The Witcher returns December 17 for its second season on Netflix with more monsters to slay, spells to cast, songs to write (we hope), and even a whole new set of armor for the eponymous witcher—and just in time, given that Henry Cavill’s muscles wore out the old leather sets.
In season one, series creator Lauren Schmidt Hissrich played with the light and dark elements of Andrzej Sapkowski’s fantasy book series—which had already been adapted as a mega-popular video game series—to offset Cavill’s taciturn-yet-charming performance with the garrulous ways of Joey Batey’s Jaskier.
Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) and Ciri (Freya Allan), meanwhile, began to come into their own, even as they found themselves inextricably linked to Geralt. Season two promises a deeper exploration of their bond, as well as more epic battles, lush production values, and a bounty of witchers.
Before Geralt takes up his sword again, it’s a good time for The A.V. Club to revisit the events of The Witcher season one, through the eyes of the main characters (and one character who’s poised to make a much bigger impression this year).
Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill) is both The Witcher and a witcher, i.e., a professional monster hunter rendered sterile and extremely good at fighting by rituals performed on him when he was a child. A wanderer and loner by trade and inclination, Geralt nevertheless spends the show’s first season forging a number of important connections with others, most notably to the sorceress Yennefer of Vengerberg, who Geralt unwittingly binds to himself through a desperate encounter with a djinn, and Princess Ciri of Cintra, who he (also not intentionally) claims as a sort of destined ward after saving her father’s life from both a curse and potentially murderous in-laws.
For most of the season, Geralt is fairly secondary to the rising war with hostile country Nilfgaard that features strongly in Ciri and Yennefer’s narratives. He spends most of his time doing what witchers do best, i.e., enduring bigotry and monster attacks in exchange for coin. But the season’s final episodes see Geralt finally give in to his destiny, first by attempting, unsuccessfully, to save Ciri from the sack of Cintra, and then by encountering her at long last in the care of a merchant he coincidentally aided. [William Hughes]
Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon (Freya Allen) is the rightful heir to the throne of Cintra (or was until the kingdom was conquered by the armies of Nilfgaard) and has been bound to the witcher Geralt (Henry Cavill) since before her birth. In lieu of payment for saving the life of her father, Geralt invoked a custom called the Law Of Surprise that granted him something from Ciri’s parents that they didn’t know they had—like, say, an unborn daughter. Geralt stayed out of Ciri’s life, though, which forced her to fend for herself when Nilfgaardian soldiers (including the knight Cahir) arrived in Cintra to capture her.
Ciri escaped, thanks to some previously unknown magical abilities, and then went on the run. She later found refuge among the elves of Brokilon Forest, but after having a vision and learning that staying in the forest would mean rejecting her destiny, Ciri left to find Geralt. She eventually did, after blacking out during another unexpected display of magic power, with a merchant’s wife finding her and taking her home … just as her husband arrived with none other than Geralt himself. [Sam Barsanti]
Yennefer of Vengerberg (Anya Chalotra) begins the series in the lowest position of our three protagonists, sold into service to passing mage Tissaia (MyAnna Buring) by a family that shunned her for a physical deformity. Yennefer swiftly begins to rise, though, once Tissaia inducts her into the study of magic at the mystical school Aretuza. Enduring snobbery, betrayal, and the constant threat of losing control of her magic, Yennefer eventually triumphs, graduating from the school and transforming her body into an idealized version of herself. She plants the seeds for future disasters, though, by refusing an assignment to be the court mage of Nilfgaard, a militant and religiously enthusiastic nation whose expansionist ambitions Yennefer’s fellow mages were hoping she could soften.
Instead, she takes an assignment with the king of Aedirn, serving him for more than 30 years before he, his wife, and his heir are assassinated while in her charge. Yennefer (youthful as ever) then sets out on her own, hoping to cure the infertility that was the cost of her transformation. To that end, she pursues rumors of a djinn near the town of Rinde, which puts her into direct conflict (and eventual partnership-with-benefits) with the witcher Geralt of Rivia.
Although the two part ways after the djinn nearly kills them both, they reunite a few years later during a dragon hunt, resuming their relationship. However, when Yennefer learns that Geralt has inadvertently bound the two of them together via a wish to the djinn, she rejects him, believing her feelings for him to have been artificially induced. Yennefer returns to her fellow mages, and is talked into fighting off the Nilfgaardian invasion of the Northern Kingdoms. Unleashing years of barely repressed anger as the fighting turns against her allies, Yennefer creates a massive firestorm that destroys most of the Nilfgaardian army. She then vanishes. [William Hughes]
Every story that features a brooding leading man of little words needs a loquacious comedic-relief sidekick—and that’s the job of Jaskier (Joey Batey). After noticing Geralt sitting off in a corner, an intrigued Jaskier asks to join the witcher in his quest to track down a demon. Jaskier, a bard, hopes the new adventure will inspire him enough to compose a new song. But he’s a bit of a magnet for trouble—Geralt ends up saving him from elves and a scornful husband at the Cintra royal ball, before taking him to be healed by Yennefer after a murderous djinn almost succeeds in strangling him to death.
After their encounter with the djinn, though, our time with the joke-cracking bard is cut short. In episode six, Geralt, still smarting from the loss of Yennefer, pushes Jaskier away, too. “Why is it whenever I find myself in a pile of shit these days, it’s you, shoveling it? The Child Surprise, the djinn, all of it. If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands,” Geralt, clearly projecting, spits out at him. Jaskier is absent from the last two episodes of the first season. [Shanicka Anderson]Though Cahir (Eamon Farren) seemed like little more than a high-level soldier in the Nilfgaardian army tasked with killing the Cintran royal family, his real goal was to capture Princess Cirilla, a.k.a. Ciri. It’s unclear why she’s so important to Nilfgaard, but Cahir—thanks to some goading from the sorceress Fringilla Vigo (Mimi Ndiweni)—is certainly under the impression that both he and Ciri are destined for Important Things. In his desperation to capture Ciri, Cahir hired a shape-shifting creature called a doppler to imitate Mousesack, an advisor to Ciri’s grandmother. The doppler succeeded but turned on Cahir after realizing who Ciri was, leading to a fight that gave Ciri a chance to escape. Cahir later led the Nilfgaardian forces against the Brotherhood Of Sorcerers in the Battle Of Sodden Hill (an important step in the empire’s attempt to conquer the whole Continent). Though he killed the powerful mage Vilgefortz, the majority of his forces were obliterated by Yennefer of Vengerberg. [Sam Barsanti]
Vesemir (Kim Bodnia) is the witcher mentor who taught Geralt everything he knows about killing monsters and getting paid to kill monsters. He’ll be a big part of season two of The Witcher, though he doesn’t physically appear in season one. But he does have a solo adventure of his own in the animated tie-in The Witcher: Nightmare Of The Wolf, which follows a young Vesemir undergoing his own witcher training before embarking on a quest to kill a monster that’s been plaguing a small town… only to discover conspiracies at work that are undermining the livelihood of all witchers.
Vesemir’s own mentor, a witcher named Deglan, had been creating monsters and unleashing them on the public, and when this was discovered, the local townsfolk attacked the witcher community at Kaer Morhen and killed nearly everyone inside. Vesemir escaped with a few students, including a young Geralt, establishing why witchers are hated and feared in the timeline of the live-action show and why there are so few of them left. [Sam Barsanti]