Hmm, I think the only time anyone mentioned Geralt being in love was the guy from the Dragon Expedition.

Geralt starts off infatuated by Yen's beauty, and like he said in the Dragon episode, when he's with her he talks more in 3 minutes than he does in days. So there's something about her that brings down his defences.

As for Yennefer, she insinuated that the reason she like Geralt is because he's one of the only people who doesn't want anything from her as a Witch or someone with political clout.

At least that's how I understood from the show.

But from the books, I always disliked Yennefer, and could never understand what Geralt saw in her. I tried to do as much as possible to prevent them from getting together in the game, but ended up relenting because its what Geralt wanted in the end and their scene at the end of Blood and Wine was amazing.

No you don't have to, the show does a good job of explaining the relevant details without relying on too much exposition dumps.

You might hear the name of some places that won't be explained, but they are not important to the central narrative.

So watch it, the show's creators definitely made it for all audiences to understand but like with every adaptation, having some knowledge of the original always enriches the experience.

 

@Jax Barely played the games and never read the books. Never really felt out of the loop. Was well directed.

 

@Quick Ben its literally in the first episode where they meet, minutes after Geralt finds out she set him up to die

 

Oh, yea Renfri and Yennefer are 2 completely different people.
Geralt falls in love with Renfri because she's been treated as an outcast and persecuted for stuff outside her control(born under eclipse). Similar to him.

 

@Quick Ben What are you on about mate? I never talked about Renfri. I said, the first episode where they meet. Them being Geralt and Yen. Read my post.

 

Now I want to play Witcher.

Guess I'll go find some books too.

 

Oh, I thought you were confused and talking about the first episode, my bad.

Yeah, she set him up to get hanged BUT I'm assuming she trusted that a witcher would be able to free himself from captivity. She didn't blink an eye after he showed up again, so she expected it, at least that's how I saw it.

 

I adored Jaskier charater tbh. So fucking rare to see such a proper Bard in a popular media series.

He was every bit as cliche and cheesy as he was supposed to be.

God I miss my D&D days.

 

I don't understand anyone who has problems with Dandelion, he was the best character, by a lot. The bits with Geralt and him were my favourite of the season.

I liked Yen, but didn't much care for the entire mage arc. I don't care to read the books, and I've only played Witcher 3, so while I can say their relationship felt accurate, I didn't much care for the pacing.

Having said that... having to stomach pre-W3 Ciri was a choir... she's so awesome (both young and older) in the game, I just couldn't stand the actress and her portrayal here. Her story was the least interesting by far. I hope she improves in the next season...

 

A few important notes from the books (specifically, the Last Wish, a collection of short stories which is undeniably the main book the season is based off of), just for situational awareness:

This tv show is the first place where Yen's upbringing and transition from hunchback to sorceress is outright shown - in the books it's only referred to in anecdote, across multiple books.

In the Last Wish, Yennefer enters the series at the very end of the book a seemingly ruthless sorceress who is appears at first to be toying with Geralt to further her own ends, only for her slowly to become more sympathetic as the source of her habitual coldness is revealed to the reader (mostly through her interactions with Ciri later on) to be a response to a horrific history of legitimate trauma and decades of becoming jaded with politics.

The tv show is doing two rather different and new things with Yen - making her sympathetic from the get-go by showing all her backstory up front, and actually showing the liminal space between hunchback and sorceress at all.

Frankly, I'm not sure I'm thrilled by the choice either. It sort of robs away - in my opinion - the most narratively poetic part of Geralt and Yennefer's relationship - their parallels with dealing with prejudice, and the singularly brilliant way Sapkowski chose to write it:

Geralt is constantly shown to be mistreated and mistrusted by humans and monsters alike. As the fantasy hero, we're naturally bent towards aligning with him, and against his enemies and rivals.

In comparison, in the books, Yennefer is initially introduced as just that - a sorceress that torments Geralt, seeming hell-bent on her own desires. Many of the friends surrounding Geralt, such as Dandelion, condemn both her for doing so and Geralt for the relationship they share despite her perceived cruelty.

In my mind, this is very deliberate: the reader is set up to be to Yennefer what the world is to Geralt. And it's lost when you give the game away from the start that Yennefer is a sympathetic, decent person from the beginning and not a heartless sorceress.

Finally, Ciri. It's not shown very well on screen (because it can't be), but in the books she's basically 10 years old at the time Cintra falls. Ciri in the Witcher 3 has already gone through entire Witcher books and had an odyssey of adventures, and is about a decade older - and young Ciri at Kaer Morhen is something you'll see before long. I'm hopeful to see her improve as the actress becomes allowed by the plot to act closer to her own age again.

 

To add, I wasn't a very big fan of how they connected Geralt to Ciri in the show.

In a Question of Price, Geralt invokes the law of surprise after saving Duny and Pavetta as a weird way of trying to revive the witchers. He says he'll return to Cintra after six years to collect the child, which he does, but he rejects it after talking with Calanthe and not wanting to subject the child to becoming like him.

And that's the main contrast. The show has Geralt looking for Ciri and Calanthe rejecting him, but the books have Geralt rejecting Ciri, and at the same time, running away from destiny.

The Brokilon sequence is such an important part of the story, I think, that was glanced over. In the show, Ciri goes there by herself AFTER the invasion of Cintra, does fuck all except make friends with that elf kid who has no real role in anything, and fails to become a dryad.

In Sword of Destiny, Geralt finds Ciri in Brokilon way before the invasion of Cintra, completely by chance, after she had run away from being married off. Ciri knows exactly who Geralt is to her, but Geralt doesn't. They bond, Geralt has a little heart to heart with Eithné, the dryad queen who basically serves as a sort of mother figure to him, and destiny blocks Ciri from becoming a dryad. Geralt, however, even after seeing this supposedly irreversible ritual prevented by destiny, decides to again reject it and returns Ciri to Mousesack and to Cintra.

The whole time, Geralt is running away from where he's supposed to belong. He doesn't believe in destiny, but he's irrevocably linked to it anyway. When Calanthe rejects Geralt in the show, it makes Geralt's whole conflict with destiny less about himself and more about Calanthe.

Because Geralt doesn't realise how important Ciri is to him until he has a talk with Yennefer, but then it's too late, and Cintra is sacked days later. He finds out about it from Dandelion when he's on the way to find her, and turns the other way thinking that destiny was complete bullshit as he'd presumed.

But in the end, through complete chance, he finds Ciri out of nowhere, at the family of a merchant who'd saved him from a near-death experience. Despite his rejection of destiny, Ciri finds her way back to him, and Geralt finally accepts her.

The show just doesn't do enough to link the two, I think. Ciri is supposed to be waiting for Geralt the whole time, but Geralt refuses to find her. In the show, Ciri has no clue who Geralt is until ten minutes before her grandmother dies, and Geralt looks for her for a bit but gets rejected by Calanthe and leaves -- the bond just isn't there, and the scene at the end where they finally find each other doesn't have the impact it's supposed to have.

 

Glad I’m not the only one that was confused by timeline (haven’t read books or played games), didn’t mind the confusion though. Enjoyed trying to figure out what was going on.

 

I think I just fell in love with the young, cheeky, adventurous kid-Ciri from my memory of the game. She seemed a bit damsel-y in the show to me. Hopefully yeah, they do stuff with that in the next season and her bond with Geralt turns her into the little rapscallion that had me wanting to murder everyone that so much as looked at her the wrong way in the game.

As for Yen, I was watching the show with my brother in law who isn't a gamer. I was telling him how excited I was for Yen to 'show up', but ultimately, I don't feel she ever did. She was nowhere near cunty enough for me. I was hoping for haughty posh bitch, I don't think we got that (says a lot about me... what?! I like wicked posh girls, go away).

It took me a while to clue in that we weren't getting the story told to us in chronological order. I think one of the show's biggest failings is how poorly it conveyed the aging (or de-aging) of characters that aren't Geralt or Mages.

 

The timeline thing was spelt out pretty clearly in Episode 3 I thought. I can see people with more knowledge picking it earlier, but the Foltest children bit made it clear otherwise.

 

The timeline was explained, but it just didn't feel organic.

Since none of the characters age and Geralts wanderings are rather random there just isn't any real indication until the show bluntly says that the time skip has happened.

I also didn't really like the character development overall, but that hopefully has more to do with the jerky nature of the plot and as the story settles into a more linear narrative we will get to see characters changing in a more detail.

 

Honestly this seems like a case of the books being better than the tv series which personally detracts from enjoyment of the show if you’ve read them.

Glad I haven’t read them bc I loved the show. Been awhile since I enjoyed a show so much.

Jaskier=Best Bard.
--- Post automerged ---
Mark Hamill want's to play Vesemir.

lul

https://comicbook.com/gaming/2019/1...p6bBhOrgqFJHTPz1gCCfSsWgvHbgFarmPzLyCvJNyJ2B0

 

I think he might already be cast. I thought I heard his voice in one of Geralt's flashbacks? Maybe not, and not that it matters, a voice doesn't exactly make it locked in.

 

As I understand it, the first season is based on a short story collection, which is fine, but I think the short stories are too disconnected to flow well with the overarching plot of the season. The witcher adventures were fun, different enough that it wasn't just a monster-of-the-week affair, but also highlighted how weak everything involving Cirilla was. Credit to Sapkowski for writing the source material.

I buy Cavill as Geralt, except for the voice--that still sounds retarded. I'm also disappointed that the fight scene in Blaviken was the show blowing its load early on that front, no fight scene following that one was as smooth or well shot.

Jaskier was great, more bards in premium fantasy shows plz. "Toss a coin to your witcher" is as good as the best song GOT had to offer (Rains of Castamere).

I couldn't care less about Yen, her development (which I thought to be poorly executed at best, relying on telling), her desire to have a kid or the romance between her and Geralt (also poorly developed).

Episode 3 is the best of the season, ep 4 is second place. This opinion is based on what Geralt was doing, I thought most of Yen's and Ciri's screentime was disappointing--Brokilon forest was the weakest part of the show. Consequently, the djinn episode was the least interesting. There isn't much substance to Yennefer beyond the actress being attractive.

I'll have to rewatch those scenes specifically, but I got the impression that CGI on dragons was kinda meh.

 

Ironically, when I started playing Witcher 3, I was right there with you.

'This guy sounds stupid, it's ruining the game...'

Cut to over three years later when I'm watching this show, it doesn't even register. That's Geralt, and I don't even take notice.

 

This song is on my work playlist...