Much More
The intro graphic for this episode presents the symbols from all 7 previous title sequences rearranging and entwining to form the logo of the series: including the wolf amulet, the swallow, and the obsidian star, representing each main character. It’s a perfect visual metaphor for the exact feat the finale fails to accomplish. The storylines never truly converge but instead, just run parallel to each other in an unsatisfactory and unbalanced conclusion. Geralt is completely removed from the action having a personal but uneventful journey. Ciri appears in 2 brief expository scenes, which is exactly 2 more scenes than I would have liked.
The climax of the season rests entirely on the shoulders of Yennefer and her fellow mages. The skirmish at the Sodden ruins is plain fine. Noticeably budget-constrained and full of befuddling decisions, the battle is anything but exciting. The entire sequence is heavily weighted down by the inconsistent use of magic and the associated poor production value. There are good character moments peppered throughout the array of logical missteps. Yen’s relationship with Tessia and Triss carries most of the emotional weight of the story. The battle could pass for an entertaining bottle episode but grossly misses its mark as the concluding set piece of the season.
The pure fact that I can still examine the episode neatly sectioned for each main character proves the great coming together the tile sequence teases never truly happens.
Geralt
Geralt’s story starts off right where we left it in the previous episode. The witcher stands amidst the ruins of Cintra grappling with his failure. There is a very welcome fresh establishing shot of the burning capital followed by a nicely framed montage of the battle’s aftermath. The voiceover and score are working overtime to establish the melancholy of the scene but Geralt’s sense of regret does not come through with enough force. It’s most certainly the low point of the narrative’s emotional arc, breaking the stoic facade would have been a powerful move here. Instead, the witcher just gets about 15% grumpier which is not a grand change at this point.
Meeting Yurga as he is burying bodies is a good change to the source material, but the scene is completely devoid of a logical or emotional throughline. The witcher’s intervention is a telegraphed turn. Yurga running off takes away all stakes from the situation. There is literally no visible reason for Geralt to combat the ghouls at this point. It is just a plainly reckless and stupid decision not backed up by the witcher’s marginally more grumpy attitude.
It would have been a clearly better choice to have Yurga stay and insist on burying the bodies. This way Geralt would stick around to protect him, immediately adding value to his peril.
The fight scene itself is rather uneven. The audio design of the ghouls is exquisite while the CGI is mediocre even by the show’s standards. There are some attempted horror elements thrown in the mix, but they fall flat due to the ghouls’ generic look. The POV shots especially highlight the uncanny texture and uneven rigging of the monsters. There is also zero witcher skill being used in the fight. While this may be intended to show Geralt has given up, it surely does not make for a very engaging action scene.
Geralt’s dying quips about happy endings and fitting ends rob the scene of its poignancy. Cavil is a capable actor, was he allowed to actually act, a closeup would have communicated much more substance than the cliche last words. It’s almost comedic how resigned to his fate he has become. Cutting straight to the witcher spread out on the wagon skips over Yurga’s return or how the old merchant managed to hoist Geralt’s 100kg of pure muscle onto his cart. Just more plotholes in this swiss cheese of a story.
The fever-dream sequences of Geralt’s past serve up some great background for the character through proficient visual storytelling. Having said that, the effects and editing choices take away from the immersion rather than adding to it. It’s still not as bad as Yen hotboxing with the students last episode, but it’s in the same ballpark.
Finally getting details on the titular witcher’s mysterious origin is a great breakthrough moment. It’s a breath of fresh air for the series to be sparse with its expositions and leave the audience to deduce the hallucination’s intricacies. It works very well, even though the effects are still distracting. Suddenly unleashing a barrage of references to Vesemir and Kaer Morhen is a bit too sudden for viewers not in the know. The show could have given some previous hints to big G’s childhood to lay the foundations of the intrigue, but it’s not a big omission. In fact, the included flashbacks stay surprisingly true to the book’s mythology.
Geralt’s delirium is surprisingly healed in the next scene. Even though he was saying his goodbyes a few scenes ago the witcher suddenly sits up and looks quite chipper for the circumstances. Then he just chugs his witcher super juice and faints out again. This sudden burst of health breaks up the otherwise well-acted condition. There is no consistent sense of Geralt’s life being in any peril. I kept questioning exactly how worried I should be for the white wolf at this point. Establishing clear stakes has been a very weak area for the show since episode 1.
By the time Refri enters the picture I was as confused as a chameleon in a bag of skittles. Geralt seeing his magical love interests instead of his mother is a disturbingly Freudian choice. But it does bring some complexity to the character. It just feels out of place in the otherwise extremely handholding and surface-level storytelling.
It’s a shame we never get a flashback to Geralt and Yennefer spending some time together. It would have strengthened their relationship if Geralt focused his fever-induced thoughts a bit more on his primary love interest like he does so in the books.
Geralt’s confrontation with Visenna is a missed opportunity as it centers too much on the destiny mambo-jumbo instead of the interpersonal conflict. It feels incredibly rushed, we just got an introduction to Geralt’s prevailing Mommy issues not 10 minutes ago, and now we’re seeing its resolution? To be fair, the book’s similarly hasty treatment of Geralt and Visenna is partly to blame.
If this whole ordeal wasn’t already confusing enough, it’s then hinted Geralt may have hallucinated the whole thing, robbing the encounter of all its significance. The audience benefits nothing from the ambiguous nature of this scene.
Geralt again makes a brief recovery to converse with his savior. There is an insultingly offhanded mention of the law of surprise that is promptly refused. Not to get ahead of myself, but this was one of the many contributing factors that caused the emotional climax of the season to fall completely flat.
Ciri
We catch up with Ciri as she is recovering from last episode’s magical outburst. Seeing the bloody aftermath of the event is a great show of her dangerous abilities. But having seen both the leadup and consequences of the explosion, it would have been nice to witness the actual event as well. Its omission stinks of budget constraints. The outburst has undoubtedly taken a toll on the princess, luckily the good-natured lady from the previous episode quickly shows up out of nowhere to take care of her. I was actually informed that the lady’s canonical name is “Goldencheeks” but that sounds vaguely sexual and somewhat disconcerting, so I will continue to refer to her as the kind lady.
The kind lady is again much too kind without any reason. Although a painfully 1-dimensional character in the books as well, the show lifts her pure intentions to mythical heights. Like, lady, look around! There is some clearly voodoo shit going on here with dudes impaled on trees. Maybe better to leave the explosive horse-thieving orphan to her own devices. Plenty of other disenfranchised children in the war-torn lands. But oh no, she needs this particular rascal.
Once taken in by the kind lady and recuperating at the cottage, Ciri suddenly goes mute in a rather unexplained development. She seemed to be at the low point of her emotional arc last episode. But even then she was hardened and resourceful. Her out-of-the-blue shell-shocked demeanor seems unjustified here. It’s like the writers simply grew tired of giving her dialogue. This results in the kind lady just talking exposition at her for the entire scene.
The family witnessing the battle from afar brings a good sense of cohesion to the different plotlines. The lady is still way too positive for the circumstances. With the Nilfgaardian assault raging next door, she should be at least a little bit terrified. The bucolic idyll of the cottage is in stark contrast to the dire condition of the refugees we see in Yen’s arc. Even though the stories are closing the gap geographically, they are still far apart in tone.
Yennefer and the damn powerful mages
The grand final stand of the mages in this episode feels pathetically small scale. In fact, the very first thing Yennefer does is call out how underwhelming the 60 mage crew seems. What I fucking wouldn’t give for an actual 60 mage crew! Best case scenario the show presents around 20 mages throughout the episode and there are maybe 4 of them the audience actually cares about. Going into the confrontation, expectations have already been mismanaged.
The fog surrounding the mage’s approach is an obviously tacked-on solution for the ever dissipating budget. The rowboat conversation is weighted down by a deluge of exposition. It’s the final confrontation of Yen’s arc, we should be at the payoff stage of the narrative and not still at the setup. Besides, it feels comical to have all the mages crammed into a dinghy raft, couldn’t they have opened a portal or something? Or is this their attempt at stealth?
Yen takes this time to recount her excursion to Nazeer which heavily contradicts the actual conditions we witnessed last episode. I can see how aligning Istredd with Niflgaard gives Yen an opportunity to project her anger towards the ex-boyfriend onto the empire that supports him. It’s cheap motivation but the attempt is commendable.
The dialogue’s quality seems to take a noticeable hit in these first few scenes. “Damn powerful mages”, “inconvenient asshole” both the phrasing and the delivery of such lines break the theme of medieval fantasy. The show has never been faithful to the historical accuracy of the setting, but these dialogues feel jarringly out of place.
Once the mages make it to Sodden Hill there is a fantastic establishing shot of the vast surrounding region. Its landscape is perfectly both foreign and familiar. This single lingering shot does a lot for underlining the grandiose atmosphere of the plot. It’s a shame the upcoming battle sequence never features better frames of the locale. The scenes of fighting actively contradict the geography this initial shot establishes. The setting seems to squeeze smaller and tighter with each progressive scene.
There is one thing the show does well and that’s refugees. The displaced despair of the war-torn common folk is a constant and palpable presence. The old woman’s monologue about her hardships adds excellent background to the war. It’s these smaller and more personal stories that were at the heart of the books. This short but emotional scene is a certified witcher moment. One of the few the series offers.
For all the talk of military strategy, the battle preparations are riddled with befuddling choices. Keeping the women and children around for the fight is an objectively bad choice and a cheap narrative trick. The montage of preparations feels like just a bunch of kids playing war with sticks and stones. It’s hard to believe jars of astrology crystals are the best defense these so-called “damn good mages” can whip up. The show is channeling Home Alone much more than Game of Thrones.
Triss and Yen serve up some good banter with a stark tonal shift from the battle prep. Bringing up Geralt feels forced and just seems like something that should have already come up in conversation between the two sorceresses. The show is openly scrambling to connect its dots before its runtime expires. The Tessia and Yen duo still serves as the heart of the narrative. All the talk of death raises the stakes just enough to get the audience slightly invested. Yen’s yearning for legacy is finally a clear wording of her desires, but it has unfortunately gotten quite tiring by this point. Nonetheless, an appropriately sombre tone is established by the pair’s musings.
Cutting to the Niflgaardian perspective blurs the lines of previously allowed points of view the show ingrained. Being this intimate with the other side’s context robs the battle of any unpredictability. It does not help that the Nilfgaardians still act like cartoon villains. The scene serves a good purpose though, in putting some emphasis back on Ciri’s capture. The fireball is a good visual effect but a mage cremating himself seems like a bit of overkill. It again contradicts the originally established equivalent exchange principle for spell casting. This is especially vexing considering how Yen deflects the fireball with relative ease. Not once but twice. This also raises the question of where Nifgaard gets its sacrificial mages. Do they just grow them on trees? Aren’t they worried about supply constraints? With mages not being the most common thing in this universe, they should be a bit more weight behind their deaths on both sides of the battlefield. Although the calamity with the eels has already established the expandable nature of the magically gifted.
The mages scurrying around in ornate nightgowns is an absurdly laughable sight. So is the Niflgaardians vaping on the entire hillside. Yennefer becomes a human walkie-talkie as a sort of control tower for the rest of the mages. It’s a great way to have Yen do something while doing nothing. It’s painful how she contributes so little to the first 90 percent of the battle. The whole idea of magical flight control is inherently flawed and out of place.
Triss conjuring mushrooms is a creative use of magic and a great start to the asymmetric combat. It fits nicely with the alchemy/plant-based magic the show chose to give Triss. The other mage simply force-choking the approaching soldiers just feels uninspired in contrast. The glitter bombs have good effects but are needlessly complicated. Let me get this straight, the mages need to put some special crystals in bottles, then they need to cast a spell in the bottles, then they need to throw the bottles, and they also need to shoot the bottles with an arrow to activate them. It’s an awful lot of steps for mediocre results. Couldn’t the “damn powerful mages’’ just conjure the final result without all the tedious setup? There is no sense of strategy to the encounter from either side. It’s just a series of trading blows rather than working towards some greater plan. The northern mages have a relatively well defendable spot at the fort yet almost all of them rush out into the woods and promptly get defeated.
The Vilgefortz vs. Cahir fight is brief but surprisingly well-executed. The most negative aspect of the encounter is that I cared absolutely nothing for either of the participants. In fact, my preferred outcome would be if these iterations of the characters could just mutually kill each other and be done with it. The disappointment that strikes me every time I look at Vilgefortz makes me realize how my parents must be feeling. He looks like a Queer Eye character rather than a battle-hardened mage. Vilie’s disappearing daggers are an underwhelming use of magic. More importantly, it completely misses the mark by omitting his signature weapon. WHERE IS THE STAFF?? I yelled repeatedly at the screen. Giving Villie daggers is like giving Robin Hood nunchucks or having Thor wield an electric scimitar. Vilgefortz, the absolute milksop, for all his talk of strategy is brash and incompetent. Is this all a ruse by him to aid Nilfgaard? Will the show eventually recontextualize all his shortcomings as part of a master plan? Well, I will believe it when I see it. Until then I continue to dread the eventual confrontation with Geralt, even though it’s one of my favorite parts of the books.
The battle feels imbalanced, not due to differences in strategy or resources but due to poor narrative choices. Fringilla whips up spells left and right while the “damn powerful” northern mages succumb to simple arrows. The power levels are only driven by plot convenience. The escalating combat feels like a first-grader trying to recap a Dragon Ball episode. The frequent cutting amidst characters coupled with the same wooded backdrop removes all sense of direction. There is no indication of how far the enemy line has advanced or how much ground the mages have given up.
Fringilla and Tessia parlaying in the middle of a supposed battle greatly upsets the pacing of the sequence. It’s an anime-inspired move in the worst way. The result is predictably hollow, only serving to remove Tessia from the action, but it does not put her in any real danger.
Triss holding the gate is a far cry from the substantial character moment she desperately needs, but it at least gives her something to do. The small scale of the encounter is brought to the forefront by this scene. The CGI vines are just straight atrocious. Slightly charring her tits pales compared to the damage she receives in the books, and just makes an additional case against nightgowns as battle ware. Don’t they have mage armor in this universe? Seems like a bit of an oversight since they clearly need it. Triss is incapacitated much too quickly but somehow never finished off due to the only defense she’s got: plot armor.
The exploding kids and Sabrina’s seeming betrayal is a good wrinkle to events and finally builds some suspense for Yen. But Fringillas’s earworms again seem like a much too overpowered move hardly justified by plot convenience. If she can just whip up a box of strategic advantage, the whole battle seems like a moot point. The much-touted “forbidden magic” explanation is thinner than an anorexic on a hunger strike. If the show was only going to explain a single magical device then the box full of mind-controlling worms would have been an excellent candidate. Alas, it just becomes another throwaway piece of inconsistent magic.
Yen wondering the battlefield provides some appropriately gruesome sights. It’s a well-emphasized low point of the arc. There are also some very well-shot frames of her amongst the mist. While the visuals excel, the storytelling continues to suffer. The battle seems to have transitioned to its ending stage without actually having a middle. There was a lot of setup and smaller isolated moments of action but the big blowout confrontation, necessary to cement the scale of the event, never happened. The battle had no real flow to it. The mages were losing and then the mages were losing more and now it’s real sad.
Ville’s awakening and the subsequent friend pummeling are just plain confusing. It’s a half-hearted hint at his villainy which is just straight unfounded at this point. Not much of a tease, but instead a simple WTF moment lost in an array of other baffling choices. I would certainly have kept it as perhaps an after-credits tease to give it more importance. The nameless mages being butchered lacks any emotional weight. Since it’s the first time the viewers see these characters it’s hard to form a bond with them, or even feel sorry for their demise. The casualties of Sodden are a focal point of Witcher mythology. Having spent all this time focusing on Yennefer and the mages, the show should have had the balls to build up a character for the purposes of dying in this final showdown. As the viewers are struggling to remain invested in the skirmish it becomes evident that the battle has mostly run out of steam by this point.
Yen and Tessia meeting is the peak of the episode. The pair have had a rocky relationship, but this scene offers an endearing and emotional conclusion. In fact second only to Gerlant and Jaskier’s bromance, the Yen — Tessia dynamic is one of the crowning achievements of the show in retrospect. Although the dialogue is still a bit cheesy, this is a rare occurrence of the show momentarily suspending all disbelief.
The shot of Yen approaching the burning fort is another triumph of the show’s inconsistent cinematography. I might just be seeing things, but the way she slightly hunches her back in this shot is a very nice touch. Yen’s napalm blast is a satisfying and bombastic set-piece, but the reused voice-over is again way too heavy-handed and greatly undercuts the otherwise emotionally packed scene. The slow-mo shot of Yen’s face beats its cliche circumstances and proves to be the most memorable frame of the entire show in my humble opinion. It’s great to witness all the makeup melt away and see the pure visceral expression on the sorceress’s face. Big props to the show for not trying to over-glamourize this moment and presenting it in all its snot-soaked natural glory.
It’s been 7 episodes of everyone hyping up Yennefer’s supposed great magic abilities, and it’s about the time the viewers got to witness it as well. This grandiose show of power works great not because of the setup laid throughout the season but rather in spite of it. The emotional background of Yen’s flamethrower hands is a bit muddled on closer inspection. Although the spectacle is undeniably impressive, I cannot help but miss the character revelation to accompany it. The show hints that Yen is channeling her past grievances here. This would have been a lot more impactful if she wasn’t so hung up on these grievances throughout the entire series. Ultimately I think it’s seeing the scene partly through Tessia’s eyes that really sells this display as a fitting conclusion to Yen’s struggles. The fire effects are also not too bad, hitting at least medium settings on a 5-year-old consumer graphics card.
The arrival of the northern armies was the moment the characters were anticipating from the very outset of the battle. The brief shot of Foltest and his knights showing up gets glossed over rather quickly and unceremoniously. It’s understandable that the show wants Yen’s fireworks to be the final say in the fight, but the arrival of the army should be the logical conclusion to the battle. Just a few more shots of the northern forces coming in to finish things would have proved a much more satisfying end-cap.
The ending
From here on out the episode transitions into what I would call the ending of the entire season. This is finally the point where the storylines converge and attempt to tie up loose ends. There is a horribly shot montage of Tessia and Geralt repeatedly screaming “Yennefer”. It’s perhaps the most confusing scene in the entire show. There is zero explanation of how Geralt got to the battlefield. There is a complete absence of the freshly arrived northern forces. All established geography is thrown right out the window. Even the camera work frames the scene in a jarring and confusing angle. Watching this atrocity unfold I am not thinking, “Oh the characters must be confused” I, myself, in this fucking corporal form, on my couch, in front of the telly, am utterly confused. It all stikes like a misguided french student film.
In the next scene, Geralt is again back on the wagon like nothing ever happened. His jolly waltz through the scorched wastes could be a hallucination just as easily as his encounter with Visenna. The show also hints that this may be one of Ciri’s visions but it’s all a guessing game at this point.
And so we get to the final moment of the show, the meeting of Geralt and Ciri. I recall reading this part for the very first time. I cried like a little bitch. It was a tour-de-force of clever storytelling, emotional expectations being fulfilled, and a palpable sense of destiny.
Naturally, the show fucks this up in an absolutely spectacular manner. But let’s put the books aside for a moment and examine how this scene SHOULD work in the context of the show.
The scene needs to elicit the proper emotional response from the on-screen characters and also from the audience. Geralt needs to let go of his despair and embrace the forces of destiny. Ciri needs to feel safe and relieved. The viewers must appreciate the smart twist of the two stories connecting, place the event in the greater established myth of the series and fully experience the emotional catharsis of the reunion.
The events in the show happen in the following sequence. Ciri seems to have a vision and rushes off into the woods. Yurga and Goldencheeks (fuck me) are reunited and take this wonderful moment to spoonfeed us exposition. Geralt gets a sudden destiny tingle and then a flashback to Renfri before he rushes off into the woods himself. The tear-jerking music switchers to overdrive. Geralt wanders the woods back and forth for a few seconds before Ciri comes rushing towards him. Since they were both heading in the same direction, into the woods, it’s perplexing how they are suddenly running towards each other. But we’ll sweep this mistake under the destiny rug. The two embrace each other for an actually heartfelt but brief moment. This is interrupted by Geralt regurgitating some destiny hocus pocus. Ciri responds by looking up to utter the lines: “Who is Yennefer?”. There is a brief shot of Geralt’s relatable confused face before cutting straight to the credits.
Some of the shortcomings of the ending stem directly from faults inherent to the show. Most of the problems though are not tied to the incompetent setup, but rather the strange choices made in presenting the scene. The intersecting plots need to be framed as a twist. There must be an emphasis placed on the moment the audience figures out Geralt is approaching the house where Ciri resides. In the show, this moment happens unceremoniously when the wide shot of the wagon pulling in is clearly right next to the house Ciri just left. No emotional music, no artful framing, not even a slow reveal. This is the true moment of reunion; the embrace in the forest is just a formality. But the show just glosses over this monumental occasion and instead regresses to its safest devices of voiceover and flashbacks. Hearing then seeing Renfri’s prophecy for the 100th time is as subtle as a sledgehammer. Not placing a bit of trust in the audience to put two and two together, is the show’s greatest failing. The constant overuse and reuse of voiceover and past scenes force-feeds the story instead of organically developing it.
I understand that opposed to the books, the series also shows Ciri’s perspective, so it’s much harder to build the reveal. Having the house act as the first hint of connection is too rushed in my opinion, leaving the reveal to the moment of the actual reunion would drag it out much longer than it needs to be. I think the best choice would have been to use the kind lady’s identity as the connection between the stories. If the show did not reveal the exterior of the house in Ciri’s arc, the audience would not be able to make the connection right at the establishing shot. The scene could build momentum by Yuga talking about his wife’s kindness as they approach. Then the door of the inconspicuous cottage swings open, there is a moment of anticipation, the music kicks in, and suddenly Goldencheeks emerges to embrace her husband. It is at this moment the audience puts two and two together and deduces that the reunion is at hand. Now tell me that does not sound much better.
The actual meeting of Geralt and Ciri is plagued by cliche framing, bad editing, and generic music. In spite of all this, the acting sells the emotional weight of the moment. Then the dialogue starts and it all goes to shit again. “WHERE IS YENNEFER?” This line haunts my every waking hour. It’s an absolute atrocity, just mere seconds before the finish line the show willingly drives itself straight off a cliff. The scene can barely handle giving Geralt and Ciri a satisfactory ending, shoehorning Yennefer into this mix is undeniably the wrong choice. It strips away focus from the two characters at hand and leaves the audience with a sense of incompleteness. It’s like the writers forgot that their original goal was to bring all 3 arcs together for the finale. So they just added this reference to Yen as a hasty last-minute change.
There is an unearned sense of familiarity between the two characters. The show is looking to replicate how these final events unfolded in the books and fails to take into account how much it has already deviated from the source material. In the books, Geralt and Ciri already know each other having shared a previous adventure in Brokilon. The show omitted the pair’s shared history making their trusting approach feel completely unjustified.
The ending of the episode and thus the entire season accomplishes none of its intended goals. It is an unearned and unsatisfying finale that most certainly did not leave me with any optimism for the future of the series.
Nightmare of the Wolf is pretty fucking lit though.
One last ride:
- Title sequences are a neat idea, music does most of its heavy lifting.
- Way too much emphasis on Yennefer and the battle. Just not a good endpoint for the season. The last episode of the Wicher has little to do with its title character.
- Geralt being offhandedly called butcher is good world-building
- I am not faulting the show for having a limited budget. I am faulting it for how unskillful it is at masking it. Its ambition clearly overstretches its funding and the writing does nothing to cover up this gap.
- The amount of times Word has autocorrected “Nifgaardians” to “Nigerians” is staggering, hopefully, I haven’t slipped up yet.
- PUT THE JASKIER SONG IN THE FUCKING EPISODE — I will paint this on a billboard on the showrunner’s front lawn
I rate this episode less than 60 underdressed mages
