I'm very late to the party, but I finally watched the netflix series. I haven't read anything or been spoiled, so I'll write down my first thoughts. I binge watched the entire season in a row.

The first episode was meh-meh, the second one was really really bad, third to fifth were all right, while the last three were a little bad.

The best scene in the entire show was the fight scene at the end of episode one. That was clearly meant as the "hook" for the rest of the series. But I really disliked Renfri (the tavern scene especially), so it was overall meh.

In general, the scenes went from drama to drama to drama to drama to more drama. It had WAY too much drama. The fight scenes other than one in the first episode were kinda meh. Too many shots of people's faces, and people just staring at each other.

Geralt was my favorite character by far. His "Hmm" grunts and rare but well-placed "Fuck" moments were really good. But I felt like his character started devolving and spiraling out of control in the later half of the season. The Ciri plotline was horribly dull, boring and pointless. Yen was given too much focus and made too "special". All this new dramatic backstory for her... ugh.

Cavill surprised me by being an excellent Geralt. Tissaia was my second favorite, I like how she was portrayed and how she acted. But Yen was miscast. She was bitchy, but she didn't have the cold superiority, confidence and even charm I've come to expect from her. Compared to the games, she fell way short. Triss wasn't just miscast, she was an abomination. All the elves were pretty bad. The dwarves were bad, other than Yarpen. And this is probably racist, but all the black people around felt surreal. Dandelion was actually all right, other than the strangely modern songs.

Way way way too much focus on destiny. Were the books like this? Repeating destiny over and over.

And man, what did they do to Nilfgaard? What's this religion? What's up with their weird armor? How did they suddenly become a world threatening power from a backwater shithole in a generation or two? Fringilla Vigo wasn't that powerful. And since when was fire magic a forbidden, evil black art?

The Battle of Sodden Hill was a bit of a joke, as large-scale battles tend to be in tv and movies.

All in all, I'd give it a 7/10. Some good parts, some bad parts, lots of average parts. The director definitely took a lot of creative liberties.

 

reading that review definitely doesn't seem like a 7/10 lol

I would have expected you to give it like a 5/10 or worse

 

That wasn't really a review, more of a stream of consciousness thing after a binge.

I think I've explained this in the video game review thread before - in my country, we grade things from 4 to 10, all the way through school. So, to me, 7/10 is decidedly average. I always forget that some people consider that a good score. If I was rating from 0 or 1 to 10, then I'd give the show a 5, yeah.

It's not like The Witcher was unwatchable. The second episode had me take a lot of breaks, yeah, but I did want to finish it after the first few episodes. Geralt was good, and the music was really cool. I personally would have loved more focus on Geralt's witchery adventures (preferrably ones where he doesn't lose his sword or get imprisoned) and less Yennefer's baby drama and Ciri endlessly running away, but you don't always get what you want.

 

No idea. I've never heard anything about that. It's just been like that since... *checking wikipedia* 1952. From grade school to high school. Thinking back, 4-10 doesn't really make much sense, but you don't really think about it after all those years.

 

idk

The music didn't sound slavic folkmusic-ish enough to do it for me tbh. Awfully poppy, which works if you're Hans Zimmer composing for Interstellar but not for an epic fantasy series.

 

New cast members announced
https://tvline.com/2020/02/21/the-witcher-season-2-cast-additions/

 

There are also continued rumours that Mark Hamill will be vesemir.

 

This looks amazing.
No need to say more.

 

Looks pretty good. The first TV show I'll watch since.... Witcher season 1.

Cavill looks right from season 1, which is great. Ciri... looks a bit too much like she came from GoT, but eh. I think I'm looking for reasons to nitpick on her since Witcher 3. I just don't want any teen drama.

If Ciri will be a good character for the show, it'll be good. If I hate her, it'll suck to watch.

 

Season 2 looks Hype

 

Hope it's better than the first. They cleaved out swathes of important context from the stories in the first season to fit them into dual-storyline episodes and ended up with two storylines I didn't care about. The first season is good for YT compilations of the cool bits of action and humor, but as a story it failed to hold my interest.

 

Mmm, I too wasn't overly impressed with the first season, but I think this one will be much better, since they did fleshing out, introducing, and the worldbuilding in the first one.

Tbh, it's not that I don't care about storylines but the way they've made it is just... like a huge prologue - which is why this one holds much more potential since they can start immediately with action, and I hope it's packed with it. Where the first seemed more character focused, I feel this one will focus more on story itself, and when talking about TV shows, it's definitely a better way to go.

I guess the first season makes sense for people who had no previous contact with Witcher, but for me it was just one big intro cinematics.

 

My exposure to the Witcher was just the video games and enjoyed them, but never read the books.

The TV show was a ton of fun and covered content I'd never really seen before so I was on the edge of my seat most of the way through.

 

I never played the games and my book knowledge was really wiki knowledge and I thought there were missing bits in the first season that would glue everything together. In ep 1 the murderkill girl was underdeveloped, I barely knew what her motivation was. Ep 2 was... something about an elf. Ep5 was something with a djinn in a bottle.

Crucial detail were missing.

 

I recently rewatched the first season, and I think I liked it even better the second time around. It's not perfect, but in terms of fantasy TV/movies I think it's as close to a masterpiece as I've seen. I was a big fan of Ciri, loved Calanthe's story, but Yennefer seemed off, though she grew on me.

I'm really looking forward to season 2.

 

Finished S2. It was good enough to keep me watching, I suppose but like... I wasn't watching with this "I need to know what's next" feeling.

It's fine. It's a fantasy series without the X factor. It's... fine.

Magic system is very soft and given how clearly important magic is in the show, I wish it was more defined. As is, it's rather formless and as such, nothing characters say about Chaos makes sense to me. It's the fantasy equivalent of technobabble.

Whole season was spent on discovering that Ciri has Elder Blood and I kept being told how important that is, but it hasn't really been explained what this exactly means, why it's important (apart from an apocalypse prophecy which... yeah okay, whatever, it's an apocalypse prophecy, those are everywhere in genre fiction), what different factions want to do with it. I thought there was time in 8 hours to peel the curtain back a bit more.

At the end of the day it's a Netflix show I won't touch again until S3.

 

Watched eps 1-4 on Friday, 5-6 on Sunday, and 7-8 tonight. Not quite a binge but I had to fit a trip to Wales in between.

SPOILERS FOR ALL OF SEASON 2

Spoiler

In almost every respect I felt like Season 2 far surpassed Season 1. The story was much better structured and compelling, and I always felt the need to watch the next episode to find out what happens next, which I never had with season 1.

I feel like Season 2 benefited from Ciri being the audience stand-in, whereas in Season 1 it was a more ensemble approach. Most things are new to Ciri and need explaining to her, whereas Geralt and Yennefer are old and experienced, so Ciri makes a much better audience stand-in. She also has a more clear progression arc ahead of her in terms of currently having little power but great potential and a destiny etc., plus a riches-to-rags-to-riches, "recover my kingdom" plot thread. She is basically the classic fantasy hero. It just so happens that it took a first season of build-up before the show reoriented itself to treating her as the main character, and I think that was key to making season 2 work so well.

That said, Yennefer also had a fairly nice character arc with losing and regaining her magic being tied into her learning to be less selfish.

Geralt was the weakest of the 3 main characters in terms of arc - he didn't really have one. He's not static. Clearly his arc is meant to be his losing his cynicism and detachment and learning to care about Ciri. But this wasn't really structured as an arc. You can't really point towards any sort of growth in Geralt at the end of season 2 compared to season 1. He just seems to act different ways at different times as the plot demands.

Jaskier was basically a non-entity. Hopefully in season 3 they will think of a better place for him.

So why did I say season 2 was better than season 1 in almost every respect?

Season 2 has a distinct - arguably criminal - lack of Anya Chalotra nudity. She has a shared bath scene with Sabrina and they didn't even go for it then. The show just doesn't feel complete without the gratuitous eye candy, the same way it wouldn't feel complete if they censored all the violence.