The Witcher Netflix series, our first impressions of the second season
The Witcher Netflix series
"The witcher and his protégé advance in the fog of battle. Of Cintra only the remains remain and of Yennefer not even the shadow. For Geralt the curse appears double, as if finding Ciri takes him away from the love of his life and vice versa. sorceress now seems lost, probably dead. Hiding the pain and living in memory is all that is currently possible for the witcher and he has only to advance towards Kaer Morhen. Princess Cirilla's survival and training come first. , also of Yennefer and this Geralt knows it well. He must find out what the real abilities of the girl are and only Vesemir can help him understand. The road is long and perhaps, for the night, it will be appropriate to stop at the house of an old friend ... "The Witcher project as a Netflix TV series was not born under a lucky star. After a series of adaptations very far from extraordinary, the streaming giant has kept all fans in suspense for years, waiting to find out if the deeds of the witcher Geralt were really ready for a transposition on the small screen. Between uneasy teaser trailers and questionable casting choices, the first season of The Witcher turned out to be a series with great character, capable of making up for a budget that was anything but stellar with supervision and accuracy that were not at all obvious.
Based on these assumptions and thanks to a resounding success, Netflix has renewed a second (and already a third) season, keeping Lauren Schmidt at the helm of the boat and continuing to fish heavily from the lore and stories written with wisdom by Andrzej Sapkowski.
We have had the opportunity to view the first two episodes of the second season of The Witcher well in advance and we do not know how to tell you in a simpler and more direct way that they are truly remarkable!
An ounce of truth
The Witcher 2: the battle carries its aftermath The first season of The Witcher was as beautiful as it was narratively difficult, especially for those who were unaware of the original material. On the other hand, the first two books of the saga represent real collections of stories, often set in very different moments and places. The timelines have been written so as to "meet" in the final stages of the first season, thus giving life to a new linearity that should accompany us from here on out. To tell the truth, the writer really appreciated the great script work put in place to give unity to the stories, but it is evident how now we are really getting into the heart of the action.This second season will adapt, in fact, much of the novel "The Blood of the Elves", third book published (fourth to be picky), but the first real novel in the saga of Geralt of Rivia, largely dedicated to the consolidation of the relationship between the witcher and Ciri, so as to the training of the princess.
The narrative, however, picks up exactly where the first season left off and for this reason the first episode acts as a bridge, taking the liberty of disengaging from the novel and belatedly adapting one of the most important stories from "The Guardian of the Innocents". "A Bit of Truth", this is the title, tells the tragic story of Nivellen, an old friend of Geralt by now condemned to live isolated from everyone and a slave to his curse. The road that leads Geralt and Ciri to Kaer Morhen prompts them to stop at the Nivellen estate for the night and to remember old moments of glory from the past.
The Witcher 2: the transposition of the first episode is sumptuous We don't want to spoil nothing of what concerns the story, both for those who know the basis of the original (however modified in some of its aspects), and for those who discover this story from scratch. But what we feel like telling you is that this first episode has convinced us, exalted and even moved us. The poetic license to join the paths of Geralt and Ciri with that of Nivellen is emblematic to understand the ability of the showrunner of the series to play with the source material, to bend it to the needs of its narration, but without ever risking lack of compared to the original work of Sapkwoski.
A Bit of Truth represents the best opening that the series could offer, capable of launching the atmospheres of the story in the best possible way, combining everything with really good horror tints realized. The tragic nature of Nivellen's story, which will be loved by some and hated by others, is beautifully interpreted by Kristofer Hivju, whom many will remember as Tormund from "Game of Thrones".
Kaer Morhen
The Witcher 2: Kaer Morhen, home sweet home The closing of the Nivellen story also gives way to the real narrative of The Blood of the Elves. Geralt and Ciri arrive at Kaer Morhen - the refuge fortress of the witchers - and here they are greeted by the handful of renegades still alive who meet for the winter after a summer of monster hunts. This second episode is important to finally give an identity to one of the most significant places in the saga of Geralt of Rivia, as well as useful to introduce the mentor of the witcher: Vesemir.Anyone who has seen the animated film The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf released a few weeks ago on Netflix, all dedicated to Vesemir and the attack of Kaer Morhen, will certainly be able to find several elements, as well as the same goes for fans of the videogame series of CD Projekt Red. It is evident that each medium now influences the other and the Witcher series is in all respects the daughter of these contaminations. The episode of Kaer Morhen in this sense is emblematic both of the ability to grasp here and there from the history of the previous adaptations, and to add totally original elements to better blend in with the relationships and events of the TV series. We will not tell you more about this episode, both because we were kindly asked given the great anticipation, and because the events and characters deserve to be discovered from scratch.
Obviously we have not forgotten about Yennefer, the great love of Geralt believed dead. The storyline of him is barely sketched in these first two episodes and it is therefore difficult to make big predictions. It moves in the background with a low playing time and with few relevant events, but it is evident that the sorceress has more than a few surprises to give us over the course of the season, even in the face of a journey that will presumably remain in the background of the main narrative. Even today he continues to be the character who least convinces us, especially for an interpreter that we really can't find in part, but we hope to be positively surprised.
Technique at the service of narration
The Witcher 2: The elves will be central in the story We could not fail to close this in-depth analysis on the first two episodes of the second season of The Witcher without taking into consideration the technical side. As already mentioned, the first eight episodes attempted with great awareness and skill to hide a budget far from similar fantasy productions. The excellent writing and the ability to show just enough were enough to still give us a splendid transposition of the stories, but it would be unfair to say that we were not expecting a qualitative leap for this second round of episodes.Fortunately this step forward has been achieved, in some cases even better than we could have expected and both the first and the second episode - still to be considered as Work in Progress, but we are convinced that they are in an almost definitive form, even already dubbed in Italian - they stage special and visual effects of great depth. We know well how The Witcher is not a fantasy linked to great magic and otherworldly worlds, but the realization of the clashes, the make-up of the actors, as well as the transposition of the signs and the monsters are really of fine workmanship. Both in the first and in the second episode, in a very different way from each other, you will be able to appreciate all the progress made by the cast and post production, giving us now really the The Witcher that we deserve also from a technical point of view .
The second season of The Witcher really starts with a bang. A first episode unrelated to the reference novel, but perfectly integrated into the narrative, acts as the incipit to horror tinges of a season that will serve to deepen the relationship between Ciri and Geralt, as well as to make us feel at home in Kaer Morhen (splendid). Technically sumptuous, well ahead of the first season, we are really excited about what we were able to see well in advance. There remains only the doubt of a central phase to be verified, also given the much more linear narrative of this second season.
