The Witcher Continues its Journey into an Action-Filled Second Season
While the initial season was difficult to follow at times, due to the three timelines running concurrently, the second round of The Witcher sticks to a traditional narrative and even turns the mirror on itself and mocks those flaws.
Lead actor Henry Cavill has really found a niche with his version of Geralt of Rivia, one of the few surviving witchers and the primary protagonist of these tales.
Fans of the original writings will be pleased to learn that this season closely follows the narratives in the first Witcher novel, The Blood of Elves, while expanding on some lesser characters such as Tissaia (MaryAnna Buring) and Istredd (Royce Pierrson), and giving them more prominent roles in the series.
The show walks a fine line of pleasing fans of the original writings by Andrzej Sapkowski, giving acknowledgement to the immensely popular video games, and keeping true to the complicated mythos of the world of The Witcher, all while trying to bring in new viewers new to the material entirely. And, they have been successful. This is one of the most successful shows on Netflix and has already been given the go ahead for additional seasons.
There is a lot of fan service, digging deep into the source material as well as Netflix’s recently released animated movie, The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, all while teasing future spinoffs, and there are plenty of references to the video games, which Cavill, himself, has been revealed to be a huge fan.
Even with the weight of expectations hanging heavily over Cavill and Netflix’s The Witcher, the cast and crew achieve and maintain an immensely entertaining, compelling, and exciting style of storytelling based in a world of fantasy but always finding it’s way back to the emotion and sentimentality of what it means to have humanity — not humane, but human — to have sympathy, to feel pain, to know compassion, to be generous, to be sullen, to crave companionship, and to care for family.
While the second doesn’t season doesn’t quite achieve the emotional highs of the first, it more than adequately builds on the characters, their relationships, and their futures, keeping us in anticipation for a season three and beyond.
Gordon’s Grade: B+
Read the Review of Season 1 Here
