The Witcher
Year of release : 2019
Run time : 1h1min episodes, 8 episodes a season
Genre : Action / Adventure/ Fantasy
Cast : Henry Cavill
The Witcher is adapted from Polish author's Andrzej Sapkowski's novels ( a total of six) and short stories(15 of them),published back in 1986 to 2013.
The witchers are mutated people who fight monsters. They are taught from a very young age how to develop supernatural abilities to fight monsters in an initiation which turns their hair white and eyes yellow,an initiation which could kill them.
Episode 1
The witchers are hated and feared among the people. Our leading man and witcher,played by Superman,Henry Cavill, is asked to find and kill Renfri under false pretenses,for she is evil and can destroy the world just because she was born under the Black Sun and considered one of Lilith's women,and also because she killed many people.
Nilfgaardians start a war with Cintra. The queen,Calanthe,tells her niece to find Geralt of Rivia because he is her destiny.
At the same time,Geralt dreams about her being his destiny,then the Lilith girl tells him the same thing as she dies.
The people in the village he saves from the Lilith girl,who planned to kill them all until the mage Stregobor came out to face her,for things done to her in her past(she was a princess,not anymore) ,are very ungrateful,which makes me think they are under the command of Stregobor. No good deed goes unpunished,again.
Episode 2
We meet Yennefer,a hunchback with violet eyes. We find out the reason she is what she is,is because her real father was half elf.
People are told the elves left the world to the people and they moved in the mountains. We find out it's not so.
One problem I have with the series,is,it doesn't tell the audience when the action takes place. It goes from the present to the past,without telling us when that time is.
Yennefer is in the past. She is sold by her father for 4 marks,less than what he'd sell a pig for.
She catches the eye of Tissaia because she teleported when scared. Tissaia is the rectoress of Aretuza, a school where she teaches girls with abilities how to control what she calls "chaos",to become mages and then join a royal household where she is to give advice.
The witcher finds himself a fan in the shape of a bard,Jaskier,who follows him everywhere,writing songs about his courage.
Episode 3
Geralt fights a striga,an overgrown abortion,which grows inside a pregnant woman's dead body,mutating,feeding on the petrified womb.
As always after he risks his life and helps / saves the people, he's met with ingratitude . People are awful deceiving beings in these series. They are not to be trusted,they are selfish and always ready to stab each other in the back. These people are caricatures of themselves,have no word,no honor, no respect towards the one who risked their life helping them. They just deceive,and lie as they breathe. They don't even pay him !
Yennefer is refused Aedirn,so she asks the clothes designer to make her beautiful. He accepts to rebuild her,but this procedure needs a sacrifice,her ability to have kids .
Episode 4
Cirilla hears the calling of a forest nearby,and enters it. The Dryads who inhabit the forest want her to drink the water of forgetfulness and stay there.
It turns out her grandmother wasn't such a nice person,starting a war against the elves,her soldiers killing them in awful ways.
Back in time,Yennefer,beautiful now, working for the king of Aedirn,is designated to travel with the queen,offering protection. They are attacked by an assassin who wants to kill her and the baby,and even Yennefer. The queen proves to be quite an awful person,once in despair.
Also back in time,Geralt is asked by the bard to play his bodyguard ,as many men want to kill him,for he is a ladies' man. There he also sees queen Calanthe wasn't such a nice person.
Helping the cursed man who invoked the law of surprise,the queen wanted to kill,the man tells him he owes him a debt. Geralt invokes the same law of surprise without believing in it. Just then, we find out the princess is pregnant.
Episode 5
A doppler ( shapeshifter) is tasked by Cahir,the general of the invading army, with taking the form of Cintra's mage,in order to catch Cirilla.
In the past,Geralt looks for a djin in a lake,because he has insomnia,and he thinks he can help. The djinn cursed his bard,and looking for a cure,Geralt meets Yennefer,who's a prisoner of the mayor of the village he's in. Immediately,sparks fly between these two.
Yennefer helps Geralt hiding her intentions about the djinn.
Episode 6
In the past,Geralt is asked to join a team who hunts a dragon. He refuses,but seeing Yennefer is in the team,accepts.
In the present,Cirilla is convinced to leave the enchanted forest with the so called mage,the doppler,and her elf friend asks him uncomfortable questions Cirilla should have thought about.
Episode 7
Feeling nostalgic,Yennefer visits her first love,asking for a second chance.
Geralt visits Cintra,asking Calanthe to let him protect Cirilla,taking her out of the city,as he sees the great army approaching. Calanthe accepts by trying to give him somebody else's daughter. When Geralt finds out,she imprisons him.
In the present,Cirilla is trying to survive all alone.
Episode 8
Yennefer agrees to fight with the mages led by Tissaia in the war against Nilfgaard.
Cirilla is rescued by a kind woman and taken to her home.
Geralt fights some zombies,gets bitten and hallucinates as he is taken by the man he rescued to his place. This is how we find out how did he end up a witcher,more or less.
I loved this last episode,the battle was fantastic !
The acting was good from everyone involved,from the actors with the smallest role to the leading ones. I personally enjoyed watching Anya Chalotra as Yennefer .
Calanthe comes across as very arrogant and she pays for it with the hatred of her people and defeat in war.
Looking up the series and the books online,I found out the series don't have that much in common with the books starting from how the characters look,to the story. Doesn't surprise me,they rarely do,if ever!
The movie has great fighting scenes,beautiful landscapes,a great built up,the last episode kept me on the edge of my seat.
The movie doesn't tell the audience it jumps from timeline to timeline,past and present. I know a few have complained about it. I know it makes it more interesting,and can provide a twist at the end,but some people can find it convoluted and hard to follow.
Season 2
Episode 1
Season 2 starts where season 1 left off,right after the battle. We are told by the characters that Nilfgaard lost,as Tissaia is looking desperately for Yennefer,apparently she loved her very much.
Geralt is looking for Yennefer too,and hearing she's dead,he leaves .On their way to where they are going(we're not told,Geralt is very secretive ),they find a deserted village,with people slaughtered.
Geralt decides to visit his friend,Nivellen, and discovers he doesn't look much like himself anymore. And he might be hiding a bruxa.
Yennefer was captured by what's left of the Nilfgaardian army,and taken prisoner by Fringilla who wants to offer her to the elders so she could get away with destroying the world,as Yennefer used fire magic to defeat the Nilfgaardian army,and that's a no-no .
Episode 2
Geralt takes Cirilla to Kaer Morhen,the place he grew up in ,and studied to become a witcher. On winter,all witchers come back home to spend it together. One of them(who apparently was a major and beloved character by the fans in the books,but who in here makes a few minutes appearance) comes back after fighting a leshy and states he was stung by its roots.
Yennefer and Fringilla,now captured by the elves army,have dreams of a caped person,Yennefer of a red caped one,Fringilla of a Black caped one. They find out the queen of the elves dreams about a white caped person herself.
Episode 3
Yennefer reaches Aretuza, where she is suspected of crossing over to the Nilfgaardian side.
Cirilla learns how to fight.
Geralt and Vesemir don't understand how is it possible for one of them to have been killed by a leshy.
Episode 4
Yennefer is in hiding,as she tries to get to Nilfgaard.
Geralt brings Triss to help Cirilla .
Cirilla has visions of a monolith.
Vesemir finds flowers which bloom where elf blood was spilled.
The elves are rounded up in the North,and put in jail or camps,as they are seen as spies for Nilfgaard.
Episode 5
Cirilla is trying to find out who she is,as Vesemir tells her the unique flowers bloomed where her blood was spilled. She wants to become a witcher,as her blood is the missing ingredient to the potion creating witchers.
Geralt is trying to find out what was in the monolith,and what really happened.
Yennefer remains in the North to help the bard,and gets into trouble.
Episode 6
In order to get out of trouble,Yennefer says the lines of the spell which takes her back to the forest hut. The being there tells her to find Cirilla so she could get her powers back.
Geralt takes Cirilla to the temple where he studied,so she could study too.
Yennefer shows up at the said temple.
Episode 7
In order to escape the pyromaniac and his posse,Yennefer convinces Cirilla to recite elven words to open a portal. She then convinces her to ride to Cintra,telling her Geralt is there.
Geralt goes to save Jaskier, as Yennefer told him the pyromaniac was questioning him.
The elves,who,in need forged an alliance with Fringilla,changed their minds once they saw they can have babies again,and acted pretty arrogant about it. I don't like people who break their promises .
Episode 8
Turns out the caped being the women saw in their visions or dreams was a demon from another realm which ended up in this one,after the Conjunction. Apparently ,before the Conjunction,only elves lived on this plane. People came,elves welcomed them,and humans did what they did best, killed them all and took their lands.
The demon feeds off pain,and it was locked by the witchers for many years in a forest hut one could get by saying certain lines. And it now inhabits Cirilla.
After the loss of their baby,believing Redania killed it,the elves ride to Redania.
The second season has much less nudity than the first one.
The series have great acting,beautiful costumes,good visual effects,amazing filming locations with incredible interior designs and furniture,and beautiful landscapes.
I liked the bond between Cirilla and Geralt,as he is very protective of her,and she sees him as the father she never had.
I liked it,but not as much as the first season,and one thing that bothered me,how come Geralt is the only one with yellow eyes and white hair,from the witchers,I thought they all look like that. The others look completely normal !
The first season of The Witcher was filmed at Mafan Film Studios,located in Budapest,Hungary,and its where they created the villages;
Hungary is also the place where Yennefer's village exists, as they filmed at the outdoors Szentendre Skanzen Village Museum of old Hungarian architecture. Hungary served as location for many other scenes in the movie,like Aretuza's Hall and the Northern Mage Conclave.
The Canary Islands, where Geralt traveled, the Dryads Brokilon forest, and the beaches in the first season,and the ruins of a Polish castle in Ogrodziniec .
In season 2,The Witcher was filmed exclusively in the UK, at Arborfield Film Studios, Coldharbour Woods, North Yorkshire and The Lake District .
The Witcher is a Netflix production,and streams exclusively on it.
Rating : It's so money !