"People linked by destiny will always find each other."
Hello everyone!
Didn't you?
Well, hopefully you did, at least, because I've been on a roll with my television season recaps, and this one will definitely be no exception.
I have to admit that I didn't know there were books or video games before news dropped that Netflix was making a show - I know, I live under that kind of rock. But after hearing about the show I went on and explored a little bit, and I've managed to munch through the two short stories collections so that I can now actually begin the main storyline.
I'm also watching the gameplay from the third video game on Youtube, because I'm that lazy and there are other people who've played it.
What am I talking about, you ask?
The Witcher, obviously.
As there is virtually nothing like this on television at the moment I have no other links to supply from my own blog, unless you want to take a look at my Game of Thrones recaps, or maybe His Dark Materials, but The Witcher is neither, really.
If I had to describe it in one sentence, I'd say it's a fantastical retelling of Slavic folk tales with a pinch of magic thrown in for good measure.
Andrzej Sapkowski created this parallel universe in which monster hunters used to roam the lands in abundance, but are currently being driven towards extinction because there just isn't enough of them anymore, and the trials the existing ones had to undertake claim more and more victims as opposed to spitting out new witchers.
On top of all that, other magical beings and creatures are also on the obvious decline, and humans are on the rise.
You may have heard of this theme before. Most notably, I'd point you in the direction of The Lord of the Rings, if you please.
In the meanwhile, let's check in with what's going on in season one of The Witcher, shall we?
Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill, probably the sole reason why this show even came to my attention since I've been loosely following his career from his Tudors days on) kills a monster in a swamp and heads into the town of Blaviken to get a reward for it. Instead, he gets dropped off with a wizard, Stregobor, who wants to hire his services.
See, Stregobor is one of those enlightened men of the time who believe women born during an eclipse are directly descendant from none other than Lilith, so therefore they must be evil and should be killed. One such, a former princess, Renfri, is hot on his trail and is going to kill him if he doesn't somehow contrive to kill her first, which is where Geralt enters the picture.
Geralt isn't really all too hot for this idea (he's a step further than Stregobor's 'enlightenment') but he DOES try and dissuade Renfri from her quest for vengeance, since he doesn't want innocent people to get killed. It looks like he might even succeed - until he wakes up and realizes he's accomplished nothing.
And since there WILL be innocents killed if he doesn't intervene, a lot of them, in fact, Geralt hotfoots it back to town and engages Renfri and her band in a bloody battle, which only really earns him the moniker Butcher of Blaviken, since the people don't realize he just saved the lot of them.
Gee thanks, Stregobor. You're such a cool guy, throwing the monster hunter doing your dirty work to the wolves.
Our witcher heads out again and continues on with his adventures, which next lead him to investigate a series of thefts in a rich farmland area, where he also encounters (and ends up being accompanied by) Jaskier the bard (Joey Batey), who promises to turn Geralt's reputation around.
But not before they first get knocked out by a Sylvan and are held hostage by the remaining Elves in the valley, who've been driven off (if not killed) by the humans there and are slowly sickening and dying because they can't bring themselves to leave. This time, Geralt is successful in convincing them they should just head to another land and settle there, and he and Jaskier go free - though I'm sure Geralt regrets the last bit since Jaskier immediately composes the most well-known tune from the entire show, Toss a Coin.
As if he doesn't have enough problems out of that, Geralt next has to deal with some sort of curse placed upon a kingdom, where a shtriga is pretty much eating her way through the populace. With the help of the king's advisor (and witch) Triss, he discovers that the creature is actually the king's daughter, born of an affair he had with his own sister, but there was a curse placed on both her and her mother by a courtier who was jealous of everything that was happening.
Since he's taking a no-kill approach after the Renfri debacle, Geralt battles the shtriga, keeping her out of her tomb until the appointed time after which the curse is lifted, and probably thinks he needs to get a pay raise for all the dumb schmucks he has to deal with along the way.
After recovering from his wounds, our witcher heads back onto the road again, and once more runs into Jaskier, who asks him to tag along to a feast in Cintra, thrown by Queen Calanthe for the betrothal of her daughter Pavetta, because Jaskier is a womanizer who has a lot of angry husbands looking for him. Since they ARE sort of friends, Geralt agrees, though he's also immediately recognized - and pretty much gets propositioned by Calanthe to kill something she's expecting to come knocking.
That something turns out to be one Duny, a man under a curse which transforms him to a humanoid hedgehog during the daytime, which is a lot worse than it sounds, trust me. In any even, Pavetta loves him, not that her mama dearest wants him near her only daughter, and a fight ensues in which Geralt, and a visiting king, Eist, actually fight on Duny's side, because Duny invokes the Law of Surprise, which states that, after rescuing Calanthe's husband years earlier, said husband owes him what he didn't know he had at home - in this case, Pavetta.
After getting triggered and causing a maelstrom (because she powerful, natch), Pavetta gets taken out of the equation by Geralt and the druid Mousesack, and Calanthe agrees to the marriage. In thanks, Geralt jokingly invokes his own Law of Surprise - immediately after which Pavetta throws up, indicating she's pregnant.
In Geralt's own words: fuck.
Years afterwards (years during which Geralt hasn't been near Cintra for the life of him), Geralt and Jaskier run into each other again, and Geralt is having trouble sleeping. So, his solution is to find a Djinn and make him fall asleep, only he and Jaskier fight over the Djinn bottle, it breaks, and there's confusion as to who is actually the wish holder, because both of them think it's Jaskier.
Except, Jaskier ends up with a badly wounded throat, so Geralt takes him to the nearest town and its mage healer - one Yennefer of Vengerberg.
Yennefer is the second protagonist of our storyline; a hunchback and quarter-Elf who was sold to Tissaia, a powerful witch, and trained at Aretuza to learn how to control the chaos that turns out to be magic, she gave up her fertility to transform herself into a beautiful woman, tricked her way into her preferred court as advisor to the king against the scheming of the elder wizards and witches, but has since gone rogue because she's fed up with everything and just wants to have a baby.
I kid you not, that's her entire raison d'etre at the moment we encounter her - she's trying to recover her fertility, and when Geralt marches in with Jaskier (and apple juice), this is what happens:
she casts a spell over Geralt after learning he's a witcher AND that there's a Djinn running loose, having him do her dirty work of petty revenge on the town they're currently in, while she prepares to channel the Djinn's power. Geralt himself gets thrown into prison - naturally - but it's through that he learns HE'S the one with the wishes, and hustles over to Yennefer's house.
A cured Jaskier - the only male who hotfoots it AWAY from Yennefer instead of TOWARDS her - tries to dissuade Geralt, to no avail, and Geralt ends up saving Yennefer by using his last wish. The last wish is never exactly specified.
Also, Geralt finally gets some sleep, which may or may not have been influenced by the fact he had sex right beforehand.
The last wish MAY influence their feelings for each other, however. How do we know? Because time afterwards, when Geralt and Yennefer run into each other again during a dragon hunt this knight Borch invites the witcher to, the third wish is actually revealed, and Geralt explains he tied his fate to Yennefer's, which angers her because she doesn't know if her feelings are real or not, so she storms off.
Borch also explains to the both of them that what they want, respectively, is impossible, so there.
As for the dragon hunt, there's machinations from the get-go which inevitably lead to Geralt and Yennefer finding a dead dragon with a dragon egg, and Borch revealing himself to be the rarest of dragons - a golden dragon, who's learned to adapt and overcome, and who shapeshifts into a human to be able to survive.
He also explains to Geralt that he can't outrun his destiny - or his responsibility - and the viewers are left wondering if EVERYONE AND THEIR MOTHER knows about the witcher's Law of Surprise that includes Pavetta's child.
In any event, Geralt heads back to Cintra to at least check on the kid, and on his way sees what he describes as 'a sea of black and gold', the Nilfgaardian army, an invasion force dead-set on taking Cintra, as the other border lands have already fallen to its might. Sensing the child is in danger, Geralt makes his way to Calanthe and invokes the Law of Surprise, to no avail, since the Queen tosses him in jail instead.
As for Pavetta and Duny, there's no sign of them, as both perished at sea and Cirilla, their daughter, commonly referred to as Ciri, was the only survivor because her mother covertly sent her off the boat.
In what seems to be a macabre retaliation for Calanthe defying Geralt, Nilfgaard arrives and attacks Cintra, pretty much demolishing its armies and tearing through the capital city to reach the castle. In the ensuing chaos, Geralt escapes his cell, and since he knows what his charge looks like (from a previous attempt of Calanthe's to saddle him with an imposter instead of the real Ciri), he rushes into the castle to rescue her.
Unfortunately, all he should've had to do was stay put, since Mousesack goes to get him, at Calanthe's orders, and Geralt isn't there when this occurs, so the royals have to secretly spirit Ciri out of the besieged castle. By the time Geralt fights his way through, she's long gone, and actually almost ends up captured by the Nilfgaardian commander, Cahir.
Only, her powers trigger, and she's able to escape, leaving the lot of them behind.
Thus begins Ciri's adventures (and misadventures) of trying to keep one step ahead of Nilfgaard, with Geralt also in hot pursuit; the princess hides in a refugee camp, is rescued by an Elf boy, Dara, lands in Brokilon Forest, the forest of the dryads, escapes pursuers including a doppler (who takes the image of anyone it encounters) pretending to be Mousesack, and eventually finds her way to a lonely farm where the farmer's wife takes her in.
Nilfgaard desperately wants Ciri - for her power, obviously, but there are also hidden reasons we'll learn later through the story - so they invade the rest of the Northern kingdoms, despite a last attempt of a group of sorcerers, led by Tissaia and including Yennefer, to stop them. They fight at Sodden Hill, where Yennefer ends up unleashing a stream of fire that pretty much decimates anything standing in her way, but supposedly vanishes right afterwards, presumed dead.
Also presumed dead is Geralt, who rescues a farmer but ends up poisoned by a bite, and in his delirium imagines his mother, who supposedly gave him up to the witchers and he's never really forgiven her for it (at this point we get the one and only guest starring appearance by Theo James, and it's mostly his voice, BUT HE'S IN THERE). But the irony of this is that the farmer takes Geralt to his home - where his wife explains about a girl she's taken in.
Following a hunch - and yes, destiny - Geralt finally meets Ciri, and the girl runs into his arms for the safety she was promised, but never actually given because of a series of circumstances keeping them apart.
Of course, because she's got untapped, raw power that includes visions, Ciri then looks at this white-haired, amber-eyed behemoth of a man, and asks who Yennefer is.
Which is where we leave them, with Geralt wondering how the fuck this ended up being his life.
TO BE CONTINUED IN SEASON TWO!
Man oh man, this show has some twists and turns to it, and a whole lot of OHMYGOD moments even - or especially - if you aren't paying close attention. It's a fairly faithful representation of the short story collections so far, with some inevitable changes that usually occur when translating book to screen. Overall, however, it's a dark, humourous, enchanting tale of just what happens when prejudice plays a massive role in the world around you.
The three leads did a fantastic job with the material they were given.
Cavill is, by his own admission, a massive fan of the fantasy genre and played the Witcher games even before this all exploded into popularity with the show, so his casting as Geralt makes a whole lot of sense. Outside of the obvious pandering to the masses by showing us a bare-chested Cavill (looking at you, tub scene), he looks like he'd be a force of nature to contend with when in his Geralt rig, and his enthusiasm shows.
Anya Chalotra portrays Yennefer, and I think she had the toughest time of it all, because intrinsically, Yennefer isn't a likeable character. Where her flaws might have made her likeable if she chose to turn the proper direction, the character of Yennefer turns bitter and malicious, which shouldn't endear her to audiences (and it often doesn't, but somehow or other there are still people out there who consider Yennefer awesome, which may be influenced by the character in the games, though that is NOT the character in the show). Still, to portray someone who shouldn't be likeable is a feat, and Chalotra is enchanting in her role.
Freya Allan, or Ciri, is the youngest in the group and probably the one whose career is going to explode the most after this. Her version of Ciri is beautiful, from the confusion to the conviction that Geralt is her destiny, and I'm going to be keeping tabs on her, because dayum, girl's got skillz.
Obviously we can't overlook Batey's Jaskier who is just an absolute delight. I love him, I love his character (even if he has no filter and needs to install a stop button somewhere for his babbling) and his singing voice is something else. When he and Geralt part ways for the final time in this season, I wanted to strangle the witcher because it was like he was kicking a puppy. DAMN YOU, GERALT!!
No show can ever be complete unless it has a strong supporting cast, however, and from MyAnna Buring to Lars Mikkelsen, they all deliver.
Note: ironically, fans were lobbying for Mads Mikkelsen, Lars' brother, to play Geralt.
Together with the backdrop of Hungary, the camera work which draws you further into the story, and some awesome stunt work, this all combines to make The Witcher into the phenomenon it turned out to be. If you've yet to read the books, this is the perfect opportunity to pick them up.
And can time pass a little faster, and can we get season two now? Please and thank you.
xx
*images and video not mine
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