Since we had a thread on the recent The Mandalorian series, I think it's only fair that The Witcher gets one too.
I've never gotten into the books, graphic novels, or video games in the Witcher universe, but it's been hard to avoid all the video game references online and in pop culture (read: cosplay, cosplay, cosplay) over the last few years. I had a passing familiarity with the names of Geralt, Yennifer, and Triss and only the vaguest understanding of their characters and roles. Beyond that, I was "going in cold" on this series and just hoping for a few hours of good fantasy fun after having my initial curiosities piqued.
I've been watching it over the past week and just finished today, and I think it delivered on my hope quite well!
There are only eight episodes, but most of them are very dense with storytelling, and there's very little retreading of previous material, IIRC. (Compare with The Mandalorian, for example, which starts every episode with a minute of recaps, and I distinctly recall them replaying that one scene from Mando's childhood
at least three times in the middle of the episodes…)
I'll avoid posting any spoilers in here, at least for now, but I'm curious if anyone else here has started watching it and what your thoughts are. Have any of you read the books or played the video games?
If you're
not familiar at all with The Witcher, I'll give a brief primer. The setting is in a very Lord of the Rings/D&D/Game of Thrones-like universe of medieval kingdoms and magic. The titular character Geralt "The Witcher" of Rivia is a monster-slayer who was somehow altered by magic in his youth to give him great strength and basic magical abilities. Other key characters include sorcerers who perform various feats of magic, though we soon learn that performing magical acts always comes at a cost. Then you have your typical feuding monarchies that are vying for land and power. The first season follows Geralt and a couple of other characters with whom he will eventually interact in important ways.
I think the actors chosen for the roles are
great even though some of them don't
look much like their arguably famous/iconic video game counterparts (Triss in particular). It didn't take long for me to forget Henry Cavill's Superman and accept him as Geralt; though, "dark and broody" Superman isn't far off from this guy.
The writing does a pretty good job of
showing and doesn't go overboard with exposition. The effects are pretty stellar, but I think we've come to expect all shows in this category to have Hollywood blockbuster-like material nowadays.
My one big complaint is that the general method of storytelling here weaves different timelines together, but there's literally
no indication that these are
not all in "present day" until well past the halfway mark of the season. To avoid spoilers, I'll say that at some point character X runs into character Y, but we saw character Y die several episodes ago! It took me a few good moments of eye-squinting and head-tilting and pondering to realize that this
wasn't a dream or an illusion of some kind but that the whole time I've been seeing several stories unfolding both at different
points in time
and over different
rates of time. A few visual cues, or even the old tried and true printing of something like "10 years ago" and "today" on the screen would have greatly resolved this confusion with little negative consequence.
Having figured that out, I almost want to go re-watch the earlier episodes to see if some things make more sense to me now, but I don't think it really makes that much of a difference. Once I "got it", the rest of things kind of clicked. My wife hasn't watched the series yet but is also very interested, and
this was the one thing I told her about ahead of time to save her the same confusion. I wonder if this is a situation where the writers assumed the audience knew more of the story and didn't need timing cues to indicate what is really happening when.