The Witcher Season Two

 Well, I meant to just watch one episode. And now, at 6:18 PM as I write this... I've watched the entire season.

So I guess there's my endorsement: The Witcher's second season has been a page-turner of a show. Netflix, of course, pioneered the full-season release, which other streaming services have walked back on, using a weekly schedule, even if streaming shows are normally half or a third or a quarter the length of a network show (that was one of the shocking things about Twin Peaks: The Return, actually, that it had a full 24 or so episodes).

In a lot of ways, season one of this show was very odd - its nesting timeline element (oddly similar to Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, when you think about it) left some viewers and reviewers confused. The intention behind it, I think, was to allow us to meet all the key characters at the start of the season instead of waiting until episode 4 or so to actually get to Geralt, and to the finale to introduce Ciri. (Actually, the one thing I find funny in all the timeframe shenanigans is that Jaskier ought to be way older than Joey Batey is by now - being neither Witcher nor Mage, there's no reason he should still look 32 given that he looked like that when Ciri was still in utero.)

The second season, then, having allowed the timeline to sync up at the Battle of Sodden Hill, has a number of advantages over the first. For one, time seems to be flowing equally for all characters, so we can trust a sense of synchronicity. The other is that, now that Ciri and Geralt have found one another, we can actually see how the two characters feel together. Ciri's story in the first season was... it was a little underwhelming. The premiere was a real gut-punch (I think one of my real "too dark" triggers is when people commit suicide to avoid being captured, especially when it's whole families,) but there was more interesting fantasy stuff going on with Yennifer and Geralt's backstories.

Actually, that might be what made the first season feel odd - it was essentially a really elaborate prologue. We got to see how Geralt first gained infamy as the Butcher of Blaviken and then earned renown as the one who cured the Striga, etc.

So, season two has the benefit of really feeling like the main plot taking off in earnest:

Ciri is on a path to discover what her powers actually mean, and Geralt has dedicated himself to protecting her - but not only that, also helping her become strong enough to fend for herself. Ciri's determination to learn to fight as well as a Witcher is a lot of fun, and I think Freya Allan seems to be having more fun in the role as someone determined to be able to fend for herself.

Yennifer, meanwhile, finds herself alive, but de-powered after the Battle of Sodden Hill. Taken prisoner by the retreating Nilfgaardians with Fringilla, the two are ultimately captured by the elves, now led less by Filavandrel and more by his wife Francesca.

Here is where the politics of the show (or in the show) start to get a little more nuanced and interesting.

Nilfgaard is introduced in the first episode as a horror-show of brutal militaristic force. Cintra, which appears to be a rather nice kingdom, is steamrolled and we're told that the empire takes no prisoners, simply killing anyone they come across.

But just as we found earlier in season one that maybe Calanthe was not really the benevolent monarch she used to be, we also see seriously reinforced the racial oppression that the northern kingdoms treat the elves with. Nilfgaard, it would seem, does not have the same sort of racial oppression built in to their otherwise authoritarian-theocratic regime. Fringilla opens Cintra (now using the old elvish name Xin'trea) to Francesca and Filavandrel's people, offering them food and shelter in exchange for an alliance.

Based on novels written in Poland, it's not hard to see some parallels here. Central (and, well, all of) Europe has a nasty history of racism. Nilfgaard, with its proclaimed goals of feeding and housing all of its citizens, looks a lot like the Soviet bloc - sweeping through other countries, setting up client states, all an admirable stated purpose of guaranteeing shared prosperity, but using brutal methods and kind of just setting up an empire in the process. But the racism of the North makes the opposition not look like wonderful liberal democracies - just the old shitty nationalism. My dad was born in Hungary, the son of Jewish Holocaust survivors, and his uncle claimed that there were only two types of people in the world - Nazis and Communists, and obviously the latter was the better of the two.

Thus, we get to see a somewhat more sympathetic side of both Cahir and Fringilla - they aren't just doing all this evil for the sake of it, but because they truly think that the world will be better off once Nilfgaard conquers it.

They're not... like... good guys. But you can see why they do what they do.

There is less monster-of-the-week stuff in this season - really only the first episode feels that way (with some really well-done prosthetics and make-up on an old acquaintance of Geralt's who seems to be some kind of Witcher-style take on Beauty and the Beast - I particularly love the way that the boar-man uses magic to summon things for his guests, making them fall out of the air like they were dropped from just above the camera's frame, which is undoubtedly what they did).

It is always kind of funny to me that the Witcher is a heroic fantasy story that is being told in an epic fantasy setting - but where the protagonist is really trying to avoid getting involved in the epic side of things. But Ciri's power is too great to be ignored, and ultimately, by the end of the season, Ciri has more than just Nilfgaard trying to find and take her, but numerous factions (including one tantalizingly unseen figure who secures the assistance of a previously-imprisoned pyromancer).

I will also say: this season has the Witcher universe's equivalent of Baba Yaga in it, including the hut on chicken legs. So, that automatically gets it some points.

I really think this season will be better-received than the first, which I think a lot of critics were skeptical of. There's much more narrative momentum here, and Ciri really benefits hugely from being able to actually spend time with the other main characters, particularly Geralt.

I'm not hugely familiar with the source material - my previous experience was playing the first half of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which is of course also an adaptation. But I do think that we've seen the introduction of some more key characters - particularly Geralt's own ersatz father/mentor Vesemir and spymaster Dijkstra (who certainly feels like an antagonist but seems like a fun one - he's one of those chessmaster types, which made a scene where we see his "process," where he basically drinks a bunch and brainstorms madly, really interesting) - that I know make for major figures within the rest of the story.

I had already known about the final cliffhanger reveal regarding Emhyr, the Nilfgaardian Emperor, but it's a nice bit of re-contextualization that alters the stakes in exciting ways.

Anyway, the downside of binging a show like this is that I have no idea when the third season will be out - and surely it won't be for another year or more. But I definitely think that if you liked the first season at all, you should definitely check this one out.