Critique: The Witcher (Series Three)

Considering how long we had to wait between series one and two, I was glad the wait between two and three was shorter. Only by six months, but half a year is a lot of time.

Yes, I know he’s called Jaskier in the show but I have to call him Dandelion like he is in the book. He’s a dandy after all and I can’t resist a good pun!

 

*****SPOILERS*****

 

 

Positives

 

As always, there were loads of goods things in this series. (The funnies get their own section). A fair few of these were wow moments.

            A naked mole rat-armadillo thing charged Ciri. She jumped to grab a pole then turned in the air as she lands. Stunning to watch.

A messenger was riding a horse and his neck was slit with an arrow, only going as deep into the flesh as it needed to, before the arrow flew into the woods. That precision would usually require a close-range dagger. Impressive skills.

Ciri’s voice broke whilst she sang. Either they planned for her voice to break or it happened and they decided to keep it. Either way, it shows authenticity because people’s voices do suffer when they’re stressed or dehydrated like Ciri was.

The fight scene between the ‘bounty hunters’ (I guess) and ‘the Rats’ in the final episode was epic. They synchronised well despite doing their own thing, even when this was squabbling amongst themselves!

 

The animation didn’t disappoint. I particularly liked that the title during the intro slides were textured like bark.

In the intros, The Witcher’s under the episode’s unique symbol. In the final episode, the symbol broke apart like a swarm of beetles, disappeared, and then ‘The Witcher’ was emblazoned on the screen in a large font. That added some flair and drama to the finale.

The blood from the very first fight scene was animated so well. It didn’t do the typical squirting motion but rather poured out; the slomo helped us see the whirls and waves of the blood.

 

The aesthetics were transcendent.

Phillipa, the mage of Redania, had a staggering variety and complexity and hairstyles throughout. It was her hair for the funeral that was most impression. Ingenius, actually: her hair was braided in front of her face like a veil.

Vilgefortz’s staff was brilliant. The way he teleported it as he fought to be a surprise defence of attack was really creative. The structure of it, being angled instead of curved like staffs usually are and having that twist at the top, was aesthetically pleasing.

The dryad’s foreheads upturned to look like peals of bark, with twigs and leaves growing with the air. Considering dryads are the nymphs of oak trees, having a tree-aesthetic was a smart choice.

 

 

Negatives

 

With some things, I wonder how the survived editing.

Geralt breaks the wrists of the fire mage as he runs back through the portal. He could have killed the fire mage on the run past by holding out his sword. We know Geralt’s precision and aim are excellent so it was well within his capabilities. Considering the fire mage is out hunting Ciri, surely Geralt would get rid of the threat once and for all? He’s killed for things he cares far less about than he cares for Ciri.

Geralt uses magic to get rid of the Wild Hunt. Ciri sees a piece of the Wild Hunt’s armour and whispers, “They were real?” How could Geralt have saved Ciri from the Wild Hunt if the Wild Hunt weren’t real? Unless battle magic (what Geralt clearly used) can banish illusions? This isn’t outside the realms of possibility but it doesn’t quit fit the pattern of magic The Witcher has demonstrated before.

When Geralt refuses to hand over Ciri to the Redania spymaster, the spymaster calls Geralt a, “Fucking prick.” Geralt wasn’t rude and the spymaster knew how important Ciri was to Geralt. So calling Geralt a fucking prick was bizarre.

Vilgefortz should have killed Geralt. Due to his intellect, he’d know Geralt would cause trouble for his plans and come after his for payback. So leaving Geralt alive, however barely, was stupid. Far too stupid for a clever character. He even says they’ll meet again so he wants Geralt to survive. It’s arrogance that will lead to his fall and he should see that.

Cahir, on foot, went to stop some horse riders from getting to Ciri. The horses could have easily galloped around Cahir: between their speed and the available space, Cahir wasn’t any sort of obstacle.

 

Yen said there was no time to argue but then insisted in burying the novices.

Even with portals, the transport and then burial would take much more time than an argument. So this didn’t give the best impression of her intelligence.

Maybe Yen should have something like, “We don’t have time to argue if we want to give these girls the burials they deserve.” That would eliminate the contradiction whilst also stopping the fight.

 

There was too much of Ciri wandering in the desert.

It went on and on and, yes, I know that’s the point. But even shaving a few minutes off this time would have given the impression of the forever concept whilst removing the tediousness.

A better solution would be slipping some alternate perspectives into the desert scenes. It would break up the desert scenes, making them more palatable for the audience; also, the start-to-finish of the desert scenes would be longer than them all in one piece, adding to the sensation of the forever-wandering concept. A win-win. The perfect solution would be Dandelion’s dryad scene split into three: singing to the dryads; walking through the dryad camp and seeing Dandelion look at horror at Geralt; and finally the final bit of the episode.

 

 

Funny

 

Two miscellaneous funny bits.

Between her white shirt and her brown, lumpy jerkin, Ciri is dressed like Shrek. I know it’s basic medieval attire but it was making me giggle every time I saw it.

The fire mage threatens to hurt the cat unless the owners tell him what he wants. The owners beg, “Not the cat,” clearly expecting their cooperation to keep them all safe. The next moment, the building is on fire and the mage walks out holding the unharmed cat. So he did as he was asked. Just creatively.

 

There were a few throw-away lines that caught my fancy.

For example, “You knobless dickhead” is the greatest insult of all time. Also, Wilberforce (Tissaia’s Vilgefortzriend) said, “Give Yen a few hours to piss everyone off.”

The soldiers threw (what they thought to be) a corpse into a ditch and said, “Rest in peace, motherfucker.” I want that on every gravestone!

A mage worries if the novices have hurt themselves. Tissaia’s response? “Then we need to get less clumsy novices.

In the first episode, Geralt gives people gold as, “Payment for your discretion.” The only one he doesn’t do that with is the dwarf who wanders of and says, “And I expect payment for my discretion.”

 

Yet it was Dandelion who held the glory of humour. Saying, “I’m right? Well that’s deeply worrying,” for example, was smile-worthy.

In a fight scene, we see an arrow land on Dandelion who screams in mortal agony. Only for the audience to see it was his lute that was hit.

When Dandelion’s girlfriend found out he cheated, his excuse was, “It was one time… with many different people.”

Dandelion had an analogy whereby, “When you’re a hammer, you see every problem as a nail and you’re like, fuck this nail.” This line by itself was brilliant. But then the analogy became, “when the problem is porridge, you need a spoon.” Clever. But then the analogy became too messy and seeing Dandelion’s look of despair was priceless.

Dandelion and the prince start snogging. Dandelion says he can’t bring the prince inside (i.e. ‘take’ as in bring him inside because Ciri’s there.) The prince responds by saying, “So take me here” (i.e. ‘take’ as in have sex). Clever wordplay.

One of the dryad’s asylum seekers tells Dandelion that he’s not Geralt’s friend, he’s just staying to make a song about Geralt dying. In the most serious voice I’ve ever heard him speak with, Dandelion says, “How dare you?” before cheerfully saying, “I’d milk it for, like, three songs. And an epic poem.” The switch in tone was perfection.

When a millipede’s about to be crushed for an elixir, Dandelion looks at it with puppy dog eyes and says, “Sorry buddy,” in the tine you’d use to tell your dog play time’s over

 

 

Things I’ve Noticed

 

The wyvern was correct, having two hind legs and having wings where the front legs would be. But then it has stubs over its shoulder blades (where a dragon’s wings would be attached) and they looked like featherless chicken wings. So, do wyverns have two sets of wings in the Witcher World?

 

There was a karkadann on one of the title screens.

The fact that the horn was upturned like a rhino’s horn and that the episode was in the desert were giveaways. Plus, the footprints in the sand were those of a rhino. So that was great attention to detail.

But then the unicorn showed up with regular horse hooves, making the rhino footprints pointless. The horn on the unicorn’s head, whilst upturned, was miniscule in proportion with the rest of it. Maybe this was to do with animal welfare reasons but it was ridiculously tiny.

 

There were two things that were strange. Not enough to be mistakes but off-putting nonetheless.

The elf-hating mage, ended up saving the other mages when the elves attacked Aretuza. So racism saved the day. That’s unsettling.

Let’s go back to the scene where the mages argue before Yen reminds them the girls need to be buried. All the mages seemed to be wearing the same shade of bronzer placed on the same part of the face. It was identical and a little unnerving because the mages never do anything to conform in appearance. Considering Phillipa had bronzer like this too when she wasn’t even part of Aretuza anymore was even more bizarre.

 

Major changes in major characters is always worthy of note.

Geralt’s smiling a lot more now. Admittedly he has the love of Yen and Ciri so he has plenty to smile about. It’s such a natural progression that him no longer scowling at everything isn’t an unbelievable change in character. Not to mention his hair looks grey rather than the white it started out as.

Dandelion’s clothes are really rather boring. The more serious his character has become over the series, the more serious his clothes have become. There’s not much variety and it’s not in our face like it was in series one. I miss that.

 

 

Conclusion

 

The quality of Series Three was intense. Its quality matched the time we had to wait for it.

It was about keeping Ciri safe whilst trying to maintain neutrality. By picking a side, it would make them enemies of the other side, so by picking neither side, neither side could become their enemy. Eventually they realised neutrality wouldn’t keep Ciri safe although I’m not entirely sure which side they’ve picked.

Having Tissaia kill herself was heartbreaking because she was one of my favourites. She felt like she failed everyone because Aretuza was in ruins, the number of mages was seriously depleted and they failed to stop the war.

            I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next!