#the witcher Netflix spoilers

[kaori04]

Does anybody else wishes that one time Jaskier would just loose it and go apeshit instead of doing his usual coping mechanism joke

[do-androids-dream-ao3acc]

Look, I haven't even watched, but it came to my attention that they did, in fact, include THE scene in TWN 3, and since I couldn't find any gifs of the moments the whump community is interested in, here they are. Thank me for my service because I don't even like that face (but I DO like the collapse and the shaky hand!)

[mantra4ia]

I didn't think it was possible for an adaptation to break my fandom heart, however

I just finished season 3 of the Witcher on Netflix

and I cannot yet put into words how disheartened I feel about it except to say 1) bigger in scale doesn't always mean better in quality and 2) I feel like 90% of the commentary in "the making of season 3" is hype.

In my opinion, a majority of the dialogue in this season is painful no matter how hard the actors try to deliver them sincerely and the people who are trying to upsell how faithful it is to the books are clearly omitting much context of the books. I do not feel like reliving the dialogue to site a litany of grievance, but "you'd be dead already" was beaten to death, as was "never lost, always found." The scripting pen was a lot more clever in the days of death and destiny circa season 1. Not just clever, but cutting, sassy even in the midst of purposeful crudeness, artful, and complex. It didn't need to spell things out for you and could let you stumble into unraveling meaning whereas this season clocked you over the head. And it wasn't just the actual lines on the page, but the timing of their delivery — for example the monologues in combat — that makes a bad situation go from rough to rags. Cahir ("my life is yours" speech) and Vilgefortz ("the hardest part was holding back") have some of the worst offending instances. That, and when they threw in a "he's having a heart attack" medical drama one liner in the midst of battle on the Isle of Thanedd, I wanted to 🤦 smack a skull.

The set dressing, when it's not overwhelming —the outlandishness of Redania, back to back with the bombastic excesses of mages on the Isle hardly gives you a moment to discern the differences, it seems homogeneously over the top — makes be sad (footnote: random bowls of apples in hallways of an academy where people can conjure magical meals at will is just sort of silly in a very 90s movie, castle interior stereotype way). I don't think that one set or scenic shot caught my eye in a memorable way, and considering we saw Shaerrawedd this season that's a shame. Yarpen's tiny house is one of my few exceptions of well designed spaces. We also could have used more contrast in design by seeing life/ stylistic choices within the empire — given that the story from here on goes into the war trenches —and so it is disappointing that the few shots we get of Nilfgaard center around an underwhelming Emyhr as opposed to culture, mentality, and actual sense of the opposition and the scale of them.

Also, there were a few props that made me want to shut off my television in terms of quality on camera. Example: the first time we see Milva draw her bow. That poor, ridiculous bow that is neither a good example from text or a nod to any archers.

The fights do not all have their own distinct style as the commentary suggests, and the ones that do have distinguishable flare are filled with artful camera work for the sake of itself; as opposed to adding to the fight it was often distracting. There were also excessive cuts at various camera angles that were superfluous, as evidenced in the walk up leading to Geralt vs Vilgefortz. Two fight sequences were a joy to watch: the Rats escape and one of the opening sequences where Geralt confronts the bounty hunters and we see him walk away through the eyes of the man that he just beheaded as the skull hits the ground. It was an interesting stylistic choice with memorable impact. Nothing that hits like Blaviken combat, but a highlight.

The monster design (the flesh monster and others) makes me miserable, the rendering of which take me out of the fights built around them. Gone are the days of the Stryga and the Bruxa.

Not concluding the the first or the second act of season 3 with the siege of Aretuza and the destruction of Tor Lara was a mistake of timing. Following the battle, the subsequent desert scenes (and Brokilon to some extent) dragged on. Even weird, trippy cameos couldn't save them. Freya/Ciri has some decent beats of progressive desperation descending into madness leading up to finding "little horse" and confronting the demons of her psyche, but the cutting and the placement of the desert sequence does it no favors.

Speaking further on Aretuza, the battle of mages and scoia'tal missed a lot of moments. If we were going to spend precious screen time dividing the familial core four (Yen/Jaskier/Geralt/Ciri) so that Yen can go back for Tissaia— knowing that very soon in the plot it will be divided again when Ciri is portalled and someone is captured by Vilgefortz — then the battle better be worth it. It wasn't entirely. The conflict opened with a very "for the stage" kind of choreography with the assembly of mages. The conflict ramped up with dimeritium arrows (kinda predictable) and elven guts, and then ended on a strange note with Alzur's Thunder, an interesting nod to game play with 50/50 execution on screen. Given that this season likes narrative voiceovers, there was a lot they could have done with Alzur's Thunder in terms of sound, flashbacks, interior cuts of Tor Lara, narration, or even spell work of Yennefer being able to enter Tissaia's mind, to nicely harken back to the themes of control and deepest fears, when Tissaia's spell casting and loss of control parallels Yennefer's early years (lightning in a bottle), and each character comes full circle in pulling chaos back from the edge. But those themes are overshadowed by flash and bang. The opportunity for a contrasting small / personal moment with Yennefer and Tissaia amidst the larger battle is lost.

I'm sorry, but when LSH says this season is very character driven, I don't know what final cut she's watching. It feels like we're racing through plot points A-Z while nearly none of the character relationships get time to breath and impart their emotional beats. Spoiler alert: I should feel devastated when Vilgefortz beats Geralt, literally breaks him, but I don't. I should feel bad when Tissaia dies, I don't. They're trying to rush feelings between Triss and Istredd, Fringilla and Francesa, that I really can't be bothered about because there are so many characters given side quests that no one really gets their due. Least among them in the supporting cast Phillipa, which has animosity with Tissaia that doesn't land, a relationship with Dijkstra that doesn't land, a sidepiece that doesn't land, and is (apart from some interesting wardrobe, hair and makeup choices) reduced to a presence that provides forewarning about Lydia and Vilgefortz. And least among the main cast Geralt, who spends a whole lot of screen time in passive action exuding quiet contempt for other characters. Which is a shame, because if this truly is the last time we see Henry as Geralt, they should have given this man free reign to burn the barn down.

One shining note: I truly appreciate that we bookend this season with narration from Yennefer and, to a lesser extent, Geralt. It is a nice, if slightly less eloquent, homage to the corresponding letters in the novels (pieced together from multiple books). I would have loved far more for each episode to make some use of narration, as a kind of through-thread for this season, in order to get equal turns from Ciri and Jaskier. Ciri has some great internal dialogue of things that she wishes she could say to Yennefer but doesn't before their family splits apart (unspoken moments of respect, adoration, and love that get quickly summarized by ice skating montages). Ans Jaskier is quite often the "unreliable" narrator in sections of the novels, which flashes backwards and forwards from his slightly mythologized autobiography as a world famous bard. Both of them really needed their turn in this season to be an overarching voice.

This season hurts. I'm glad if you are a Witcher / Sapkowski fan and you enjoyed yourself in season 3. But it really let me down, the creative direction and didn't seem to come together into a cohesive tone (it couldn't strike the balance between humor and gravitas), vision, or unfolding of the story.

I don't know if I can bring myself to rewatch this season a second time with fresh eyes and hope for the best. But I will miss Henry Cavill, and have much respect for cast and crew.

[vordemtodgefeit]

i have to say, so far they’re healing my wounds from the last two seasons of bard maltreatment

[jaskiersboobs]

Fringilla x Francesca power couple reunited baby!!!!

[untaintedtea]

The Witcher S3 spoilers (nsfw) idek I just need to put this somewhere

when I saw this

I thought of this (Bridgerton S1)

anyone else?? LOL anyway yeah that’s probably my headcanon. thanks for reading

also while I’m here I just wanna complain about the continued Yen(nefer) (nick)name crimes yet again. “Yenna” exists you know!! idek why I expected any different but it would have been nice lol

[arianaofimladris]

I tried the third season. After the initial facepalm of the first three minutes, after swallowing the fact that Yennefer-imposter character is acting exactly opposite to Yennefer character (no surprise there), I decided to look at it as a parody. Worked just fine for about the next fifteen minutes. I mean it was in a way hilarious, watching how after two seasons the scriptwriters realised they had forgotten to show in any way any kind of relation between Geralt and Yennefer, other than them being two characters who randomly fucked in two episodes of the first season. So to make it up and pretend to build some kind of background and past, the characters were made to casually reminisce all the weird places they had sex in. Yeah, while the physical aspect of their relations is a huge part in canon, in relation to what season 2 presented, and what we get to see, it was ridiculous.

I really liked Yarpen, the actor is doing great job and Yarpen seems lively and in character.

And just as I was beginning to settle in watching this as a comedy and parody, Jaskier came in, looking and behaving pathetic and sort of unable to utter a sentence. Mouthy, cheeky, cocky and impertinent Dandelion reduced to this. Nah, thanks.

And then sadly I was reminded of that bullshit subplot with the elves and Francesca, followed by some bullshit about the elves obsessing over Ciri, followed by the bullshit Ciri served about how she is going to unite everyone. What the hell. It's not Star Wars,, for God's sake. Followed by the Sherrawed fighting scene that looks more elaborated than that sneak peak they published some time ago, but still has so many idiotic sequences and illogical shots (like Geralt strolling casually in the background while a second later he's running and picking back a knife he had supposedly thrown?. Or the fact that they made a trap and Geralt left Rience alive (yeah, because the plot will demand his presence later)) .

I gave up at the "drama" of Jaskier being shot and "dying" and being ridiculous while doing so. The cringe was too hard there.

All in all, I tried only to make sure my initial idea of simpky watching some cool scenes without having to deal with shitload of the plot the scriptwriters came up with was the best I could have. I guess I will just wait for the Internet to tell me where to find in these episodes scenes I might enjoy watching. Like Geralt fighting. Or perhaps Geralt visiting Codringer and Fenn, I saw a photo and it looked nice.

Yennefer is still butchered to the point where she only shares the name and eye color with Yennefer of Vengerberg. The last word I would ever use to describe Yennefer of Vengerberg is pathetic or pleading and that's what I see - but then hardly a surprise, given how the character arc was butchered in the previous season, they had to continue that.

With Ciri the issue remains too - her character is still being written as that of a teenager, at this Belletyn festival she acts like a cheery kid and that is all nice, except it is being performed by an actress who simply looks too old. Don't get me wrong, she looks nice and pretty, but she looks her age, between 25 and 30, she does not have this kind of "endless child type of beauty" - and as a result her looks do not correspond with how her character is written. It's jarring.

Geralt is always nice to watch except when you get a close up look on the hideous lenses they still haven't changed in all this time.

[theladyofspaceandtime]

IS THIS SUPPOSED TO BE FAKE CIRI?!? Wait…wait..wait!

LAUREN!

[this-is-not-a-slow-burn]

So I finished the Witcher S3 last night and it was lightyears better than the first half of the season. However it still had some huge issues. There were many scenes that were aborted and rendered basically throwaway nonsense because of how terribly written the dialouge was, or how dismissive and weirdly paced they were. They felt like placeholders. They were obviously tossed in because there was information in them that was important to future scenes, but did they hire 5th graders to write them?

Though I will say it was quite effective for showing just how absolutely insignificant Rience had become, and how absolutely not worth a big scene he was. He was a horrible person who didn't deserve to be given attention, so Geralt acted accordingly. It was perfect. (I haven't gotten to that part of the books yet so I'm not sure if that's how it goes or if the show took liberties there)

But that technique in other scenes was jarring. As if the writers forgot they had written [JASK AND YEN SCENE GOES HERE] and just left it, without actually writing the scene. That or someone found continuity errors while filming and so they wrote the dialogue on the fly and filmed it.

But nothing will ever be as bad as the scene in the first half of the season with Ciri riding from The Wild Hunt on a very obviously fake horse head on a green screen. My god I literally burst out laughing at that scene. The absolute opposite of what should have happened in a scene about horse mounted murder elves bearing down on the princess they need for taking over the world.

[ruiniel]

Hm. Casual fan here, personal opinion time. I've read the book series, devoured it, cried over it (some parts are that good). I've seen people's woes and very familiar with all the deviations (which once again are happening).

But is it just me or did they place just a wee bit more effort in the new Witcher season? The acting is great (shout out to Yennefer, Jaskier, Radovid, Dijkstra, Cahir, Rience, Philippa etc) there's chemistry between the found family, the costumes have improved. The setting feels more lived in, everyone is gorgeous (the creatures aren't too shabby either), they used the cgi a little more mindfully, it feels (so far). There's a little more room to breathe for character development.

There were *some* lines in reference to the books (ha, the unicorn mention in passing) which I appreciated.

Not a fan of using the huge reveal before its time (The White Flame & Ciri's connection) but I like what they did with The Wild Hunt, and we had our first glimpse of Eredin, uh oh.

Right now the adaptation feels to me like a dragon egg that took its sweet time to hatch. All in all, watching part 2 where everything's supposed to hit the fan, again.

[kaori04]

he really did produce a next banger epic heroic song by watching geralt grunting, amazing what a genius

[do-androids-dream-ao3acc]

I’m... sorry, Radovid? Jaskier/Radovid? Oooookay. 

[autisticwitcher]

I'll try not to make a too long post about this because like, whatever, but the thing that has me the most upset about the Witcher s3 is actually the way the writing treats the physical space these characters inhabit because this is supposed to be a big fantasy story! This is a big continent in which different countries are at war with each other! Nilfgaard trying to take over the rest of the contintent is a big deal because it would make the empire MASSIVE. But you don't get that feeling from the show because because their writing just chaotically flip flops between character constellations and places to hit as many plot beats from the books as it can until the world has collapsed so that everyone somehow lives in an area that doesn't feel bigger than a large metropolitan area.

Take the sene where Ciri is chased by the Wild Hunt for example. That scene is lifted fromt he books, but it doesn't have the same context as the book and so it's free of any internal logic. In the books Ciri and Yen are in Gors Velen, Ciri and Yen fight, the whole bath scene yada yada but Ciri learns that Geralt is nearby on a farm so she runs away to Geralt, gets overtaken by the hunt and Geralt sensing with his Witcher sense that something is wrong in the area goes to check it out and finds (and rescues) Ciri. In the show we don't actually know where exactly Geralt is. Is he close? Is he far away? Where even is that castle, how long was he traveling with Teryn, where do Anika and Otto live? Doesn't matter. Geralt is going to Ciri and Ciri ran away vaguely towards Geralt so somehow they run into each other in the middle of nowhere in the woods right when the Hunt dramatically reaches her. Yay father daughter reunion, we can now move onto our next plot point. (And yes I get that this was also supposed to resemble their meeting in S1 but like, that at least made sense because we are told they are in the same area and also looking for each other and also fate intervened a little bit...but you're telling me destiny somehow gave them a magic father daughter radar?)

Or take the Radskier meeting in Loxia: How tf did Radovid know where Jaskier was? I get that Loxia is a settlement by Thanedd, the students are also lodging there while the guests occupy their rooms, but like, when they show the house it looks like it's in the middle of the woods. If it had been a townhouse, then yeah sure this makes perfect sense. Radovid learns Jaskier's in town, decides to stop by. But no he goes out the middle of nowhere where this house seems to stand, then sneaks about when he runs into the forcefield, not even waiting for the door to open, to get a fun "Jaskier thinks there's an intruder but actually it's his boy Radovid" sequence which...aesthetically fun but WHERE is the narrative logic to any of that?

Cahir is shown in some fancy castle in Nilfgaard in one scene, then the next have him and several other riders carrying a lot of goods to the elves who are somewhere in the North, potentially up in Kaedwin where their last marked location was, maybe closer to the border in Lyria or Temeria or somewhere. How did he get there? Did the whole convoy step through a portal? Did he portal to the nearest post and form the convoy there? We can imagine the possibilities but it would have been so much better to show it just to give the distances weight and meaning.

And don't even get me started on Mistle in Gors Velen...like great that she and Ciri had that interaction, the moment itself was fun, but like...do you know how far Gors Velen is from Gheso? How little sense it makes for her to be there and then later be elsewhere? That there are several books worth of plot because Ciri stepped through a portal that lands her in the middle of the Nilfgaardian Empire where she is alone and has to somehow survive while her parents travel leagues to find and save her?? And so having Mistle meet her in Gors Velen only to later hang out with the Rats in Gheso two weeks later makes it feel like Ciri stepped through a portal in New York to land in New Jersey? When it should be more like stepping into a portal in New York and ending up in Texas?

Thanedd and the political plot are sooo central this season but because everyone immediately reaches everyone else and characters even on horseback travel long distances so fast it feel like they're squabbling about who gets to rule which burrough of New York or something, not countries on a continent. Like look at the map:

It doesn't feel like these characters exist on this map, and that just throws off the whole vibe. Like yeah some of the writing decisions are stupid, some of the decisions characters make have no internal logic, and the costuming is mostly bad. But I feel like all that would be much better if it all felt more consequential because there was something behind it all. But instead only the places the characters are in right now matter and they get there because they have to for plot and they keep going back and forth because it's more fun if they split up but also they need to reunite but also they need to split up again and so we keep riding around in the same part of the woods.

Idk where I wanted to go with this, maybe I'm just nitpicky. Maybe I'm too autistic and got worked up about the wrong thing, but it's just so frustrating that it feels like they did not consider why plot point A leads to point B in the books and so just haphazardly throw shit together because they think it looks fun in the show. And the problems with the physical space just exemplify that.

[vordemtodgefeit]

i wonder if they’ll include that reason why emhyr wants ciri

[fluffyspaceshark]

Jaskier being bisexual makes me so happy.

[all-or-nothing-baby]

(op's explanatory tags my beloved<3)

jaskier for this entire season : emotional support bard