The Witcher: The Next Game of Thrones?

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As soon as Netflix dropped its new exclusive TV series, “The Witcher,” the uptown pokies exploded with excitement. The show has been praised for being awesome, but does it deserve it?

If you don’t know, The Witcher series is based on a series of fantasy books by Andrzej Sapkowski, a Polish writer. His work is mostly known, however, through a series of highly popular video games produced and developed by CDProjectRed.

The third installment, aptly named “The Witcher 3”, is many people’s contender for Best Game of the 2010s. Now, as someone who has only played a minimal amount of “The Witcher 3”, and has never touched either of its predecessors, I feel I’m in a decent position to judge the merit of Netflix’s new show more objectively. So, does the show hold up to a relative newcomer?

Geralt, Jaskier, and the Rest

If I were to judge this show on the quality of its plot, I would have to give this a hard pass. I’ll explain that more when I get to it, but for the moment, it’s enough to say that what makes this show worth watching is the characters. Geralt, our protagonist, and hero, is a Witcher. Witchers are magically made mutants who have had their emotions removed, their libidos engorged, and their physical prowess turned superhuman.

Geralt, portrayed amazingly by Henry Cavill, spends eighty percent of his time grumbling about how he doesn’t want to be involved in the plot, fifteen percent of his time hunting monsters, and the rest of the time sleeping around with women who are inexplicably attracted to him.

Jaskier, a charismatic and down-on-his-luck bard, tags along on Geralt’s adventures to get material he can write songs about. He’s cowardly but persistent, and extremely funny. His persistent optimism is a hilarious foil to Geralt’s grim, growly, anti-hero attitude, and every piece of dialogue between them is gold.

Our second protagonist is Ciri. A young princess who is being hunted by the forces of an invading army that conquers her home kingdom. For reasons unknown, her grandmother sends her away to find Geralt just as the invading army breaches the walls, and thus she flees for her life.

There isn’t much else to say about her. She’s a small girl in a vast world, scared and trying desperately to survive. She’s clever enough to keep a low cover but otherwise inexperienced. She’s portrayed well, and you’ll be rooting for her throughout the story. (By the way, her grandmother, Queen Calanthe, is one of my favorite characters. She’s snarky, confident, and authoritative, but genuinely cares about her family).

Geralt, when he isn’t busy knobbing everything that moves, has a love interest by the name of Yennefer. The show initially presents her as an abused and sympathetic character, born a hunchback and disfigured. Her father sells her off to a witch, who brings her to a school of magic where she’s taught how to use hidden powers she didn’t know she had.

From this briefing, it seems like the perfect setup for an underdog story, but within the span of one or two episodes, Yennefer becomes a fully realized witch, uses magic to fix her appearance, and suddenly turns incredibly entitled and selfish. I’m not saying her character should have stayed an abused hunchback, but her sudden transformation and newfound powers were felt incredibly rushed, and whatever positive traits Geralt sees in her enough to fall head over heels for her seems absent from the plot.

Speaking of the Plot

The story of The Witcher is confusing at best, bad at worst. It’s revealed relatively early on that events on screen are not happening in the order that they’re initially presented. This isn’t necessarily bad, but the way it’s handled is more confusing than anything else.

In short, the scenes with Geralt in it are happening fifteen to thirty years before the scenes with Ciri in them, it’s a neat reveal but executed poorly. No spoilers, but there’s a wedding scene Geralt attends where Ciri’s mother appears, but the actress looks so similar to Ciri’s actor that I didn’t realize it wasn’t Ciri until I talked about it with a friend afterward.

On top of that, the overall story itself is… meh. Sure, the story of Geralt and Ciri is good, and that’s the part you’ll love, but everything surrounding it is lackluster and confusing. Character motivations are sometimes vague and undefined, if not contradictory with other stated motivations.

Geralt’s relationships are one-night-stands that he sometimes gets obsessed over for no reason, and the in-universe magic system is vague and poorly implemented.

Final Thoughts

The Witcher is an entertaining fantasy series if you don’t think about it too hard. The characters are a blast to follow, the special effects and monster designs are creative and outstanding, and the soundtrack is so good. The main problems of this show lie in basically everything outside of what’s directly happening to Geralt, Jaskier, and Ciri. I rate it:

6 / 10

Hooked by the games, stayed for the characters, apathetic about the plot

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