"The Witcher," Year Three

This is probably the last season of "The Witcher" I'm going to watch, since Henry Cavill is leaving the series, and even with his participation the show is severely hit-or-miss.  Frankly, the worldbuilding was always messy, and I'm bored of  all the various factions that are vying for power and trying to hunt down Ciri.  It's difficult to keep the secondary and minor characters straight, let alone care about them.  At least the narrative's pretty straightforward this year - no jumping around in time, and no annoying roadblocks like mysteriously lost powers or romantic miscommunications stand in the way.  The three main characters, Geralt, Yennefer, and Cirilla, actually get to spend a decent amount of time together being a quasi-family while they're searching the continent for a place to hide away in peace.

Of the eight episodes this year, there were exactly two that I enjoyed: the premiere where this season's story is laid out, and episode six, which sees a destructive attack on the magic academy of Aretuza.  It feels like most of the budget was spent on making these two episodes especially impressive, while the rest are pretty typical fantasy adventuring in the style of old "Hercules" and "Xena" hijinks.  "The Witcher" is obviously more expensive, with more impressive fight choreography and CGI beasties, but its attempts at political intrigue are clumsy, and even the beats of a basic love story between Geralt and Yennefer often seem to be too much for the writers to handle.  The show is better when  characters are reacting to immediate dangers, and at its worst whenever it tries to get us invested in anything else.  There's a lot of time spent on the various mages vying for power, scheming kingdoms, and the whole mess with the elves, and none of it really lands.

The oddest thing about this season is that it doesn't really give the audience a chance to say goodbye to Cavill as Geralt.  Episode six functions as a big climax, but the last two episodes of the season are busy setting up the next season, and leaves us without anything resolved.  The show brings back several characters like Cahir (Eamon Farren) and Dara (Wilson Mbomio) for updates, and introduces a bunch of new players like Milva the archer (Meng'er Zhang) and a new elf commander, Gallatin (Robbie Amell), but none of them are really around long enough to get attached to.  Ciri's progression toward becoming the chosen one is all well and good, including an entire episode of her wandering the desert on a vision quest, but Yennefer's arc has more or less stalled.  Cavill is as charismatic as ever onscreen, but season three doesn't doesn't give him anything new or interesting to play.  The character who actually gets the biggest badass moments and a real endpoint is Tissaia. 

And if Geralt is just spinning his proverbial wheels like this, I understand why Cavill decided to call it quits.  Bad timing has left him without a major franchise, but considering how talented he is, I can't imagine that it'll stay that way for long.  As for his replacement, poor Liam Hmsworth, I understand why he took the job but he's facing a no-win situation. Cavill was too good for "The Witcher" from the beginning, and the show is almost certainly going to capsize without him, unless it lets Anya Chalotra or Freya Allen take over as main character - which it won't.  "The Witcher" is still adapting the Andrez Sapkowski novels, and has four more to go.  

Looking back on the whole series, I can't see much to recommend.  The first season is a moderately fun watch, but the quality has been so up and down for the entire run, and there are so many better alternatives, it's a mistake to get too invested.  As a fan of high fantasy, I'm happy that "The Witcher" got made and found an audience, at least, which may hopefully pave the way for more shows like it.  Cavill left such an impression, though, I expect we'll see a remake in a few years - hopefully made by creatives with a better handle on things than this bunch.

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