Triss Merigold Archives - The Wide Screen

December 19, 2021

“The Witcher” Returns Stronger Than Ever After Two Years

MINOR SPOILERS FOR THE WITCHER SEASON 2 AHEAD!

With the universe of The Witcher expanding at the rate that is, and Netflix investing in live-action prequels, anime spinoffs, and even a kid’s show (I have…so many questions about how that’s gonna work), there was a lot of pressure on The Witcher‘s second season to validate that level of support from the streaming service. The first season was good, don’t get me wrong, but it takes more than “good” for Netflix to bank so heavily on any of their original franchises – especially one with a large budget and a star whose salary doubled between seasons.

So it’s fortunate indeed that The Witcher season two gleefully one-ups its debut season at every opportunity and on every level. Showrunner Lauren Hissrich has consistently proven in her social media interactions with fans that she’s always willing to listen and engage with valid critiques of her work on season one, and in season two it appears that she and her team have taken great care to evolve in response to those critiques while staying true to her over-arching vision for the series. The process of achieving that delicate balance begins in the writers room.

That’s where it must have been decided to stick to just one timeline from now on, after audiences responded poorly to the gradual reveal in season one that the show had been jumping between three timelines without warning. To be fair, that reveal works better on a rewatch, when you can pick up all the clues that the writers cleverly planted in early episodes, and I hope season two will be equally as rewarding on successive rewatches; because on a first viewing, to someone who hasn’t read the books or played the games, I think it’s the politics that are going to be most challenging to follow in season two.

I encourage anyone new to The Witcher to find themselves a detailed map of The Continent online before settling in to watch season two, because whether you can keep up with which kingdoms are fighting over what, much less play along with all the political intrigue on your own, will largely depend on how fast you can figure out where the kingdom of Redania is in relation to Cintra and where everything is in relation to Nilfgaard. Most fantasy stories on this scale will have some character in-universe unfurl a map to help out the audience – The Witcher is not most fantasy stories, so you’re gonna have to bring your own.

If you can get past that hurdle, the political intrigue of The Witcher is well-executed, satisfyingly complex…and integral to this season and the forward direction of the series. If Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) was your favorite character in season one because you loved exploring the world of the Mages with their secretive individual agendas and allegiances, you’ll find much to enjoy in season two as the Mages clash with new characters like Dijkstra (Graham McTavish), a man with an almost Machiavellian cunning, and old characters with new goals, like the ostracized Nilfgaardian Mage Fringilla Vigo (Mimî M. Khayisa).

In other words, this season of The Witcher was tailor-made for me. Political intrigue is one of my favorite tropes in fantasy, and as much as I love seeing Geralt (Henry Cavill) hunt monsters, especially now that Ciri (Freya Allan) is in on the action with a sword of her own and some very cool magic abilities, I’m always gonna gravitate more towards the cloak-and-dagger stuff, the conspiracies behind closed doors, the plots and the political maneuvering enriched by the addition of a magical element in this case. But rest assured, monster lovers, The Witcher hasn’t forgotten you.

Following complaints that season one was suspiciously light on monsters for a show about a monster-hunter, season two brings a number of new beasts off the pages of Andrzej Sapkowski’s books and into live-action. By the end of the season, The Witcher is just about testing the limits of its expanded budget (without getting into spoilers, there are several basilisks in the finale, each a little less convincing than the last), but you can tell that the show has more money and resources to allocate towards CGI, because the fight-scenes are longer and better-lit, showing off the cool monster designs rather than hiding them in shadows.

There are monsters where there don’t even need to be monsters in season two, which is an improvement over almost no monsters at all. The Bruxa (a bloodsucking shapeshifter) and the Leshy (a malevolent tree) are by far my favorites; both enigmatic, both hauntingly beautiful, and both absolutely terrifying. If there’s a tiebreaker between the two, it’s the Leshy’s relative lack of screentime and personality that pushes the Bruxa into the lead. I’d say it’s impressive that the Leshy made any impact on me at all in just forty-five seconds, but that’s actually very telling of how much I love evil trees.

The Witcher and its monsters are deeply rooted in Slavic (specifically Polish) folklore, and even monsters original to the Netflix series are designed with the same cultural influences in mind. Season two introduces a haggard demoness named Voleth Meir (Ania Marson, a Polish screen legend), nowhere to be found in Sapkowski’s books but immediately familiar to fans of Baba Yaga (me, again). At first she’s just a creepy witch living in a hut in the woods, but then the hut lifts itself up and…well, if you know the Baba Yaga myth, you know what’s underneath.

Voleth Meir is one of several characters in season two linked to events that took place long before The Witcher, which will presumably be explored further in the live-action prequel series, Blood Origin. A sneak-peek at Blood Origin is attached to The Witcher‘s season finale as a mid-credits scene, and with how much worldbuilding there is in regard to Elven bloodlines, the mysterious black monoliths scattered across the Continent, and the fabled Conjunction of the Spheres, I imagine that a lot of fans will want to check that out to see how closely the two series’ are intertwined (also because it stars Michelle Yeoh).

In much the same way that a map is important to understanding the political intrigue elements of The Witcher, I feel that Blood Origin may be essential viewing to figure out what actually happened in this season at all – and there’s a big difference between expecting viewers to look at a map and asking that they watch two series’ (one of which isn’t out yet) just to understand the one they actually came for in the first place. By contrast, Nightmare Of The Wolf is complimentary to The Witcher and fills in some gaps regarding our knowledge of Vesemir (Kim Bodnia), but you needn’t have watched it to understand his character’s actions.

Thankfully, even as its plot occasionally strays towards the past, The Witcher is anchored in the here-and-now by a trinity of exceptional performances from Cavill, Chalotra, and Allan. Throughout season one, Chalotra did most of the dramatic heavy lifting for the trio, it has to be said. And I will argue that even in season two, she’s still given the most compelling material to work with, but the burden of “carrying the show” is more evenly divided between the three when the season opens, Cavill’s Geralt and Allan’s Ciri having already met at the very end of season one.

It’s the first time in her flight across the Continent that Ciri has paused long enough to have a proper conversation with anybody, but Allan is able to quickly and deftly mold a three-dimensional heroine out of her character, who was little more than a plot-device in season one. As she gives voice to her trauma and inner tumult, we explore more facets of her personality beyond the poise and shy politeness hammered into her by her grandmother – including a ceaseless hatred for her family’s enemies that burns within her body, manifesting itself in violence that both terrifies and mesmerizes Ciri.

Disappointingly, the one element of Ciri’s character that didn’t quite make it to the screen in this season is her bisexuality. Several deleted scenes apparently exist of her crushing on the Mage Triss Merigold (Anna Shaffer), along with one that would have confirmed the Witcher Lambert (Paul Bullion) as a bisexual character. That these scenes were removed so methodically is obviously frustrating. As for the bard Jaskier (Joey Batey), his character is more overtly queer-coded than ever, but the only evidence that he harbors any unrequited romantic feelings for Geralt is one confusingly emotional break-up song about the Witcher.

Deprived of his muse, however, it appears that the bard has lost his touch for clever, catchy songwriting. The break-up song, titled “Burn”, disappoints immensely and is even ridiculed in-universe by some of Jaskier’s audience. It’s certainly not a worthy successor to “Toss A Coin To Your Witcher”, Jaskier’s stirring hymn to Geralt that became a smash hit in real-life and on the Continent, where a star-struck fan even boldly approaches Jaskier with his extremely meta criticisms of the bard’s other work, including one song with too many “different timelines”.

It would certainly have been ironic if The Witcher‘s second season had continued the analogy by falling as flat as Jaskier’s new songs. But happily, this is one series that just keeps getting better across the board, and I’m very excited to see whether season three can raise the bar still further.

Series Rating: 8.5/10

June 11, 2021

Blink And You’ll Miss First Look At “The Witcher” Season 2

The last big news out of Netflix’s Geeked Week event was the unveiling of another upcoming online fandom event, specifically directed at fans of The Witcher franchise – WitcherCon, which will take place just around the corner on July 9th, and will finally give viewers of Netflix’s wildly successful The Witcher series and players of CD Projekt Red’s bestselling Witcher video games a shared space in which to interact and enjoy news related to both. I’ll let people with a more comprehensive knowledge of the games guide the conversation surrounding that specific topic, but as a fan of Netflix’s series I believe the first full-length trailer for The Witcher‘s second season is probably being reserved to debut during WitcherCon, and I’m beyond excited to see it.

Today, however, to appease the ravenous fans baying like wolves in their comments (no, not me…well, not just me), Netflix gave us a brief taste of what to expect from season two (which you can watch at the 41:30 mark in the video above), in a twelve-second teaser video focused on the show’s central character, Princess Cirilla of Cintra, better known to fans as Ciri. After fleeing from the burning wreckage of the privileged life in Cintra she had enjoyed as a child, Ciri’s journey in season one ended with her finally meeting Geralt of Rivia, the Witcher with whose destiny hers had been intertwined before her birth. Season two will follow Ciri’s own path to becoming a Witcher, as Geralt brings her back to the ancient citadel of Kaer Morhen, where his mentor/father figure Vesemir will begin training Ciri in the ways of the Witchers, making her the first woman to be inducted into the mysterious order.

The teaser gives us a few split-second glimpses of that training, as Ciri discards the heavy, richly embroidered, Cintran robes she wore for most of season one, and shifts into lightweight, practical, armor for her fight scenes. But when she’s not running obstacle courses or hunting monsters in the woods at night, it seems she’ll be diving deeper into the magical origins of her mysterious powers, including the catastrophic events that happen whenever she unleashes her literally earth-shattering wail. She’ll probably be assisted in this search by the mage Yennefer of Vengerburg, the trendsetting icon whom I choose to believe is also responsible for picking out the luxurious white fur gown Ciri can be seen wearing in the teaser in a couple different shots.

Unfortunately, we don’t get to see either Yennefer or Geralt in this teaser, which is mostly filled with brief flashes of significant (or in any case, haunting) imagery, like a ceremonial dagger resting on a plinth, dancing shadow-puppets, runes etched in stone, a skeletal corpse placed on an altar, and my personal favorite: a mural depicting a man having his leg eaten by a large bird or perhaps a dragon. Fantastical and horrifying monsters are a big reason for the franchise’s popularity, and season two is expected to introduce some particularly iconic beasts from The Witcher books and games into the series, including the forest-dwelling leshy, depicted in the games as a towering humanoid creature with a head modeled after a deer’s skull, and a majestic crown of black antlers. I haven’t ever played the games, but the images alone are unforgettable.

As I said, I think we’ll see much more during WitcherCon, including a full-length trailer, but this little teaser is a nice way to end Geeked Week, which also gave us the Shadow And Bone season two renewal we craved alongside some more miscellaneous reports and reveals. I think Geeked Week’s biggest problem in hindsight was a lack of footage from the shows and films being covered during the event, although I’m actually willing to give The Witcher a pass since it will be getting its very own Comic-Con type extravaganza just a month from now.

But what about you? Was this sampling of season two enough to appease you, or were you left disappointed by the lack of content? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

October 6, 2020

“The Witcher” Season 2 – First Look At Ciri Training At Kaer Morhen!

No, Geralt of Rivia’s fresh new look and upgraded suit of armor wasn’t a fluke: the entire cast of The Witcher has been absolutely thriving, as evidenced by our first look at Geralt’s apprentice/child of surprise, Ciri, in the new outfit she’ll be wearing in season two of the hit Netflix fantasy series. The Witcher‘s season one finale left off with Ciri and Geralt finally reunited after being linked to each other by a mysterious bond of destiny long before Ciri’s birth, and now we can see where Ciri’s destiny has led her: to the isolated castle of Kaer Morhen, domain of Vesemir and his small brotherhood of monster-hunting Witchers. Here, as in the books and video games, Ciri will train to become the first female Witcher in history while learning about her own magical powers.

And that’s, of course, why the new images of Ciri revealed today on Netflix’s social media accounts show the usurped Princess of Cintra looking particularly stoic and grim while donning a practical suit of lightweight leather armor, wielding a small wooden practice sword, and tying her hair back into a braid because long hair whipping in your face and obstructing your vision probably isn’t a great idea in the heat of battle (*glances meaningfully at Geralt*). Unfortunately, since only a side-view of her costume is available to us, it’s impossible to see if any cool detailing or ornamentation has been worked into the front of Ciri’s new armor. My first thought was that this is unlikely, considering that the Witchers of Kaer Morhen seem like a relatively simplistic lot, but then again, Geralt did come out of there with a whole set of abs sculpted into his armor, so anything’s possible, I guess?

What’s immediately clear is that this particular outfit, at least, is only loosely inspired by the video game version of Ciri, and even that’s a stretch. In The Witcher games, Ciri’s look has become iconic: the choppy silver hair, the loose, long-sleeved white shirt and assortment of extremely large belts…many fans of the games have been hoping to see some version of this adapted to live-action, but it looks like they’ll have to wait a while longer. The Netflix version of Ciri’s Witcher outfit appears to be more armor than travel wear, and it would be rather bizarre for her to be wearing thin shirts in the middle of winter while snow is falling. The behind-the-scenes photos revealed recently did show Ciri wearing what could have been an outfit more directly inspired by the games, but this seems to be that same outfit (the long, gray-green sleeves are identical), and these high-quality images confirm that this is not going to be much like The Witcher video game version of the character.

Instead we can be certain that this season, like the first, will draw most heavily from the original books by Andrzej Sapkowski. With the books as our guide, we can predict that Ciri will be trained by Vesemir, despite suffering from recurring nightmares, hallucinations, and visions of impending death. She’ll encounter the Mage Triss Merigold (who had a small role in season one), and the kind-hearted sorceress will also aid in her training, teaching her the Elder Speech (the language of most magic users in The Witcher universe). Throughout season one of The Witcher, Ciri would randomly cause outbursts of chaotic and destructive magic whenever she felt threatened, usually triggered by her screams, and I thoroughly believe that the show will delve into the explanation for that a little bit more in season two: in the books, Ciri’s incredible power derives from her being a “Source”, a person born with untapped resources of magic due to their Elven heritage. The first official synopsis for season two, released yesterday, mentioned that it’s Geralt’s responsibility to protect Ciri from her own power, and it also intriguingly referenced wars between elves and humans in the world outside Kaer Morhen’s walls. In season one, there were a couple of Elven characters and a handful of times that we actually got to observe their ways, but season two might do a better job of exploring the Elven societies that exist within this universe, and how Ciri fits into their delicate political situation.

Another important event in Ciri’s character arc is her first meeting with the Mage Yennefer of Vengerburg. In the show, Ciri hasn’t met Yennefer yet (although she has had some sort of vision of her: her last line in season one was literally “Who’s Yennefer?”), and Geralt currently believes the Mage to be dead following her disappearance at the Battle of Sodden Hill, which suggests to me that bringing Ciri and Yennefer together will be a main plot-point in season two. Personally, I’m hoping that they meet sometime before the season two finale, but it’s probable that, no matter when or how it happens, it will be a life-changing event for both characters: Yennefer has always wanted a child, and in the books she becomes like a mother figure to Ciri, while also acting as her mentor and traveling with her across the Continent. Ciri, for her part, never really had a chance to know her own mother, and so Yennefer will begin to fill a void in Ciri’s life. As much as I’m excited to see how Geralt and Ciri interact, I’m even more curious to see what kind of dynamic will exist between the two women. The Witcher has done a great job fleshing out its female characters and making them complex and interesting, and I expect that to continue as more women join the mix and begin to form more compelling relationships.

Thankfully, we won’t have long to wait before we see what Yennefer herself has been doing ever since she vanished in a burst of fire and smoke at Sodden Hill, because more first look images are coming tomorrow, and will probably reveal the Mage in all her glory. The question of what exactly happened to her has weighed heavily on the minds of all The Witcher‘s fans ever since the season one finale: but the likelihood, in my opinion, is that Yennefer was able to weakly manifest a portal and make her escape while everyone was distracted by the flames she summoned to obliterate the Nilfgaardian army. But why? And where did she go? These are the questions I hope to have answered sooner rather than later.

So what do you think? How do you feel about Ciri’s new look? And which character from The Witcher are you most excited to see return in season two? Share your own thoughts, theories and opinions in the comments below!