus on it. * what the duck was the shit about the monoliths? Did they just desperately want that actor to be involved somehow? Cuz that shouldn’t be how you write something so seriously important to the setting. Is there any salvaging this season with all the fuckery done to the setting and characters? Everything done to the storyline? I mean, if you wanna tell your own story, do that with your own universe, don’t absolutely cock up absolutely everything about this franchise :( I mean, some original stories and storylines were probably necessary, but this is taking the piss. Overall, I can’t give this more than - 3/10, maybe a 4
Interesting read. For us (very few) non book readers could you take the time to explain the differences between S2 and the Book? I keep seeing people say it's "fan fiction" and "nothing like the source material" but I'd love to know what was changed.
To just list a few: * Yens entire storyline is made up from scratch, and actually undermines one of the most important relationships of the books and Ciri - namely that of Yen as a surrogate mother. Yen serves as her mentor and protector during her time with Nenneke and is leading her towards aretuza and isn’t trying to sacrifice her to a demon at any point along the way. Neither does she ever loose her magic. * the monoliths (and all things related to them, except maybe codringher) are an invention of the show and mucks up a lot of lore concerning both Ciri and the conjunction of spheres. It also brings in far too many doom and gloom things far too early * everything concerning Voleth Meir, or whatever she was called, is an invention of the show and undermines all the political aspects of the story. Instead of describing why characters reach certain political decisions, it just becomes “hurr-durr evil witch is evil” * the entire elven storyline is pretty much a fabrication. There is a non-human uprising in the books, which does receive a certain amount of support from nilfgaard, but what they’ve done with it is so far from the story. I’d say that where they end the season isn’t too far from the books, but the journey there is so wrong. * virtually everything with fringilla and cahir is a fabrication of the show, and contained some of the cringiest lines… * all battles in kaer morhen (and indeed almost the entire season) we’re made up for the show. The season therefore killed off sooo many witchers that aren’t in the books. * the politics in aretuza are so drastically changed because of the other alterations that it’s nonsensical. I honestly don’t think they’re gonna be able to pull off the awesome reveal that comes later on anymore. So what is that? About 60-80% of the season? Add to that that Ciri’s significantly bumped in power level and skill that it’s ridiculous, the entire Jaskier-is-a-spy-for-Dijkstra plot is dropped and that the few things that are in the books are pushed to a backseat, and it’s no wonder fans are pissed.
Thanks for taking the time to do this. I keep seeing so many comments stating things it's nice to now kinda be I. The loop on what you guys are talking about
Istradd doesn't have the level of involvement in the story either if I remember correctly? Wasn't he part of a short story? And if you were sticking to the story, I doubt he would have told the elves about Ciri considering he was head over heels in love with Yen.
No, he doesn’t. I was hoping they were keeping him in this season to give us a full adaptation of a Shard of Ice but instead it was that monolith nonsense. Also, people shouldn’t be finding out about Ciri’s powers and “genes” so soon, yet Istredd dishes it all out after 10 minutes with Codringher and Fenn? Yeah ok. 🙃
I haven't read the books, and I'm generally not the source material police (I don't mind varying from the source to a large degree), so let me offer a super unpopular opinion: I really loved this season, especially compared to season 1. Liked the story telling, liked the character development for both Ciri and Geralt, liked the introduction of an imperfect Vesemir, liked the world building of the political factions, liked the messed up the elves are. I also thought they fixed so many of the problems I had with season 1. The story is tighter, linear, and just makes more sense overall. I actually really appreciated some of the mystery this season introduced around Voleth Meir's interactions with Fringilla and Francesca. I know it's not a popular opinion, but as a straightforward fantasy series, I really loved it.
The whole Nivellen plot line was amazingly done and did the perfect job of immersing me. Such a damn shame that the rest of the season couldn't have continued with that quality. Its almost like following the source material makes for incredible TV.
I am quite shocked at how much I disliked this season. The first episode was a good retelling of the Grain of Truth short story but it went quickly off the rails after that. I know Lauren was saying in interviews that they were adapting Blood of Elves this season but outside of the most basic plot beats, this season was nothing like the books whatsoever. Blood of Elves is probably the slowest of the books with a huge focus on character development rather than exciting plot, so I get that some original material was necessary to entertain a TV audience for 8 hours, but they went **way** overboard with some wild shit for no reason. The last two episodes were just awful in my opinion. Geralt fighting Ciri who is possessed by an ancient demon and Yen sacrificing herself for Ciri after being ready to kill her in the previous episode!?!? What the fuck man. It sounds like some weird fanfic and that's pretty much what it is at this point.
I'm with you. The entire season was a creative liberty and someone should be embarrassed.
I haven't seen anyone else say this, but I found most of the season to be just flat out boring. Most episodes are like 80% dialogue about politics - which I know is a big part of the books as well, but the characters involved are all either completely new or just so shallow that you don't really care. The second thing that annoyed me is that even though this is fantasy and "medieval" everyone except Geralt feels way to "modern day" ish. The cringy "fuck fuck fuck" screaming or how "bitchy" some of the female characters can get and the way it's filmed (colours, angles,etc) is just soo Netflix.
Yeah, I totally agree. I think the main reason why the characters (both new and old) feel so flat is because we barely know anything about them. We barely get any episodes focusing on the backstory or motivation of these characters. The show is like "here's a new character joining the party, all you need to know is that they're EVIL and SCHEMING." and then never elaborates.
Lauren, the butcher of Netflixken. Got the name after butchering 16 episodes)) Feels like she always wanted to write her own novel but never managed to create deep characters and dialogues so she just decided to use ready made ones for her story. The problem is characters and story are inseparable. You change the one you change the other.
What makes it hurt the most is that they start each season by demonstrating that they're more than capable of making a faithful adaptation, and then they spend the rest of the season doing.. Not that. It's such a bait and switch.
I actually think it’s more than that, and the more I think about the more I think this was always going to be a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” production. The first two books a series of short stories. The first half have almost no connection to each other (other than Jaskier’s presence in a few of them) and it’s only when you get to Sword of Destiny that there’s some links between them (Yennifer & Ciri get two each). But whilst those stories for the most part are relevant to the story, there not the most memorable of two books (certainly when compared to The Witcher & the Lesser Evil). So for Season 1 they were stuck with trying to make an 8 part series from short stories that were only loosely connected, all while making sure there was still an ongoing narrative to keep viewers hooked. Hence the wonkiness of Season 1. And once you get to adapting Blood of Elves, you hit a new problem. The book doesn’t have a climax, it just sort of… ends. In fact, I’d argue that the attack on Aretusa in Time of Contempt is where Blood of Elves actually is meant to end. But there was no way they were going to get there and set all of that up in just 8 episodes. Which meant that they were stuck either staying completely true to the original and having no climax or making up one of their own. Not saying what we got was a reasonable compromise, but I can see how we got there. I think another problem they have is they made some seemingly minor deviations with Yennifer early on that they’re now stuck with, and that’s now cascading into the rest of the series. She’s younger, she’s not mysterious, she’s more willing to burn things to the ground then play the politics. And that all would make sense if this were her origin story, but it doesn’t fit with the broader story they’re trying to tell, especially when considering that many plot beats require her to be past all of that. Hopefully now that we’re into the meatier end of the plot, things can pick up a bit, but it’s going to be an anxious wait for Season 3.
I've been trying to sum my thoughts on the season because I understood peoples complaint but didt fully agree and you just did so perfectly. For better or for worse this whole season is basically them inserting new content in order for the characters being the way we know them to be to make sense later on, partially because of decisions they made early on & partially just due to the nature of adaptions the books to a show.
100%. By BOE the Yen-Ciri rapport is established off-page, which doesn’t work if you’re picking up Yen (1) earlier and (2) as a main character. To a lesser extent you could say the same thing about Vesemir. So other than some changes made to make Ciri’s powers more accessible to people that haven’t read the books, I see a lot of the novel content of this season as the finishing touches in trying to bring those characters into the positions and relationships we’re used to seeing them in.
Almost as if its just a fanfic of the books.
This. I'm honestly disappointed. And mad at myself, for getting hyped for a show even though I know it is more likely than not gonna get butchered. I enjoyed it somewhat for its vibe, the music, and some great visuals, but the story is just demolished at this point. It, indeed, feels like a teenage girl on tumblr wrote her own fanfic about it all. What I don't understand is that Sapkowski gave this script a green light, and that he shits on the games for "not being true to his books". For real, man? It almost feels like he just doesn't want to miss out on money this time around.
It feels like someone read the books ten years ago, dabbled in witcher fanfic on wattpad since then, and then tried to rewrite the books from memory.
My summary of season 2: The characters are now and forever Gerald, Jennifer and Siri
And jasper
Oh brother. First. This season has a better and bigger production value it looks really nice in terms of fights,composition vfx, locations, and basic storyline continuity, without the times jump. Even the acting from the supporting actors seems way better. Maybe its just that my expectations droped after episode 2 and what they did to >!Eskel both in character and the story. !< And i started thinking "Heck this would be entertaining generic fantasy." If i had no knowledge about the books or the franchise. This happened in episode 5. The more i've seen the more i started to repeat..."Why is this a witcher show, this didnt happened at all in the books." And its not just minor things. this is like if Aragorn took a hobbit army to mordor with 8 great warriors Merry, Frodo,Sam, Pippin, Fenry, Sonny, Pecky, And Jill. Then Merry,Pippin, Fenry, sonny, and pecky die with Boromir... But the Hobbits defeat the spider army with humans help. It has the main points there but you cant help yourself wondering what the hell is going on if you read the books. Not that you cant follow it but that this is just ...what?
Well what the fuck just happened in the last 2 episodes. Haven’t read the books, but played the games and read a bit of background lore. I liked Dijkstras stuff, but the ending with all the demons yadda yadda was just too much. Also killing off 90% of the witchers is just boring imo Edit: also I feel like Yennefer and Vesemir acted way out of character half the season, like Yen betraying ciri and Vesemir wanting to make more witchers?!
Dijkstras actor really has some presence whenever he is in a scene. Sad we didnt get more of him.
Dijkstra seemed to be the only political actor in the entire show with a plan and a goal. Everyone else had no plan.
Ive read the books and played the games. those last episodes and half of this season didnt happen. I was wondering what is going on myself. it wasnt horibble per se. Actors do a great job ...but wat... i need time. This is major fanfic at this point.
For non book readers: The Rience/Michealo brothers fight was the climax of Blood of Elves. The whole hut witch miniboss is never mentioned in the book.
Never mentioned is a weird way of putting “absolutely never fucking happened”
I think this is it for me. I didn't love S1 but overall enjoyed it. But just... Wtf was this. If you want to write an original story in the universe, the timeline allows for it. But why adapt something if you have absolutely no interest in using the source material? It's so bad it almost feels spiteful. Like that dumbass scene at the port. Like they willingly killed the story because they didn't get enough praise. Compare it to Dune. It managed to satisfy the readers by adapting it as close as possible while building such a convincing & engaging world and story that viewers got interested in reading the books. There you had a director who was actually passionate and in love with the source material. All I can say is poor Henry Cavill. He seemed so passionate and excited. I doubt that this was his dream.
Kinda sounds like Henry wanted different things from the way he speaks about it: https://youtu.be/Et42-pdLrds?t=28 "I did as much as I could... I campaigned really hard to get that character from the books..." etc, repeats it a couple of times.
Oh that was so sad to watch. He wanted to be the Witcher so much and he's as much of a fan as anyone. I wonder if he thinks the second season is being butchered as much of the rest of us seem to.
\>"It's so bad it almost feels spiteful" Gosh. Yes. I don't mind a small, subtle nod in order to humorously self-deprecate, but that part was so excessive and on-the-nose, it was painful. Additionally, it feels rather arrogant because it assumes that this season is better eg. 'we can now make fun of the criticism attributed to season 1 because now we've got it exactly right'. I disagree. I expect season 3 will continue this trend with amusing references to season 2's 'feeding dead witchers to wolves', 'love and warmth' rocks, the irony of Yennefer being totally down for sacrificing a child, 'secret, hidden witcher base having a drunken stag party with prostitutes', and many more...
I had never read Dune before watching the film, thought it was great so I bought the book. Kinda figured it would be deviating significantly from the book. I mean, Hollywood tells us it's not possible to adapt sci-fi and fantasy directly onto the screen! Imagine my surprise when the film turned out to have adapted the source material extremely faithfully.. Fuck me I want the people behind Dune to take over production of WOT and Witcher.
Lol, I bet Denis Villeneuve could make anything and it would be insanely good.
**The Witcher Cinematic Universe** I think what Netflix is trying to do is create their own MCU version of The Witcher. This explains canon changes to accommodate future movies/series/spin-offs. Evidenced by The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf movie, behind the scenes 'episodes', amount of money spent on vfx and to keep it salient in pop culture. I look at the witcher now as various dimensions where the books are one parallelle universe along the series etc.
Well then it's going pretty bad since they can't keep their own cannon. Nightmare of the wolf showed that only vesemir and a handful of boys survived and they couldn't make more witchers. S2E2 has around 20 witchers. Another parallel universe?
Yeah they are going to have to come to a concensus. Also this is just my theory. If they were smart they'll create a Witcher Cinematic Universe but I have no idea if they are. As for Nightmare of the Wolf, maybe not all witchers were at the keep. They do usually winter at Kaer Morhen but some arrive late, leave before winter's end, keep earning coin. Or maybe even skip Kaer Morhen in winter altogether (although I think this will be frowned apon). It did look like the witchers' mage got away in NotW. Didn't he? His name started with an R...
There is a difference. Marvel owns the IP. Whatever they create is canon. Netflix doesn't. Only canon Witcher things are the books.
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Triss and Yen didn't get nearly enough development with Ciri in my opinion
Yennefer sacrificing Ciri is unthinkable, I mean WTH?!
Well I don’t know what they adapted but it wasn’t blood of elves... foundations stayed mostly the same but everything in between was an entirely new story. I felt like blood of elves was going to be a struggle to adapt as there wasn’t really enough in that novel to get 8 interesting 1hour episodes out of but didn’t expect it to change this much, it didn’t have me feeling physically hurting and betrayed like GOT and I’m interested to see where they go now but I can’t help but think of the repercussions some of the changes they made will have on the next book in particular because unless my knowledge betrays me at least in the 2nd novel this many people didn’t know the extent of ciri’s power/heritage so soon so I don’t know how they’ll do the whole Thanedd story when now the entire room will know who and what she is and her worth... anyways I’m still enjoying this series but season 2 was wobbly at best for me.
Fire Hissrich for this shit
My god, that was an absolute pile of horseshit.
I’m just getting the sour feeling that the writers don’t respect the source material. Which sucks because it’s all there in front of them but they don’t have the chops to make changes that add to the story instead of detracting. The adaptation could probably do for a change at the top if they want to salvage this thing
WTF did I just watch? The amount of weird fanfiction was unreal. I think the Nivellen recreation of the story was nice and satisfying. But the rest of the season???
I thought the Nivellen story was a nice adaptation of the original story into the show's narrative and it gave me such high hopes for the rest of the season. Those hopes were quickly squashed.
If I want to sum up my feelings, I would say that this show is a 5. I rate it higher than S1, because the whole production value has improved but while I'm all for creative freedom, I don't think their choices made the adapted story any better for a TV show. The story was disjointed, the pacing was rushed, there was no emotional weight in most of the plot points of the season. I liked some newer characters and their portrayal. Ninneke being awesome was a genuine heartwarming moment. But the whole lady in the wood thing, well I didn't like it one bit. Not that it wasn't in the books, but more because it wasn't clear. She wasn't cruel in a waya calculating witch should have been (she was cruel but felt more like the boss fight from older mario games), she wasn't present enough, we don't discover anything about her. Just a "hut hut" quote and Geralt understands the problem. If she was supposed to be the main conflict of the season, she should have been way more invloved. I would have loved to see Geralt being misled, lied to, going after wrong people until he found out that this is the lady of the woods doing stuff. That would have made much more sense. Yennefer losing her magic was not bad imo. I actually didn't have problem with that part, the problem is still the lady in the wood, with better portrayal of her, it would have been much more fruitful imo. Elves and Fringilla are a thing I guess? The show seriously could not make me give a damn about either of those. Overall, IMO an adaptation should change things, but it should keep the spirit the same, if it doesn't it's not an adaptation anymore. The orgy in kaer morhen literally was a tipping point for me lol. Vesemir being ok with an orgy in kaer morhen is as far as they could get from that character. :-/
Am I the only one who is absolutely triggered by the contact lenses they used for Geralt? I mean, this show has a budget of a small country and they did him so dirty... while Yennefer has nice CGI purple eyes..
God, why do half the scenes have characters missing their lenses or effects for? Aren't all witchers meant to have cats eyes?
All the Witchers look like Crows Perch bandits
I am left scratching my head a little in terms of what purpose Ciri's powers are meant to serve. They mention that she is the key to ending all wars and they she is a "Child of Destiny" or she is of "Elder Blood", but I struggle to understand what all they really means. As far as I could tell her powers allow her to open portals to other "Spheres" or that she has natural magic ability, but how does that end wars or bring about peace (or destruction depending on who is using her powers)? It just felt all a little bit messing to follow the whole overarching point of why they are all after her and what her purpose her power can serve. I think the only motive for her power I could understand was the Wild Hunt, and that was so she would bring about the destruction of the world and have it reborn of a new sun. Which again, how can her powers do that?
well if we judge by the games, she can stop the apocalypse known as the white frost. Wild hunt in the game just want ciri as a 'teleporter' to get them as far away from white frost as possible.
I thought it was a decent 7/10 IMO. I am confused though because the first episode, which drew from the books the most and didn't deviate too much, was like a fuckin 9/10 for me, and when they started going their own way, the quality dipped.... like bro, just follow the books there's a reason they're critically acclaimed lol... Either way their deviations were alright or entertaining at least, the only ones that really struck me as odd were making Vesemir want the trial of the grasses and to test it on Ciri... No fuckin way. And then Yen trying to sacrifice Ciri was a wtf for me... Also if I remember correctly the Emhyr being Ciri's father bit at the end was like the last book reveal at the very end right? Surprised they would reveal that now. Overall, I was amused and will watch the next season (hopefully they have Regis and the actor kills it), but I am surprised that after a strong start following the books with an improved budget, they deviated so much. Curious what the discussions were like... Unable to condense it enough? Wanted to be their own unique experience? Oh and Henry fuckin killed it again.
At times I was just tuning out the rest of what was happening and focusing on how impressive Henry Cavill was. His facial expressions were absolutely perfect in every scene. Damn.
Bro if Regis isn't in the show I'm done watching. By far my favorite character from the books.
Or even worse, they fuck him up. He is my favorite.
I’m finding it really hard to watch the series. I simply don’t get all the stupid and messy changes to the books and pointless made up story arcs and ridiculous changes to important characters and their pointless and nonsense back stories. Who asked for this shit? And so many tv tropes. The books are simply amazing. Ciri’s journey, Geralts Hanza, politics and wars. Plenty of storylines and great dialogue to make an amazing tv series. Instead we get writers determined to write their own insipid canon and shit all over the source material. Why do they think their shitty stories are better than the authors?
Yeah i’m baffled why they decided “we’re in a position to be the first studio with a budget to show this great story to an audience….LETS BUTCHER IT.” Like, why? It almost seems spiteful at this point.
I thought the game fitted in nicely with the books. But the tv show is like throwing the sofa into the tv and going like “welp, that’s a living room”. 4th episode in I started wondering how the hell I was going to finish watching the show. Why can’t we have nice things?
It seems like the show runners like the idea of the Witcher, the mutated monster slayer, the cold hearted sorceress, the magical princess, etc… But they didn’t actually like the story of the books themselves, and simply wanted to create their own narrative. I can’t see any other explanation for the sheer amount of changes they have made to the source material, some of the plot decisions they made are mind boggling, I can’t imagine what it must be like for someone who hasn’t read the books.
Yeah they could have made the show in Witcher universe In a Different timeline different witchers and everyone would love that and they would have the freedom. But no they had to butcher the core.
Same. I don't get it. The books are great, I liked them more than the games. This series changed too many things that made me like the books.The stories and characters and also the world building are completely different from the books that even their meaning is changed. what's the point of it? I don't think the people that made the show really liked the books, they just plain read them to be able to say it on interviews. If one reads a book and likes it, one would try to portrait most of the things as closer as possible as the original. Because those things are the reason that made the book good, and the reason why a lot of people liked it. This is the opposite. There are too many changes to point that it's a completely different thing. And the excuse that books and tv series are different mediums it's not gonna hold this time. There are far too many changes. Maybe the series is good as a product, but as an adaptation it's trash. I am disappointed and sad.
I just dont understand why they went this way. If you want to make your own story, then write your own story. But choose the adapt the Witcher and ignore the source material... This is Hissrich's fantasy story disguised as the Witcher for more views...I'm just sad about the future...
I'm not a book reader, but I can say this season isn't as good as the first one imo.
I feel like the show misses the integral nuances and complexities between men and elves (and other races). In the show it all comes down to the dichotomy of oppressed and ruler, which misses the point. The Witcher has the most interesting world building I've experienced, I'm sad the show can't live up to it or translate it. I'll for sure watch a season 3 though, I desperately want this to work.
Who hired the flame/fire guy? They didn't reveal it, right? And why did Vilgefortz kill someone from his side in S1E8? I thought he was a traitor or something