See, I come to this with no knowledge of book lore, so I just saw him getting his ass handed to him there. I don't know what he's supposed to go and do later. Also, holy crap Yen.
Finally done. Man, that was an epic ending, but can we get Season 2 now, please? I'm ready.
Adding this: I didn't expect Season 1 to resolve all the plot lines, but whoever is writing this is clearly planning for a long run. With the quality they've displayed so far, I really hope they get it, but this must be costing Netflix a bundle. I mean, I did spot some dodgy VFX here and there (the dragon in particular, and some of the wide army shots are meh) but overall the quality is incredible.
The most jarring part for me is the sudden introduction of Geralt's mother as a plot-relevant character. Kind of out of nowhere, that. Do they plan to really dive into his origin story? I mean, the obvious path to take now that Geralt and Ciri are united is Kaer Morhen, which is a perfect starting point for Season 2. I know how important it is to Witcher lore.
Edited by Fighteer on Dec 25th 2019 at 10:54:13 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Well Ciri does undergo at least some Witcher enhancements, but she's never made a ''full' Witcher because there's never been a female one (apparently because they react badly to some of the stuff in the Trails of the Grasses).
Anyway I'm watching Episode 7 now. Ciri, I know you're finding it hard to trust anyone now, but come on...
Okay, finished the season finally. I thought from what I'd read here that First Sodden was way more of a curb stomp, but they definitely made Nilfgaard pay heavily (to say nothing of what Yen did). I bet if Fringilla hadn't been there Nilfgaard might have been beaten.
Glad that Geralt and Ciri found one another though, thankfully. Plus Ciri got picked up by that nice lady. Hopefully they'll both stay there for a while even with the war on.
Also oh goody, more Cintrans that I can hate. Fuck you Anton and you other street rats, you deserved what you got.
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That family creeps me out a little bit... the wife in particular seems a little out of it. Good people are extremely rare in the Witcher. I wouldn't have felt comfortable with Ciri staying there long-term.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure Ciri and Geralt are headed for Kaer Morhen as soon as he's well enough to ride. It would be kind of weird for Season 2 to pick up immediately afterwards, as the dangling plot threads are all ones that can handle a minor time skip. Clearly Yennefer's not dead, so that'll be a nice place to go.
In book lore, both Triss and Yen are listed among the dead after Sodden, but the show doesn't feel compelled to follow the books strictly and literally.
I'm not sure what you mean. The quality of Season 1 is stellar in my opinion. It manages to capture the look and feel of the series and its characters brilliantly, and although it mashes up some plot lines, it forges them all into a neat, coherent package. It's about as good as I could possibly have hoped for.
I've heard people say that Episodes 4 and 6 are a little weak, but on a relative scale that's still high praise.
Edited by Fighteer on Dec 26th 2019 at 6:11:28 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Bit of a correction, but
As for Season 1, my primary bone to pick against it is the fact that there's no real emotional weight to Geralt and Ciri re/uniting at the end, since the two of them had never even met before that point in the show; in the books, the events of Brokilon Forest happen differently, and Geralt and Ciri develop a fairly close bond Geralt leaves her with Calanthe and refuses to claim his Child of Surprise. In the show, however, here's no real bond between them to warrant that tight embrace other than relief, which makes for a kinda weak ending.
Hitokiri in the streets, daishouri in the sheets.I've seen at least one long Twitter thread (didn't save it and it wasn't anyone I follow so I doubt I'll be able to find it again) of someone being VERY ... I think "triggered" is a fair term to use, although I don't use it in the dismissive and disparaging way anti-SJW's do, or in the technical medical sense, over Yennefer's treatment in the show. I hadn't seen the show at this point, so I couldn't quite parse what was going on, but you don't have to look very far to find others who don't like the "ableist cure narrative" (quotes for their words rather than implying I don't take them seriously) in Yenn's backstory.
Otherwise, just binged the whole lot between Xmas eve and Boxing day, give Season 2 now please.
"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."
We talked about this extensively earlier. It is made clear many, many times that Yennefer made a terrible sacrifice to become beautiful and that being beautiful has brought her neither happiness nor a sense of self-worth. If that's an ableist message, I'll eat my shorts.
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As for that first meeting, eh. It hit the emotional mark it needed to, and that's what matters. We're shown that Destiny leaves a supernatural bond on those who share it, even if they have never met. Anyway, it's not like there could be that many men matching Geralt's description in the middle of a forest near Sodden, and I assume he learned what Ciri really looks like from the journal on Calanthe's divan.
Edited by Fighteer on Dec 26th 2019 at 1:12:15 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Sorry about necro'ing that particular topic, I didn't realise that was a faux pas, but I've only just finished watching it.
Regarding their reunion/meeting, Geralt saw Ciri in the street, so he'd already know what her face looks like. Plus they did a great job with casting/makeup and got Ciri and her mother to look really alike.
"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."The question isn't really how Geralt recognizes Ciri but how she immediately recognizes him. I'm not concerned about it, though.
By the way, Penny Arcade nails it with today's comic.
"woo magic destiny vision bullshit"
Half of the first season is based around "woo magic destiny vision bullshit", so it's hardly inconsistent.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Re: Mark Hamill as "Gruff Old Swordsman Mentor": He's actually already played just such a role, I believe, and played it well. In Knightfall, he plays a Templar (as in actual "Order of Solomon's Temple", not as in Knight Templar) in charge of training the order's new recruits, and his role is pretty much as described: tough, gruff, but ultimately caring very much about the well-being of his trainees.
Thus it seems to me that it wouldn't be out of place for him to do so again in this series, and he's already shown that he can play such a part. ^_^
As to this series itself, I'll copy-paste my thoughts from my posts on Twitter, if I may. Note that I went in having neither read the books nor played the games, but had picked up a few bits and pieces along the way.
There were, however, two points on which it didn't quite work for me, I feel:
First, it was seldom clear what magic could and couldn't do, or what the costs could be. This made it hard to reason about the actions of mages, to consider what they did or might do.
I can take guesses, but a bit more clarity would have been preferable, I feel.
(This was especially perplexing when characters talked about Yennifer's incredible power—and then she runs from a single assassin and his admittedly-ferocious creature, or spends most of a combat using a blade.)
And second, the fact that the story took place in multiple time-frames was never stated, for no solid reason that I perceived.
While it was somewhat fun to figure out the timeline, I still think that I would have enjoyed the story more had the show been explicit about this
With all that said, however, I found the series to be overall excellent—and with a wonderful showing of magecraft at the end, to boot! :D
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Dec 29th 2019 at 3:48:38 PM
My Games and Asset PacksTo each their own, of course, but once I figured out that the series was doing alternate timelines, I got them sorted out pretty quickly. There are ample clues, and this is just a brief list:
- When Yennefer saunters into the court of Aedirn, you see Foltest and Adda as children, looking exactly as they do in the painting that Geralt and Triss examine in the ruined castle. This means her timeline is at least far enough back for Foltest to have become king and bedded his sister.
- Geralt visits the court of Cintra while Ciri's mother is pregnant with her, placing that timeline 12 to 13 years before Ciri's.
That's really all you need even if you don't follow the rest.
Edited by Fighteer on Dec 29th 2019 at 9:53:54 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The only thing that really confused me about the timelines is that while "enhanced" humans like Geralt or the sorcerers don't seem to age much, neither do apparently ordinary humans like Jaskier or Ciri's grandparents. I get why this was done and I still managed to piece the timeline together quickly enough but I can see why some people might find it confusing if they come in with no prior knowledge.
"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."Jaskier mentions the passage of time at a few points, and someone calls him out on having "crow's feet". Cintra's a bit more obvious: one wouldn't expect Mousesack to age much, but Calanthe and Eist could have used a bit more makeup work to make them appear a decade older between scenes. It doesn't matter that much, though. If you can't figure it out from the foreground details, I don't see why the background ones would be relevant.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Oh, I didn't have any real trouble sorting out the timelines. I just feel that it was to the detriment of my enjoyment of the show that the timelines weren't made clear; I saw no benefit (aside from the pleasant feeling of figuring something out) to making them unclear. It wasn't confusing, just unwarranted work, and a slight muddying of early-story waters.
(I think that my first clue was something political—a mention of Cintra before it fell, or some such thing. But I may be forgetting.)
[edit] Indeed, I think that making the multiple timelines clearer might have been to the benefit of my enjoyment of the show, allowing me to appreciate from the start the idea of seeing the various threads come together.
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Dec 29th 2019 at 5:30:05 PM
My Games and Asset PacksI didn't like it that much. It isn't bad per see, but I felt that the series could have used some time to do some exposition and lore-building (for example, things like the "Conjunction of the Spheres" are mentioned but not explained at all, no mention that Witchers don't age - may need to check that though -, we see Geralt gobbles potions but someone who is not familiar with the books and/or games may not understand why, etc). The pacing was kind of weird too.
The fight between Cahir and Vilgefortz made the latter look like an incompetent foul. Seriously, for someone who is supposed to be a warrior-mage, losing his weapon - multiple times - and not casting any useful magic whatsoever which could have ended the duel quickly (like his female colleagues did to soldiers, such as Coral) make him look like a complete joke. Granted, he seems to be a double agent, but such a display of incompetence was pretty jarring.
Overall, magic doesn't seem to be handled very well.
Out of all the characters, the one I liked the most was, surprisingly enough, Jaskier. Geralt himself wasn't so bad (I was expecting the worst from him, and in the end he was pretty solid).
Edited by NonoRobot on Dec 29th 2019 at 9:10:04 AM
Jaskier is a truly hilarious character. He balances exposition with comic relief perfectly, even throwing in an absolutely adorable fourth wall break in Episode 2. Henry Cavill's Geralt is perfect: everything I could ever have hoped for from the role, which is fitting since he practically begged to be allowed to play the character.
My favorite in Season 1, however, is Anya Chalotra's Yennefer, without question. She absolutely nails the character: her struggle for self-worth, her alienation, her discovery of what it means to fight for something you believe in. I've heard it said that Yen is the true protagonist of this season, and I don't disagree. It is, after all, her arc that shows the most character development.
Edited by Fighteer on Dec 29th 2019 at 2:48:53 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1211689821007208448?s=21
It’s only been out for a few weeks but The Witcher is one of Netflix’s most popular releases all year, in all categories...as per Netflix themselves.

Hey, even in the game Sorcerers are nasty to fight.