The Witcher: Season 2

The Witcher: Season 2

I didn’t think it was a bad season, really, but then I also don’t think it was an especially good one. It seems to have tried to fix things that were never broken, while nursing along all the broken things from the first season.

Before I complain though, I’ll be nice. I thought Jaskier (Joey Batey) was miles better this season, maybe because the overall tone was a bit darker, so the comic relief was more of a relief, maybe because the writing was better, less dependent on one-liners and more character-based.

At one point he shares a look and a smile with a bearded dwarf lady, barely lasts an instant, but it’s screamingly funny precisely because they don’t beat you over the head with it, just trust you to know the character and know what the look means.

There’s another bit shortly after where he and Geralt (an obscenely muscular Henry Cavill) are doing a walk and talk and he does a pitch-perfect imitation of Geralt. Again, nice little moment, building off our familiarity with the characters.

Then there’s a big, long scene where a dock worker complains he didn’t realize one of Jaskier’s songs took place in two timelines, ha ha, meta joke about the first season. Well, we’ll fix that with a purely linear narrative in season 2, hurrah for making stories more generic and predictable.

Which leads me to the point about trying to fix things that were fine.

The narrative invention is gone, and instead the suspense and drama are interrupted every two minutes to check and see what’s happening in the five other story lines (spoiler: Not much).

It’s also far less monster-of-the-week, more tired old “chosen one who might save or destroy the world” and you’ll be forgiven for checking if you’re accidentally watching Wheel of Time or not. Instead of twisted fairy tales, we get people possessed by demons being told to “fight against it!” and other staples of the genre.

The first episode is probably the best, and lo and behold, that’s the only one this season that has a monster-of-the-week setup. It’s a twisted take on “Beauty and the Beast” that dares to wonder what kind of woman would be attracted to a lion-boar-man living in a haunted mansion, and if such a person might not be the scarier of the two.

The rest is a fairly muddled and muddy tale about “destiny” which—and this is the killer—absolutely refuses to tell you what the friggin’ destiny in question actually is in anything but the vaguest terms imaginable. Something about the end of the world and the “Wild Hunt” and the “Conjunction of the Spheres” and “Elder blood” – the last of which seems to mean being part elf, but since there are whole tribes of elves running around it’s not clear why being marginally related to them is relevant. There’s also something called “Ithlinne’s Prophecy” but don’t worry, the show never bothers to explain what that is.

The other main story arc is about some ancient demon thing which, death stroke number two, absolutely refuses to tell you what it is friggin’ attempting to do in anything but the vaguest terms imaginable. “It feeds on pain” or something to that effect, which is great, just kind of generically evil without any goals then. “It wants to do bad stuff.” Very exciting.

So, we have a demon thingy which wants to do something, not clear what, and this may or may not have something to do with someone’s destiny, not clear what that is either. It’s the writerly urge to obfuscate and misdirect striking again, and it’s death to any kind of dramatic clarity or tension.

The dialog is pretty ropey, filled with lots of ponderous pronouncements which I think are meant to sound deep and meaningful, but are almost invariably just straight up baffling nonsense, like bullshit buzzwords spouted by a Lexus car commercial. “Fear is an illness, if you leave it untreated it can consume you” … “It’s not a question of price; it’s a matter of cost” … “True luxury should be compassionate, engaging and deeply personal.”

People keep saying these things but there’s no weight to them, nothing in the story to actually back them up.

“She's tougher than she looks,” says Geralt of Ciri (Freya Allan), his adopted daughter who he has known for all of half an episode. How the fuck would you know, Gerry? She’s ridden around on your horse for a day or two. Not exactly an Olympian display of fortitude.

The production design, directing and cinematography of the show are all kind of off-kilter, really. To examine a dead tree-monster thing (kind of like an evil Ent), Geralt rips random bits out of it with his bare hands. He goes to meet a kind of high priestess person, who o-VER e-NUN-see-AY-tes eh-VERY sy-LA-ble. There’s a wizard whose beard looks like painted-on asphalt. Telekinetic spells that blow people backwards ALWAYS do it in slow motion. There’s a bit of a Marvel-style reveal at the end of the last episode of … some woman, idk, she’s kind of there but gets no introduction or explanation.

Just so many bizarre choices.

I’m not sure I’m adequately conveying the atmosphere here. The bottom line is these people do not talk or act like human beings. It’s all just slightly off.