Adding to the long list of fantasy shows that have been on a surge since the success of the HBO epic Game of Thrones (GoT), The Witcher is an English language adaptation of Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher series. With Henry Cavill as the protagonist (also called Geralt of Rivia), the show sets off on an exciting premise.
There are kings and queens fighting for thrones, there are elves and witches stirring magic potions, there are dragons guarding eggs, there are scary looking monsters killing the innocent and there are commoners with Scottish accents who are trying to get by with a humble mug of country ale. If you thought that it’s a rip-off of the best elements of GoT and Lord of the Rings (LOTR), wait till nude scenes surface.
The episode Of Banquets, Bastards and Burials looks like a non-violent rendition of GoT’s Red Wedding. Another LOTR aspect is the introduction of a new language called Elder which Sapkowski used in the books.
The showmakers deployed the best in the business—David J Peterson, who has created languages such as Dothraki and Valyrian for GoT among other such shows—to ensure nothing was amiss. But not everything is borrowed and copied, after all The Witcher is also a famous videogame.
What makes the show stand out in the overcrowded world of fantasy is the musical score and the high-quality VFX which GoT tanked at.
For those who have read the books, there are many surprise clues in the episodes that are sure to fill Reddit with fan threads.
For example, the first episode, The End’s Beginning, features the image of a solar eclipse. If you’ve read the Sapkowski’s short story Lesser Evil, you know that the princess Renfri was born under a so-called black sun, leading a wizard to assume that she was cursed. Sure enough, The End’s Beginning tells Renfri’s story all the way to its brutal ending.
The Witcher is told in a non-linear matter, which according to reports is inspired by Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, but it doesn’t work in the show’s favour, making it rather cumbersome to follow the various plotlines that merge in the finale.
We’d say the eight-episode-long season one is an easy miss, given the plethora of fantasy shows that exist in the streaming universe today, but the popularity of the books perhaps have a different story to tell.
