Adapts the short story "The Witcher" from the anthology The Last Wish.
Geralt takes on another Witcher's unfinished business in a kingdom stalked by a ferocious beast. At a brutal cost, Yennefer forges a magical new future.
Tropes present in this episode:
- Being Good Sucks: Geralt could have just slain the Striga and been done with it, but instead he went to all the trouble to learn how the young princess was cursed so he could cure her. And said cure involved getting the ever-loving snot beaten out of him to keep her from crawling back into her crypt before dawn.
- Both Sides Have a Point: Yennifer is furious when she learns Istredd betrayed her elven heritage to his mentor, which helped get her reassigned from Aedirn to Nilfgaard. He counters that she was spying on him for her mentor too, and that she's chasing empty idols by pursuing beauty and power that she'll never feel worthy of. Neither can really claim the moral high ground in this argument.
- Brother–Sister Incest: King Foltest and his sister Adda were in love, and despite attempts to resist their mutual attraction, they conceived a child.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: The royal retainer Ostrit is revealed to be this. He was so furious with Foltest for "stealing" the princess he loved that he inadvertently cursed her and her daughter (though won't admit it) in an attempt to punish Foltest.
- Death by Childbirth: Adda ended up dying in childbirth; not directly because of the incest, but due to a curse by an unrequited love on Foltest that transferred to their daughter. The child is born a striga, a hideous man-eating monster.
- Entitled to Have You: Ostrit is revealed to have these feelings for the late Princess Adda, and it's what caused him to (accidentally) curse her and her unborn child in his attempt to punish Foltest for "stealing her" from him.
- Exact Words: When asked what his relationship with Princess Adda was, Ostrit claims that he would like to think he was a close friend and confidant of hers. It's true that he would like to think so, but he wasn't.
- Fatal Flaw: As we see with Yennifer, her rashness and stubbornness. While her being reassigned to Nilfgaard was mostly because she was deemed best able to maneuver an upcoming tricky political situation, she is so blinded by her hurt and betrayal over being passed over due to her elven blood and twisted spine, and desire to obtain beauty and power by any means necessary, that she forgoes all caution and magically alters herself into a beauty who can charm the King of Aedirn into taking her by her side. It spells disaster not just for her own future happiness (giving up her womb for beauty and power that brings her no fulfillment), but the stability of the continent when Fringilla turns out to be indeed unable to prevent (and even embraces) what Nilfgaard would become.
- Fetal Position Rebirth: A twofer, shown in conjunction. Princess Adelaide is posed like this when she is turned back to human; Yennefer is posed like this following her transformation into a beauty.
- Fan Disservice: Yennefer becomes very beautiful, but there is absolutely nothing sexy about her having a vaginal hysterectomy and her bones magically rearranging themselves without anesthesia.
- Foreshadowing: Shortly after Geralt and Triss learn of King Foltest's secret affair with his own sister, they discover a letter by their mother imploring Adda not to keep the baby, which Adda never heeded. It's an early sign that her relationship with her brother was consensual.
- From a Certain Point of View: Ostrit implies to Geralt and Triss that King Foltest's relationship with Princess Adda wasn't consensual. When they later call him out on misleading them, they realize that from Ostrit's point of view, her relationship with her brother indeed wasn't consensual because he'd convinced himself that Adda was his, and Foltest must have forced or brainwashed her to take her away from him.
- Karmic Death: Geralt uses Ostrit, who cursed the princess, as bait to draw her out, and leaves him tied up. It's unclear whether the striga actually understands who he is, or is just going for the most vulnerable target first, but she rips him to pieces before she even looks at Geralt.
- My Greatest Failure: Geralt is implied to feel this way about killing Renfri. He informs King Foltest that this is not his first time battling a princess whom everyone else sees as a monster. While he bluntly reveals that he killed the first one, Triss reveals that while he was out, he said her name over and over while he was out.
- Never My Fault: Ostrit had the gall to claim Foltest was in the wrong. Foltest couldn't help himself falling in love with his sister Adda, but Ostrit loved her as well and he grew spiteful of Foltest, so he put a curse on Adda while she was pregnant, which resulted in the birth of the striga and tried for years to put Foltest up as the bad guy, spinning as Foltest raping Adda. And not once does Ostrit try and rectify this deed, because above all else, Foltest needs to pay for having fallen in love with a person Ostrit loved and he can't let the memory of her be smeared with the notion she gave birth to a striga.
- Not Quite Back to Normal: Even after being turned back to human, Adalaide has still spent her whole life so far as a feral beast and keeps trying to fight Geralt, only backing down when he bites her neck. He'd earlier told Foltest she'll need a ton of care to begin a normal life.
- The Lost Lenore: King Foltest has never married, even though he's badly in need of an heir, which is one of the things that clues Geralt in about him being the striga's father.
- Oh, Crap!: The first witcher when he realises just what he's been ambushed by Adda is this quick look of surprise before she guts him.
- Poor Communication Kills: Yennefer clearly thinks that the council voted to switch her and Fringilla's assignments because of her visible disability and elven blood. Tissaia never manages to explain that the council actually thinks Yennefer is better able to handle what's about to turn into a very chancy political situation (possibly because of Yennefer's anger, possibly because she herself thinks Yennefer should get Aedirn anyway), so Yennefer forces her way into the Aedirn assignment, and...well, just ask Cintra how well that turns out. Why she is right that their final decision was due to Fantastic Racism against her elven blood, she didn't know they were leaning in that direction anyway.
- Red Herring:
- As Geralt points out, King Foltest barely reacts to hearing of his sister's death, but flinches when Geralt brings up her child. This suggests that he might have been the one to kill or curse his sister. It's later revealed that he loved her very much (and their incestuous relationship was consensual) and had nothing to do with her death or curse.
- Ostrit puts forth the possibility that Foltest's affair with his sister might not be consensual. Geralt and Triss later learn that it very much was.
- Refuge in Audacity: In-universe, Yennefer knows she won't get the Aedirn assignment back if she asks for it. So she gets her back fixed and puts on a gorgeous black dress (rather than the red dress requested by the king she was supposed to be assigned to), strides into the ball held for the monarchs and their new sorceresses late, and walks straight up to the Aedirnian king and introduces herself. Which breaks just about every rule about court assignments, but once Yennefer's done it, Aretuza can't undo it. She gets Aedirn.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: Nilfgaard is not at all the powerful empire it will later become, with a boorish king who harasses every woman in reach while taxing and neglecting his people into starvation, so nobody wants to become its Court Mage. This is what Yennefer thinks has happened to her, and what actually ends up happening to Fringilla.
- Scars Are Forever: Invoked by Yennefer when she undergoes her magical transformation. The only thing she asks the surgeon not to change are her purple eyes and the scars on her wrists from when she tried to kill herself.
- Scar Survey: The prostitue Geralt is spending the night with takes some time to look over his scars. She recognises two of them from Jaskier's songs but one on his knee is a mystery to her.
- Slashed Throat: Geralt nearly dies from this when the not-quite cured Adda attacks him after sunrise. Fortunately, Triss is able to get to him in time.
- Speak Ill of the Dead: The witcher (who judging by his medallion, appears to be from either the School of the Bear or Cat) who initially took the contract on the striga before Geralt in the mistaken belief it was a different kind of monster, suffers this; after the striga kills him, his death is hushed up by the Temerian authorities lest people realise how bad the problem is, and the locals who hired the witcher assume he took their gold and ran. Geralt angrily rages at Triss for allowing one of his brethren to be posthumously vilified, not to mention giving other witchers a bad name in the process.
- This Is Gonna Suck: Geralt starts swearing violently when he realizes the only way to cure the striga is to keep her out of her sarcophagus until the rooster crows three times. He was clearly hoping it would be a little simpler.Ostrit: ...you'll have to fight her until dawn.
- Wham Episode: After just a few hints in the first two episodes, this one makes clear that the three storylines are in Anachronic Order.
- The Worf Effect: The reason Triss lied about the first Witcher's fate is that there would be more fear among the population if they discovered that the monster managed to kill a Witcher.
- The World's Expert (on Getting Killed): The Witcher killed in the opening scene doesn't even get a look at the monster before he's ambushed and butchered. This could be chalked up to him being told he was facing a vukodlak instead of a striga, causing him to go in unprepared.
