The Witcher Episode 8 Review

by Chelsea House, GGR Corespondent

The final episode of the season! And boy is it packed! There is a lot in this episode that I will only go over briefly because I feel like watching adds so much to the overall emotion and flow. I want you to experience it yourself if you haven’t seen it yet. Plus there’s just a lot that happens and you’re here to read a review, not a book! So without further ado, let’s jump into it. 

CIRI

Cirilla lays on the ground waking up from whatever that craziness happened at the end of the last episode. A familiar face, the woman who wanted her to come home with her, lays a hand on her shoulder. Ciri looks around, sees everything flattened, the horse bloodied and dead. She stands up, the woman asks, “What happened?”. Ciri, noticing her “friends” impaled on trees states, “They came for me.” In a shaky voice. You see by her terrified eyes that she knows what happened and how it happened. “They got what they deserved,” the woman says, “you’re safe now.” As she and Ciri walk off to head home the camera pans away and we see the mass devastation caused by our Cirilla. 

Now at the woman’s farm she has a brief conversation with the farmer's son and the woman. Their conversation ends abruptly when they hear explosions in the air. “Nilfgaard” the woman says. “They’re here.” The son agrees. 

Unaffected by what’s going on in the warzone, Ciri is snuggled up a little awkwardly in bed. The woman comes to tuck her in and states that she has had everything in life that she’s ever needed or wanted; everything except a daughter. She confides that she feels Ciri was brought to her for a reason and then tells her to go to sleep. Ciri drifts off into a dream where she sees a rather bleak battlefield smoldering with embers. She sees an increasingly frantic Tissaia yelling “Yennefer!” as well as a frantic Geralt yelling the same. Ciri snaps awake and has a vision of Calanthe saying, “Go. Find Geralt of Rivia. He is your destiny.” 

With this our little nomad hops out of bed, dresses herself, and then runs off into the woods. 

YENNEFER

Yennefer is in a rowboat with 60 (or so) mages heading towards Sodden. Tissaia, Vilgefortz, Yennefer and Triss are having a conversation about strategy. We discover that Sodden is the only way north and there is an old elven keep that guards it. The goal is to hold the fort while they wait for back ups from Temeria and Kaewyn. The boat lands, and as they march towards the keep, the important bit of information we get is, “hold Sodden, save the continent.” Seems simple enough. 

They are met by a man who walks them through the encampments of vagabonds who settled there. All of them had been affected by the terrors of Nilfgaard. The man passionately states it has to be held. “That’s very heroic” Triss says. “Or stupid.” our diplomatic Yennefer states. She tells him to take everyone and hide before Nilfgaard comes. He quips back that there is no where else. “You still believe it can be saved?” Triss asks. The man states he does, “With help.” So the people and the mages then busy themselves preparing bombs, spells, fletching arrows and more. They do battle preparations into the evening where everyone settles down and unwinds to some ale and good conversation.

Yennefer finds herself walking on the battlements looking down at the seemingly carefree people. She runs into a woman who seems as sullen as she. The woman shares that they wanted more fletching, but the roads were blocked by Nilfgaard. Yennefer suggests that she go down and enjoy herself. She says she can’t, and tells Yenn her about her personal run-ins with the Nilfgaardians. She kept their family farm running after her husband died and it was all destroyed, everything she’d ever known or had. 

Up to this point, our ever angsty Yenn seemed completely detached from this whole war thing. There is something that brought her here, as Vilgefortz earlier detected, but we are unsure what, as Yennefer declined to answer. She has shown nothing but lassitude towards the cause and has been only reacted scornfully to every military discussion made thus far. It is really hard to see why she even bothered coming. Then we see the first glimpse of compassion. She picks up a feather and multiplies them for the woman. When she states she wishes she could do the same, Yennefer simply replies. “It’s just magic. It isn’t real.” 

Yennefer now bothers herself to go down with the others to mingle. There are many important conversations that happen here. If you’re a gamer, it has the feel of comrade conversations before the final boss battle. If you’re not a gamer, it’s everyone’s moment to be vulnerable and let their guard down. With each conversation Yennefer seems to be reminded of comradery and companionship. Her bristles seem to be softening. Again, I want to remain vague on these scenes, however, one important blip is a conversation between Yennefer and Tissaia where we learn that Yennefer is ready to die. She has concluded that life has nothing left to give. A frustrated Tissaia replies, “You have so much left to give.” And gets up and walks away. 

Off to Cahir and his Commander discussing battle plans. Frangilla steps in and informs them that The Brotherhood is there and they need to move. The Commander does not like this idea, but she insists stating that she will “personally deplete them”. She reminds Cahir of Cirilla, and against his Commander’s blatant protest tells Frangilla they can’t lose her and to test their defenses.  

Yennefer is awoken by a large bright red light. She wakes up just in time to fling the missile in another direction. 

Frangilla, without even looking at her, states “again,” to the mage standing beside her. The mage creates another energy ball that completely depletes her into a pile of ashes, and again it is flung at the Keep, and again the missile is redirected. Frangilla then closes her eyes and conjures two items into her hands; an odd looking black box, and some sort of amulet. She gives the box to another mage standing next to her and tells him to draw the mages out, the amulet she tucks into her cloak. 

Morning has come. The mages are positioning themselves and Tissaia orders Yennefer to go to the tower. When Yenn protests, Tissaia orders her to reserve her chaos. While they are preparing, the mage that Frangilla sent off is causing a heavy mist to go through the forest. 

With Yennefer keeping watch at the tower, everything seems to be going really well. The mages and Sodden are making a dent! Then things start to fall apart. Vilgefortz loses to Cahir in a sword fight, Frangilla casts a weird powder on Tissaia that causes her extreme pain, and the mages are beginning to get taken down. Things start to spiral quickly when we find out what the box was. Turns out it was containing a bunch of brainwashing worms that turn some kids and a female mage. The kids cause a massive explosion inside of the fort, and female mage stabs Yennefer before they both go cascading over the ledge of the tower. 

Yennefer, holding her wounded abdomen, slowly walks in search of someone who is still alive. She finds Tissaia, tells her that they all need her help. Triss has been  burned badly by fire, many are badly wounded, including herself. She pauses when she sees Tissaia drop to her knees in pain. Yennefer drops to her knees to meet her eye to eye. She says they can’t give up. She can feel the weight of each lost and wounded soldier. Where she wasn’t invested in the battle before, her heart is certainly burdened heavily now. She says, “You saved me, I will never forget that.” NOW. Now we know why Tissaia’s “please” in the previous episode held so much weight. Now we see why she bothered to come in the first place. In a lot of ways this woman was probably her only real mother figure, and certainly the first person to believe in her. Tissaia responds that it’s now Yennefer’s turn to save them all. “I can’t.” She says in exasperation. “You can.” Tissaia insists. “Everything you’ve ever felt… Everything you’ve ever buried… Forget the bottle. Let your chaos explode.” We get the impression here that Tissaia has known all along that our Yennefer would be their salvation. After all, she did order her to reserve her chaos. So up a hill Yennefer walks. She stops only to absorb huge amounts of fire from the pillaging happening around her. She slowly walks up to the top of the hill and unleashes a fire blast that would rival our beloved Drogon. (I had to throw one GOT reference in there.) She obliterates everything within a rather large radius of herself and even Tissaia seems a little shook by the multitude of power. 

We see Cahir looking down at the fire blast with a forlorn expression, and then we see King Foltest coming in with his troops. Finally Temeria has made it!

GERALT

Cintra is on fire. The scene is harrowing. Such a proud and prosperous place completely reduced in what seemed like just a day. What’s that saying? Pride cometh before the fall? Geralt stands in Ciri’s room amongst a litter of corpses. He grabs a book she was reading, sees her green dress hanging up, and grabs her knuckle bones. “I will take her, protect her, and bring her back unharmed. I promise you that,” the words echoing in his mind, hauntingly.

Flash forward, Geralt rides into the Cintran Refugee Camp that Ciri and Dara escaped from not too long ago. A random man is piling up bodies. After some unkind pleasantries between he and Geralt, the man states he’s trying to give them respect. They’d been there for about a week. He pleads with Geralt to help him. Unhelpful Witcher states that all the man needs to do is flee. Stubborn Man states “look at these people, innocent people, killed for what? So Nilfgaard can have more land?” They deserve better he says. “I’m not better” our still Unhelpful Witcher states. 

Stubborn Man continues his work until some zombie/ghoul creatures come out of the ground and attack him. Just as you think he’s about to meet his demise, we hear a sword swinging. Stubborn Man quickly turns and sees now Helpful Witcher looming with his black eyes. “Go home.” he growls. Stubborn Man offers to help, Geralt tells him no, one bite would kill him, and he runs off. Helpful Witcher now does his thing and hacks and slashes his way through the monsters only to notice when all is quiet, that he has been bitten on the leg. “No happily ever after, after all. A fitting end, huh Roach?” And with that he falls face first into the dirt. 

Stubborn Man (who apparently didn’t run off) drives a wagon with a very pale and sick looking Geralt on the back. Our Geralt is having some wicked hallucinations that we immediately understand to be flashbacks. He’s a boy playing knight and telling a woman, his mother, that he will one day make her a necklace of dragons teeth. “We must live and let live” is her response. Child Geralt looks down at the ground and sees a very tiny gold dragon who says, “It’s magic, it isn’t real.” 

Stubborn man has stopped to check on Geralt. He grabs his leg to look at it and Geralt jerks awake in pain and frantically asks for his bag. He then, rather reluctantly, drinks half of a black potion and pours the other half on his wound which causes him immense discomfort. Stubborn Man suggests a healer, and Geralt says to get him to the Blue Mountains. Stubborn man says that’s impossible, the Witcher will die if they travel that far. Geralt mutters “He will save me.” (?) 

We are now in another hallucination where young Geralt is in the back of a wagon having a rather spirited conversation with this mother. All we see is her back. She leans her hand back and summons an apple. Ahh, so she is a sorceress! She then stops and asks young Geralt to fetch water. When he comes back from the stream she is completely gone. He cries for her “Ma! Ma! Visenna!” (so now we have a name!) 

A man, who we don’t see, states that he has been waiting for Geralt for a while and a frightened Geralt runs off. We then see him sitting on the ground with his back against a tree. In this scene we finally get to see the face of his mother, Visenna. When she calls him Geralt, he tells her she doesn’t have the right to use that name, Vesemir gave him that name. They have a heated conversation about why Visenna abandoned her son that gets our Witcher no answers he was searching for. Leaving us with two new names to ponder and speculate, he wakes up, stands, and limps to the wagon where he and Stubborn Man ride to Stubborn Man’s farm. 

It is here that we meet the Stubborn Man’s wife, who looks very familiar indeed! She is the woman who rescued Ciri, and she tells her husband of the girl. Geralt, suddenly really interested in his surroundings, hears Renfri in his mind, “The girl in the woods will be with you always. She is your destiny.” 

Now able to walk, he hops off of the wagon and begins wandering to the woods. He walks and listens and stops in disappointment when he hears nothing. Right when we think that they may drag this reunion out to another season, he turns to see Ciri desperately running towards him. She stops and they share a moment where they simply take each other in. She grabs him in a full embrace which he accepts, holding her head to his chest. And at this point I shamelessly teared up! “People linked by destiny will always find each other.” Ciri responds with , “Who’s Yennefer?” 

And this, my friends, ends Season 1 of The Witcher. 

My thoughts? 

So many thoughts, not really sure where to begin here. First and foremost, would I recommend this show to others? Absolutely. It’s beautiful. The casting was done sooo well with the exception of some characters not looking exactly like the video game. (Triss comes to mind as just one.) There was such good chemistry between everyone and together they made the world that much more believable. 

The fighting choreography was absolutely gorgeous. You can tell that time was taken to plan out each step, each swing, each explosion. They were just so well thought out. Geralt between the books and the show (I did my research) is roughly around 85 - 95 years old which means he’s been doing this Witcher gig for a hot minute. With each parry and thrust, those swords look like extensions of his body versus an addition. Not to mention Henry Cavill did each of those stunts himself! 

The music for the show was awesome. I loved the slavic feel to everything. The different pitches, tones, and instruments gave me the same element of surprise and glee as the Sherlock Holmes films soundtrack by Hanz Zimmer.  Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli did a wonderful job bringing a fresh new sound to a mainstream series. 

I did have a few nitpicky critiques for the show, for instance the time line being so jolting, and a couple of other things. But those can be for another day. Overall I give this series a 4.5 out of 5 and would recommend it for anyone!

Now I will anxiously await the next season!