Toss a Coin to the Third Season of Netflix's The Witcher

Urgh, don't mention RE, I'm trying to forget it exists.

This would have to be outstanding to pull me back in — I completely fell off after season 1. It was okay, but Henry Cavill's Geralt was by far the best thing about it, and I've had no desire to watch season 2 after hearing that Geralt is once again sidelined so that the show can focus on worse characters.

@ShogunRok You aren't missing much. Season 2 was very average.

@get2sammyb the second series was hard going. Seemed to meander around and Ciri's eyebrows kept distracting me 😁

For what it's worth, I liked the second season, even if it was lacking in Yennifer's boobs when compared with the first. It was slow, but IMHO really paid it off towards the end.

In other matters, surely Minnie Driver is best known for her cameo in GoldenEye (https://youtu.be/aTxZeHy4kOI)? That terrible singing seared itself into my youthful mind.

Edit: I can never figure out what this site expects as the formatting for YouTube links as the guide says they're supposed to just work

@ShogunRok Completely agree. I thought the first season was really good - but that its main problem was the subplots (that were both confusing and much less interesting than Geralt's story.)

I figured - second season, if they create a tighter narrative, it'll be even better. Instead, there were MORE subplots with even less interesting characters.

I'll never understand show creators believing that they can create storylines that are more interesting than the original author's...

Ok... so where's the first two season on legitimate blu-ray? Netflix enjoys releasing many of their shows on disc but not one that would be very popular among physical media enthusiasts. The only blu-ray I can find for sale here in America are bootlegs. 😠

Why the need to mention RE at all? That was confirmed canned several weeks ago

@ShogunRok read the books and see how "sidelining" Geralt is quite normal. You can read chapter on chapter with no Geralt and that's fine.

The show is... okay-ish. But the quality of it has nothing to do with it's Geralt frequency. The games are great and are Geralt-centric, yes, but that is also not why the games are great. The original books are great and are about many characters and about the world, and it's politics etc.

How various adaptions work, or don't work as well, are more about the care for everything in the source material. And the show does not care about everything in the source material. It's trying to build up the main characters, and the world, which it has to do because they are so important to the story, eventually, but it is struggling to do it in a way that feels sympathetic to the source material.

You can't have a Witcher show without Dandelion, Yen, Ciri, involved as much as possible. A family has to be built for the sake of the story, and people have to care about these characters, they can't just drop them in randomly half way through season 2 with no backstory or anything like that and expect people to care.

But still, they could do better 😅

Witcher in the Summer though? The summer when typically people care less about big dark fantasy shows. I'd have much preferred the Main show to air over Christmas time, and the spin off to air in spring.

Seems like a shoot themselves in the foot kind of decision :/

The first episode of season 2 was brilliant and that's because it was a short story from The first book, The Last Wish. The next episode started deviating again from the books. I thought it was rubbish so I stopped watching.

@Ravix I adored the books too, even more than the Witcher 3 (somehow!!).

I guess the main difference between sidelining Geralt in the books vs the show is that he's usually sidelined for a very engaging Ciri-related story in the books. In Season 2 of the show, he's sidelined continually for a mind-numbingly boring side-plot involving Fringilla and Francesa (which exists for some unknown reason). Also, unlike the books, Geralt (as Shogun mentioned) is the clear standout in the first season of the show - moving even further away from that in Season 2 was an absolute disaster!

There's a strong sense of the showrunners trying to fit too much into too little time, too. The interactions between Yen and Dandelion are so cringey in Season 2 - acting like best friends when they barely interacted in Season 1. In a show where there really isn't a ton of space, so much of it is wasted by boring subplots.

And that's not even to mention how they treated the character of Eskel, or completely sprinted past Ciri's time at the temple of Melitele, or all the other deviations from the amazing stories in the books...

As @ApostateMage suggets above, the show really is at its best when it sticks to the source material. But for some reason, the showrunners think they're capable of creating better...

Can't stand Henry as Geralt. After a few episodes I just dropped it. I'll keep just playing the game.

Season 2 dropped the ball hard after that nonsense they pulled with Eskel. There was no reason for that!

I really enjoyed the show, especially season 2 but there are two things in it that I didn't like at all which makes me favour season 1 more. One of them is about Eskel that has been commonly talked about. Prefer not to mention the other reason as it would be a spoiler for anyone that didn't watch yet.

@OptionalStealth I'm all with you on that, the books can just affect you emotionally so much more than the game, and they lead to such a perfect place in storytelling, and the Witcher 3 is absolutely phenomenal so that's saying something! But The games are made with love, which is clear. The show, hmm, love from some, not from others.

Yeah, that's all fair. I was hyped for S2 thinking as it's going to be more structured and telling the novels story, more so than short stories, it would stick to the source more, but it was very forgettable. I didn't dwell on what could have been, but I didn't get annoyed at the stuff others did. It was just a bit meh, overall, which is more embarrassing for the runners than winding up some fans in my opinion.

But it is hard. Adapting a show isn't as simple as scripting page by page scene for scene, as books are written in a completely different way to TV. I really wish it was more sympathetic to the books (hire more people who genuinely understand the source material) whilst also adding the things it needs to be successful as a show. They needed a way to add more monsters, for example, because there's naff all monsters in the books (apart from the really scummy people we get to meet) and Geralt doing lots of walking, hobbling and being sulky isn't riveting TV unfortunately (although I'd watch it as that's sympathetic to the books and why I love them so much, and I'm already a fan of sulky Geralt 😁)

It's also hard because in the books they can recall reasons why Geralt and Yen have such a stormy relationship with exposition about their past, but in the show they have to add a way to actually show it in the current timeline. So I think that thread with Yen was fine for the show. She now has to earn Geralt's trust.

I'm hoping (once again like a big idiot) that finally season 3 will hit the real meat of the story, and actually get to tell what is a magnificent story without having to mess around too much.

But if not, I'm still happy with the books and enjoy re reading them

@tameshiyaku Eskel is barely in one book, though. They did it to trigger people who think it's based on the games 😅 pointless, but not unforgivable, as it gave them a monster to slay. There are worse things they've done when ignoring source material.

But that? Eskel actually got to do more in the show than the books, so... 😁

@Ravix I've read the books but it still had me annoyed. It's been years since I've read them, but the current portrayal of Vilgefortz seems off the mark, but maybe they'll get it right in s3.
S1 was mostly well done though I do wish they would have just sticked to the shorts instead of shoehorning Ciri into it, but from a TV perspective it was understandable. Only wished they would have given the story of the golden dragon two episodes because it needed some more room to breathe.
Also lament that they'll probably not put much if anything from season of storms in the coming seasons.

@tameshiyaku yeah, it's understandable, I'm just quite chill 😅 like I said in my posts though, I wasn't annoyed I was just disappointed especially as it was a pretty forgettable S2. That's almost unforgivable to make such a great franchise a bit bland. S1 was a lot better. It makes me wonder if they should have just adapted the short stories and some major themes, rather than trying to adapt the novels, as they are not doing the novels justice yet.

I don't care about the odd random moment like Eskel, or random ways to introduce stuff Netflix will demand (monster and action) as that doesn't hurt anything, but I don't have complete faith they will tell the main story of Ciri, Geralt and Yen, and the extended family right. But it is too soon to say for sure. I'm giving it maybe one or two more seasons, because the novels get really, really good from a storytelling stand point. And it's a story I want to see on screen.

In series one they did have to force Ciri in, as I eluded too, because it'd be a shock to have the main character of the novels not mentioned in anything but one short story in the show. Her story linked together the timelines pretty well too, as her story was the constant that lead to the present.

As for Vilgefortz, I guess we just have to wait and see how much focus the discussion with Geralt in the room with the art and history of the continent gets, and the subsequent events on Thanedd (I'm putting that in as vague a way as possible, as it's such a memorable discussion, and the books create such a vivid scene) I'd even be tempted to have 3 episodes set on Thanedd: but that's probably unrealistic :/

I would rather have a third season of Raised by Wolves, to be honest.

Just to echo what a few people have already alluded to here, was disappointed with the Witcher series overall. Considering it was supposed to be based on the Witcher's character, it seemed like Cavell was barely in it in some episodes. I had little to no interest in most of the other characters and it felt like a watered-down version of The last kingdom. Probably avoid this and keep my fingers crossed The Last of us adaptation does itself justice - which I think it will.

Huh I’m in the minority, I thought the second season was amazing. I’ve played all the games but never read any of the books, so I just approached it as a big budget fantasy series and didn’t get caught up in double checking all the lore.