The Witcher Season 3 surprised me. Maybe not in the way you’d expect after
that opening line, I didn’t exactly like it, but the most shocking revelation to come
from me strapping myself into a straightjacket in preparation for another season of Netflix
Witcher, was that it seems like this new season feels the same way about the second one that
I do. I won’t be shy in saying that I hated Season
2 — it took many of the best character arcs from the original story, dragged ‘em behind
Kaer Morhen, told ‘em to look at the flowers and then pot ‘em in the head. So, following that up, the big question going
into a third season (which I only watched because I’d be dumb not to review it), is
whether anything had managed to improve. Were there any lessons learned from the backlash
this show has now faced for nearly two years straight, and is this new season at least better
than the spinoff they put out last year, the one that became the lowest-rated show in Netflix
history? Well, the answer to both of those questions,
in my opinion at least, is yes — with like 175 asterisks attached to that yes. Overall, Season 3 Part 1 is a less frustrating
watch than what came before. Part of that is because, in heading into this
season, the writers had already done the heavy lifting in making a huge mess. Yennefer tried to trade Ciri’s soul to a
demon last time we saw her, it couldn’t possibly get worse, right? Well… right, actually — yes. The season premiere is mostly an hour-long
session of admitting that Season 2 was a complete and utter misfire. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not an apologetic
premiere fixing things, its more like they got around to writing this season and realized
that they’d set nothing up for the story to move forward, and that very few of the
characters have the relationships they need to, most notably the main trio. Where this season opens, pre-Thanedd Ball,
is the point in the story where a deep and extended mother-daughter relationship between
Yennefer and Ciri needed to have already been firmly established. Last season though, they decided
none of that setup was important, unless the writer’s room’s idea of healthy mother-daughter
bond involved demonic sacrifice. They wrote Yen last season so neither Geralt
or Ciri should trust her at all, and the show attempts to quickly fix this and convince
you that Yen’s betrayal doesn’t really matter now, and all is well. For Geralt they do this using a bunch of voiceover
where Yennefer repeatedly begs for his attention, begs, with cutesy little letters that read like they
should’ve been taped to someone’s locker in high school. I really think that alone should say just
about everything when it comes to what this show did to Yennefer last season — is there
anything less Yen-like than months-long groveling sessions, begging and begging Geralt to look her way? The answer is no, there isn’t, and they
try to wrap those letters in a book-reference by having them start with dear friend — but
that’s all it is. It's a passing reference to try and mask the band-aid attempt at salvaging
that relationship. Even less attention is given to Ciri and Yennefer at least at first, because in
the premiere the relationship they don’t have is mostly addressed by Geralt
just looking at the two of them in the distance while they smile, and that’s how you’re
supposed to know that they’re cool now, and then of course there’s also a 15-second
exchange where Ciri says “you were gonna sacrifice me to a demon in Season 2 Episode 7 of Netflix's hit comedy 'The Witcher™', that was very very rude”, and Yen replies “I only did it because I was sad, but I’ll never do it again”,
and that’s about all ya get before the show just pretends that Yennefer is a mother
to Ciri now. The premiere mostly just wants you to forget
about the damage of Season 2 as quickly as possible, and in a sense that was the best
path forward. Trying to build on that trainwreck would’ve
been a mistake if the show is gonna soldier on, but it also needs to be pointed out that
everything the writers try to undo and hastily mend is 100% their fault to begin with. The writers of this show are the ones who
discarded the story they were supposed to be adapting, and instead chose to wrote themselves
into every single corner they have now needed to awkwardly dig the show out of. I will say, to give credit to the first episode where some is warranted, there are several moments with
the trio that are nice and cute, but they work because the actors are charming and manage
to shine despite nothing being set up, which is really the story of this show’s production. Speaking of story, what exactly is it they’re trying
to do this season? Well, the first four episodes are largely
comprised of scenes that attempt to make the major event in the fifth make some sort of
sense. You might say "well, obviously earlier episodes
would set up later ones", but that’s not the point in this case. The major event that this season has to get
right is the Thanedd Ball, and what takes place there. Where the third season kicks off is at a point
where 90% of character motivations and relationships should’ve been solidly in place, meaning
everything would lead right to Thanedd naturally. Unfortunately, the writer’s of this show
went on a character assassination spree last season while skipping over everything important,
and I mean just about everything. Nothing is in place so they have to brute force it
for four straight episodes. To start this off, let’s look at what they’ve done
with Geralt and Jaskier. Don't worry, we'll talk about Jaskier. For Geralt, at the end of the premiere
the writers separate him from Ciri and Yen so he can hunt down Rience, the fire mage. The unfortunate thing is that the setup for that is arguably
this season’s dumbest moment, right in the premiere. Geralt and the other main characters draw
Rience out specifically to kill him as he’s a threat to Ciri. Geralt ends up defeating the guy and breaks
his hands, but then he just walks past the mage twice with his sword drawn, but leaves
him alive. It seems in the moment like Geralt chose to
spare Rience for some reason, but then in the very next scene, he makes the group split
up so he can go hunt Rience down to finish him off. If you’re gonna leave a comment saying Geralt
“didn’t have time to kill him, he needed to get back” then I mean go for it, do what
you want, but just know that nobody buys that, it would’ve taken a grand total of zero
extra seconds to kill Rience there. What’s more frustrating is that they could’ve
written that scene any other way to avoid everyone being distracted by what is a dumb moment
that takes mental gymnastics to ignore, a moment that is the setup for Geralt’s story
this season. Now, before moving past the premiere and getting
to the Jaskier talk, I also have to mention the new elf they introduce. His name is Gallatin, and while I generally
think the performances in this show range from decent to sometimes great, this character
was truly awful — and I mean zero redeeming qualities. I’m pretty sure the pitch for this guy,
who is 100% a show invention, had to have gone something like “hey what if we introduce
a new elf that only has one character trait", and that character trait is that [cringeworthy fake deep voice] "he talks
like this all the time, like he’s a ventriloquist puppet that was traumatized in Vietnam", [end cringeworthy fake deep voice], and that is the only thing this character does other than dying after we’re forced to watch him for a half dozen agonizing scenes. It is painful to sit through, and what is
worse is that from the beginning it was very evident that this character was only being
given so much screen time just to try and quickly make him seem important before he then inevitably got killed. Storywise, his purpose is just to be quick means
for Cahir to get back into the Emperor’s good graces, which again is this season’s
attempt at trying to quickly move important pieces back into position after they
derailed everybody last time around. Now, thankfully, and this is a positive, other
than parody Batman elf the first episode mostly focuses on Geralt, Ciri and Yennefer. It’s
the middle 3 that spend about half of their time away from anyone you want to see. On that topic, let’s talk about Radovid —
which by extension also means talking about Jaskier finally, because most of what Jaskier does
in this season revolves around Radovid. Now, it’s worth pointing out that Radovid
in the books is a small child at this point in the timeline, he’s supposed to be about
twelve, but they’ve decided to age him up just so they could put him in a romantic relationship
with Jaskier, who is pushing 40 by the events of Season 3. Now, if you don’t think that was a strange
choice, I won’t ask for you to like and subscribe, instead I’ll just request that
you please seek help, but that aside, you may ask what purpose aging 12-year-old Radovid
up serves to the story? Surely such an odd change had a good reason
behind it, right? Well, the answer will shock you to your very
core, I’m sure of it considering this show’s track record, but Radovid being Radovid serves
absolutely no purpose at all. This character is Radovid in name only, which
shouldn’t really come as a shock, that description applies to about a third of the book characters
in this show. They’ve used Radovid’s name and attached
it to a new, previously-nonexistent brother of Redania’s King Vizimir, whereas Radovid
is supposed to be his very young son. They could’ve easily just created a brother
without using Radovid’s name, could’ve called him Bob or Travis or Scooter, and it
would’ve made no story difference whatsoever. It feels to me like they just wanted the name
recognition and maybe to rile people up, because most fans associate Radovid with what he gets
up to in Witcher 3, and putting ‘Radovid and Dandelion are now a couple’ in a headline
is sure to get people’s attention. To be completely blunt, I really could not
possibly care less what the Netflix version of Jaskier gets up to romantically, in any
context it just doesn’t interest me, but ignoring the romance element of it, almost
all of Radovid’s scenes were a tough watch. The writers have kept up their trend of apparently
only being capable of showing that Kings and Princes are incompetent by going way over
the top with it. In Season 1 they made Foltest a blubbering
moron, in the Blood Origin spinoff every single male ruler was a parody-level idiot, and now
in Season 3 Vizimir, who’s supposed to be a wise and pretty level-headed King, is instead
an exaggerated clown, whereas Radovid speaks like he has the vocabulary of a 12-year-old,
which I suppose might be their nod to the source material. The performance itself is also bizarre for Radovid, at
all times this version speaks like he’s on the verge of bursting into tears
because he doesn’t know where he is, like he wandered down the wrong aisle at Walmart. It’s suggested that he’s playing up being
an idiot at times, but that excuse doesn’t explain half of his other private scenes where
he acts almost exactly the same. Anyway, how Radovid and Jaskier’s steamy
love affair begins is that Jaskier is working with Redania to potentially have Ciri sent
to them, as he thinks that wouldn’t be a bad place for her. Jaskier tells Philippa and Radovid that if
they can take out Rience then they’ll have earned Ciri’s trust, and this eventually
leads to sparks flying in a garden shed on Thanedd Isle. That has to be a new sentence. Anyway, since I mentioned Philippa, let me
address the side character situation. If you hated that Season 2 spent most of its
time away from both Geralt and Ciri, well episodes 2, 3 and 4, especially 2 and 3, have
a ton of that, but I will say that the side characters they spend the most time on are
more engaging than what we had last time around. When I say they’re better, well, you know
how season 2 invented a storyline for Fringilla out of thin air and just made her a main character,
to the point where she must’ve had nearly the same amount of screentime as Geralt? Well, she is barely in this season so far,
I think she had 3 scenes, and close to the same can be said for Francesca, who was also
all over Season 2. In her case, it seems like they just don’t
know what to do with her, whereas with Fringilla it seems like they’re setting her up to
have a big return, although Netflix, if you’re watching, feel free to take your
time on that one, because most of the screentime those characters were given last season, instead
went to Philippa and Dijkstra this time around. Now, a couple of their scenes really don’t
work, but the actors they cast for Dijkstra and Philippa are great in my opinion, and
they actually have some of the Philippa-Dijkstra dynamic locked down. Whereas with last season whenever the show
would cut back to Fringilla or Francesca or the character assassinating ‘Vesemir wants
to make Ciri take the Witcher mutations’ subplot I would just groan, when this season
would cut away to Philippa, Dijkstra or both I would at least be somewhat interested, because
there were individual good scenes which meant I was hopeful for another, which is more than
I could ever say during the second season. The Emperor, Emhyr, also has a bunch of scenes,
and his moments overall are not half bad. The actor is good, he’s a little young looking
for Emhyr but that’s a nitpick, and most importantly his screentime isn’t excruciating
to watch, which if you can’t tell, that’s where the bar was for me leading into this
season. I could truly see this actor excelling
in some of what is to come for his character, and I hope he nails it. Now, I do have address the unfortunate part
of any improvements, and that is the dark cloud hanging over all of them: Henry Cavill
is leaving, the heart of the show for I’d go as far as to say most viewers is walking
away after this season, so any side character you may newly enjoy, or whatever elements that seem to be
trending slightly upwards are never going to cross paths with Geralt, at least not this
Geralt in any meaningful way. Unsurprisingly, Cavill does a very good job
yet again this season, in which Geralt is mostly off trying to hunt down Rience which then
opens up another plotline, where he finds a young girl that looks like and thinks she’s
Ciri: Geralt: "Who are you?"
Fake Ciri: “Don’t be silly Geralt… you know who I am.” This storyline is a show-only thing, at least
so far, I think it’ll be a replacement for something else, but the jury is out for now. Anyway, this girl serves as a way to get Geralt
to Thanedd, because they needed some reason for him to go back to Yen and Ciri before
ever accomplishing anything that he set out to do, and this girl serves that purpose. During an unrelated conversation Jaskier mentions
Aretuza, the magical academy on Thanedd Isle, and then Geralt goes “oh, whoever brainwashed
this girl might be from Aretuza, which is where Yennefer is right now”, and boom, there’s
a reason for him to go there right away. It’s also at this exact point in the season
where the show just completely gives up on any sense of scale, as Geralt and Ciri then
reunite absolutely out of nowhere. There’s a ten second scene where Ciri calls
out to Geralt, then hard cut and next you see she’s on horseback in the middle of
being chased by the Wild Hunt, at which point Geralt just shows up. He uses Aard and I guess that alone scares
off the Hunt. If it seems like I skipped something major there, or possibly an entire episode
or two, I didn’t, Geralt and Ciri were extremely far away from each other but in this show
the entire continent is the size of Rhode Island so… whatever. What’s a little worse is that the story
completely forgets about Yennefer when Geralt and Ciri reunite, and I’m assuming multiple
scenes must’ve been scrapped because this episode, which is the fourth one, is kind
of all over the place. Since I mentioned Yennefer, what exactly were
Ciri and her doing while Geralt was off hunting Rience? The answer is actually pretty straightforward,
they travel together a bit before going to Thanedd, and that's kind of their story up until a
certain point I'll get to. In those travels the show does a very faithful
sequence in a bank and marketplace that is right out of the books. There’s this one scene where Ciri is getting
chaperoned that I thought was near perfect. As far as Yen and Ciri together, well, I think
it kind of goes without saying that they just don’t have anything approaching a mother-daughter
dynamic on screen, which is mostly the fault of Season 2 skipping every ounce of setup,
it’s not a skill thing with the actresses. At one point they even have Yennefer start
calling Ciri ‘my ugly one’, which is a nickname Yen has for her in the books under
a completely different context. There, it works perfectly, in the show… it feels random and out of place, because
it is. Now, since they made Yennefer a wanted traitorous
criminal to the other mages last season, that means that they needed to undo that, just
like everything else from Season 2, if Thanedd was going to happen. So, in bringing Ciri to Aretuza which is on
Thanedd Isle for an education, they have Yen appeal to the brotherhood of mages. Yennefer says she’s sorry and offers to
sacrifice Ciri to another demon for forgiveness, but the Brotherhood say that’s unnecessary
and she’s forgiven. Then, Yennefer’s criminality is over and
reversed, again, bravo to Season 2, ya really moved the plot forward since half of this
season is spent trying to undo where they left things. By the way, I was kidding about the second
demonic sacrifice of Ciri. That’s the setup for Thanedd though, Yennefer
says the Northern Kingdoms need to unite against Nilfgaard, so let’s all talk, and that catches
us up to the point where Geralt and Ciri reunite, and is also where they must have chopped out
multiple scenes. Yennefer is never shown to have noticed or
worried at all that Ciri is missing, they get in a fight, then Ciri suddenly
reunites with Geralt, and at no point is there any moment where you see Yen notice that she’s
run off. She has multiple scenes where she’s completely
unbothered while Ciri is gone with no acknowledgment of it, so you’re wondering if she’s even
noticed, but then out of nowhere Yen tells Triss, “Oh, Geralt is bringing Ciri here.” I have no idea how she knows that, it’s
just not shown. Now, Geralt and Ciri’s moments together
right before the mid-season finale as they travel with Jaskier to Aretuza / Thanedd are
pretty good, mostly because it's the pair of Henry Cavill and Freya Allen that work
by far the best on screen from any combination of the main trio. There’s a couple of scenes with them that
are mostly slow, understated moments that work well, and to break it up there is a monster
fight that’s a retooled version of one that they skipped last season. I haven’t yet talked about any of the action in
this season, and honestly it's because there’s nothing to say, really. The fight choreography is mostly pretty good,
I believe they brought back the guy from the Blaviken scene for certain moments. Other than that though, the visuals in this
season, and this goes beyond the fights and monsters, were downgraded drastically
from even Season 2. Everything just looks way cheaper, the CG,
the lighting especially, even the makeup, I don’t know why but it’s just caked on
at times. Anyway, after that fight I mentioned, we then get our reunion of the core four characters, and this results in what I think is easily the best scene of the last two seasons. Ciri and Jaskier walk off to give Yen and
Geralt some privacy while still watching them from a distance, and then together the two
of them start imitating / parodying what Geralt and Yen might be saying: Jaskier [imitating Yennefer]: "Well, at least she was in disguise there, not clanging stupid swords when I specifically told her not to draw attention to herself." Ciri [imitating Geralt]: "Hmm, funny. I wonder how she
learned such complete and utter disregard for authority."
Jaskier: "That was a good one." Jaskier [imitating Yennefer]: "You're unbelievable!"
Ciri [imitating Geralt]: "You're delusional!" I thought that scene was genuinely cute, really
the main cast of this show is solid to great all around. All that’s left now though is the final
episode before the break, the meeting at Thanedd. Well, sort of because this first part of the
season ends on a cliffhanger before most of what should be the good stuff takes place. Now, your enjoyment of this episode is likely
to be based almost entirely on three things. First is whether you personally buy into the
Netflix Geralt and Netflix Yennefer chemistry. I wish I felt differently, but I’ve always
thought that Henry Cavill’s Geralt has better on-screen chemistry with just about every
other character - Ciri, Jaskier, Yarpen, Nivellan, Renfri, name the character and I think they
work better on screen together than Geralt and Yennefer in the show. I expect I’m nearly alone in feeling that
way, that's okay, but I’ve tried and I just can’t buy into it fully... it always feels off. Now, the second factor in your enjoyment is
whether you like what they did with repetition. You see, the first 20ish minutes of the mid-season
finale play twice, back to back, 40 of the 50 minutes are that. There’s some time manipulation going on,
so you see the same events play out twice [or more] in a row, and while you do get some differing
perspectives in that repetition you’re also forced to watch a lot of line-for-line repeated
conversations. I get what they were going for, but overall
I think the idea could've been significantly more effective had they edited things down a lot. The final major enjoyment factor is whether
you’ve read the books, because the core conflict of this episode is a show invention
specifically written for people who haven’t, which isn’t necessarily a problem, I just
think you’re a lot more likely to enjoy this mid-season finale if you don’t realize
what part of the episode is a tacked on misdirect. It involves Geralt and Yennefer thinking Stregobor
is behind the fake brainwashed Ciri and other dastardly deeds, and a ton of focus is put
on the character of Stregogor who I couldn’t possibly care less about in this show, and
when you’re familiar with where things are going, aka the reveal at the end of the episode
that Vilgefortz is who they should’ve been focusing on, then the Stregobor stuff is really likely to test your patience. Between that and the other repetition, I just
found that the mid-season finale was about 15-20 minutes of worthwhile material stretched
to 50, and maybe this episode will work a little better once we get to see the second half
of Thanedd when the rest of the season comes out. The episode ends with Dijkstra cornering Geralt
as a commotion is heard breaking out in the distance, and that sets up what’s to come. Now that I’ve seen this first part of the
season, it did exceed my expectations, and I do think it’s a step up from Season 2.
That only means so much though, and Season 3: Part 1, gets a 5/10 from me. It has plenty of redeeming moments, and it
also has several that made my eyes roll so far back into my skull I’m not sure I’ll
ever see again. Maybe most important of all is that this season
pays dearly for the sins of Season 2, spending much of its runtime awkwardly shoving in what
they skipped and undoing everything that needed it, which were all show decisions to begin with. This video will probably get a total of 0
likes because I’m sure half my audience want me to say this is the worst thing ever
made, and the other half want me to say it’s absolutely flawless. Truth is, in my opinion at least, the show
is very mediocre and needlessly so. They had a great story available to them and
somehow turned into The Vampire Diaries. Anyway, that’s all for now, thank you for
watching, and I will see you in the next one.
