The Witcher (2019) s02e07 – Voleth Meir

Lots gets done this episode. An almost unimaginable amount, given all the characters in play.

The episode begins with Henry Cavill apologizing to Adjoa Andoh for fighting in the temple (no fighting in the temple is one of the rules), but it’s not his fault; it’s bad guy Chris Fulton’s fault. Andoh forgives Cavill and suggests maybe he ought to pay that forgiving forward to Anya Chalotra. Cavill’s pretty sure Chalotra has kidnapped Freya Allan; he just doesn’t know why. So at this point, he does not know it was Allan who magicked open a portal and got them out of there.

Meanwhile, Chalotra and Allan escaped Fulton to find themselves in a less dangerous but still upsetting setting. Fulton tracked down some of Allan’s friends from the first season and killed them, horrifying Allan. Chalotra–indeed acting with malicious intent–lies to Allan about Fulton capturing Cavill in the temple fight, and now they’re going to have to go rescue him. From the city where the bad guys have been giving the elves refuge and where Allan ran from last season, and where she unintentionally unleashed a bunch of monsters when she escaped Eamon Farren. This episode’s going to be a backtrack for Allan’s arc and then a catch-up one for Cavill. Separately. I can’t remember if callback events happen in the previous season finale. It just feels late to return to them, like the last six episodes have just been transitory.

Back at the mage base, we find out MyAnna Buring is making the beast with two backs with Mahesh Jadu, who has assumed control of the Mage Brotherhood since we last saw him. Or I completely missed a scene explaining it. But Jadu’s the boss, Buring’s his lady friend, and Anna Shaffer has come back in a panic after discovering Allan’s a warrior princess with elven blood.

Then the action cuts to Mimi Ndiweni and her troubles hanging on to power. Farren and the human generals in the South are sick of the elves not wanting to fight and are convinced there’s a spy somewhere. So they’re indiscriminately killing elves. It had seemed like there might be some complicated morality at play with the South kingdom like they were trying to help the elves against the racist Northern rulers. But the Southern people are just as bad.

So there’s Chalotra and Allan, Buring and Shaffer, Ndiweni and Farren. And then Cavill and Joey Batey. There’s a great scene where Cavill busts Batey out of jail, lots of action, lots of solid jokes about that action.

Cavill and Batey have some catch-up before Cavill figures out Chalotra’s in league with the Baba Yaga (Ania Marson). Only they need fresh horses, and they happen upon some more season one returnees to get them.

There’s character development for pretty much everyone, usually an equal share—though Batey’s mostly just for laughs and then Buring co-opts Shaffer’s. The character arcs for Allan and Chalotra are the best, especially as Chalotra proves the most successful person yet at teaching Allan how to use her magicks.

The hard cliffhanger has Marson making at least one big move while someone else crosses a point of no return in Ndiweni’s arc too. Monumental ramifications. It’s an excellent episode for Ndiweni in particular. She and Buring have an interesting “even mages are misogynists” juxtaposing.

It’s real good. Very impressive they were able to do so much in the penultimate episode of an eight-episode season. Like, it hasn’t been lackadaisical by any means, but they did take their time a lot in the first half and made then maintained a busy, brisk pace for the rest.

The Witcher (2019) s02e04 – Redanian Intelligence

Lots goes on this episode, including the return of a season one regular, the return of a season one guest player, and a new political intrigue subplot. Still, nothing’s more important than the Kevin Doyle guest spot. It’s the episode of “The Witcher” with Mr. Molesley from “Downton.” Everything else is secondary.

The episode opens with Henry Cavill training Freya Allan in the mountains. They’re running along in helicopter shots, and I really wanted Cavill to yell out, “This is the Quickening!” But alas, no. Allan will have a good character development arc involving Cavill and Anna Shaffer. Shaffer’s at the Witcher Winter Wonderland because Cavill wants Allan to get training for her magic. Allan’s still slightly distrustful of Cavill as far as her powers go, and the episode does a fine job getting them communicating. In no small part, thanks to the Shaffer’s presence, it helps to have another woman in the Witcher Winter Wonderland, especially one who doesn’t put up with their shit.

Otherwise, it’s kind of a bridging episode. Maybe for everyone but Allan, actually.

Anya Chalotra is still teamed up with Dollar Store Kylo Ren (Eamon Farren), trying to escape the north. They’re going to go to the southern city Farren’s troops captured, which has become a refuge for the elves all the northern kingdoms are rounding up for slaughter; Doyle’s one of the elves. But, only less important because it’s Mr. Moseley, Joey Batey’s the coyote. Batey, still stinging from Cavill ditching him last season—when is unclear, their friendship being one of the confusing parts of the Westworlded narrative structure—is nonetheless still a good guy, and he’s going to help the elves.

Even if he’s got to work with pseudo-nemesis Chalotra. Their bickering might be the most fun “Watcher” has had in season two. Everything else is serious and sad. Batey and Chalotra being cattish is very welcome.

It seems like a done-in-one cameo for Batey until the third act makes it more consequential and potentially derails Chalotra’s arc. It’s very effective and balanced. The episode very nimbly trades Farren for Batey for Chalotra’s sidekick.

The political intrigue involves foppish king Ed Birch, his advisor Graham McTavish, and their pet David Bowie from Labyrinth owl. McTavish is trying to convince Birch to invade the city in the south and take it from Farren’s guys. But first, they’re going to need some intelligence, so they’re going to send Wilson Mbomio (Allan’s elf friend from season one) as a spy.

There’s also a contrived reason for Shaffer not to tell Cavill about Chalotra being alive, some more hints at Allan’s unique heritage and powers, including her blood probably being magic, and then a big team-up for Cavill for next episode.

The episode—“Mr. Moseley from Downton is on the Witcher”—gets a lot done, most of it successfully. Some very good acting from Allan, Chalotra, and Shaffer. And Batey’s return is well-executed.

The Witcher (2019) s02e03 – What Is Lost

It’s old home week on “The Witcher,” with Anya Chalotra getting back to the Mage Fortress just as MyAnna Buring has finally come to terms with Chalotra’s presumed demise. We also find out when Buring tortured Eamon Farren in the season premiere, and they cut away… they cut away from Buring not finding anything out because Farren’s got a magic brainwashing shield. It’s a month later, with absolute dipshit Lars Mikkelsen suspicious because Chalotra’s been gone so long.

Mikkelsen’s a cartoonishly broad villain, which doesn’t play well off anyone else. I can’t remember if it worked better last season, but here he seems silly playing off very serious Buring, Chalotra, and Royce Pierreson. Pierreson’s back from last season, too—it seems like the reason no one was around the last time they were at Mage Fortress was budgetary, not because the characters had an excuse to be anywhere else.

Chalotra’s got some okay bonding scenes with Buring and Anna Shaffer, but she’s got a deep dark secret, which the show’s heavily implied for the audience, and Buring lays out in dialogue about halfway through. Chalotra’s going to have a strange plot arc this episode, getting involved with Buring and Mahesh Jadu’s political machinations. It’s a lousy arc for Buring, who gets progressively less sympathetic as it plays out.

At the Witcher Winter Wonderland, Henry Cavill and Kim Bodnia have been trying to figure out how a plant monster could breach the walls of their fortress. Though when they do establishing shots and show the broken down sections of the fortress, it doesn’t seem like they should be so surprised. It’s a decent investigation arc for Cavill and Bodnia, which also has them bonding over (surrogate) fatherhood.

But all Cavill’s focusing on helping Bodnia has meant he’s not paying attention to Freya Allan or her training. Or Witcher Paul Bullion deciding he’s going to bully Allan and see if he can get her to hurt herself out of trying to be a Witcher. It shouldn’t be hard since Cavill establishes he and the other boy Witchers are all fast-healing mutants, and Allan’s just a regular human who’ll die.

The show keeps at the training sequence long enough to make it an athletic achievement arc for Allan, right before she and Cavill go monster hunting, and she’s able to stay alive, no matter what occurs. The show also gets around to addressing Allan’s secret magical powers and Cavill knowing about them, which is nice they’re not dragging that bit out. It’s a nice sequence for Cavill and Allan, who haven’t done much bonding because they’re at Winter Wonderland.

There’s also some catchup with evil mage Mimi Ndiweni and elf mage Mecia Simson, who are teaming up to take on the good guys. The show seems to be laying the groundwork for the good guys actually being a bunch of racist shitheels, so… potential twist.

The Allan and Cavill material makes up for Chalotra finding herself in a wanting arc. Chalotra’s okay; it’s just the story. Some very good direction from Sarah O’Gorman throughout. It all works out thanks to Chalotra’s plot getting an actually surprising conclusion with a lot of character agency. Not Mikkelsen, who seems like he’s auditioning to play that villain in “The Smurfs,” but otherwise.

It’s a good episode.

The Witcher (2019) s02e01 – A Grain of Truth

Despite “The Witcher” taking place in a world of magic and monsters, they don’t come up with a cool way to explain why Freya Allan’s all of a sudden got brown eyebrows this season. This episode picks up immediately after last season’s cliffhanger, with Henry Cavill and Allan finally united and trying to find Anya Chalotra. MyAnna Buring’s also trying to find Chalotra, who tapped into the fire magicks to defeat the bad guys last time, and everyone sort of thinks she spontaneously combusted from the effort.

So fire, lots of fire, potentially could’ve singed Allan’s eyebrows, made them visible. Instead of the transparent blonde they were the entire last season. Allan’s aged a little between season filming, no doubt, but with the different eyebrows—it takes a while to get used to her new look. Especially since the season one recap has a bunch of the transparent blonde eyebrows.

After finding out Chalotra’s presumed dead, a stoically mourning Cavill heads toward the Witcher winter palace, Allan in tow. It’s where Witchers go to chill and prepare for a summer of monster hunting. It’s unclear. Especially since the episode opens with a group of travelers stopping in a small village and being picked off by a flying monster. When Cavill and Allan show up in the town, it plays like it’s their destination. But apparently not. Luckily Cavill’s got a friend nearby, and so he takes Allan into a Beauty and the Beast adaptation.

Kristofer Hivju—Tormund from “Game of Thrones” but beastly most of the episode—looks like a warthog man but has a bunch of fun magic and is old friends with Cavill. He doesn’t know anything about the village being empty, also ignore he’s apparently got something living in his attic.

Meanwhile, Buring is back at the Mage Fortress trying to figure out how to get prisoner Eamon Farren to talk. Buring’s upset about Chalotra being dead and will make Farren pay. Except, of course, Chalotra’s not dead; she’s really being held prisoner by Farren’s mage pal, Mimi Ndiweni.

The main plot with Cavill and Allan getting more and more suspicious at Hivju’s, even though he seems trustworthy, is pretty good. It’s maybe not the best adventure for Allan and Cavill if you just binged the first season and were waiting for them to get together, but it’s a well-executed Beauty and the Beast riff. Agnes Born plays a mysterious woman Allan encounters—who knows Allan’s got magic too—and she’s good. It works out, mainly because it finds a good balance for Cavill and Allan.

It’s good because the other plots go nowhere. The Buring plot goes nowhere, while the Chalotra one at least gets to be the cliffhanger. Though they could’ve introduced her being alive and done the cliffhanger as the cliffhanger. The plot’s nothing in between, except a little banter between Chalotra and Ndiweni.

It also doesn’t help for the first half of the episode; I kept trying to see if they were Westworlding the timelines to gin up the narrative like they did last season. They aren’t, and they don’t draw attention to it, but it does imply this season of the “Witcher” will be less manipulative than the first.

The Witcher (2019) s01e05 – Bottled Appetites

This episode has storylines converging, something I really thought they’d wait to do until the season finale cliffhanger. Instead, Henry Cavill and Joey Batey run across Anya Chalotra in their quest for a cure to Batey’s magically inflamed throat. The episode opens with Cavill trying to find a djinn’s bottle so he can wish for sleep—the episode’s set an indeterminate time after the previous one, at least for Cavill and Batey (something Batey mentions but with an intentional lack of specificity, maybe because Batey still looks the same age—I’m assuming Cavill doesn’t age normal because he’s a mutant). Because Cavill and Batey are bickering, things go wrong with the djinn and Batey gets a magical owie; they need a mage, Chalotra turns out to be the mage.

Since we’ve last seen her, she’s become a rogue mage who’s trying to recover her ability to bear children, something you have to give up to be a mage. At least if you’ve got a uterus. It’s unclear if gonads get snipped.

Chalotra’s ostensibly a prisoner but has been mind controlling the populace and keeping them going in an Eyes Wide Shut party with season two “Game of Thrones” level nudity.

Cavill’s fun playing the tough guy, especially with Chalotra and Batey around—not sure there’s so much been character development in the series as better writing for what Cavill can do and do well. Plus Chalotra and Cavill trying to get the djinn stuff sorted out lets Cavill play hero in a better situation (he’s trying to save sympathetic regulars—Chalotra and Batey—not fighting for what’s right). There’s a lot with the three wishes and some emphasis on the third mystery wish. “The Witcher”’s predictable, but in a well-executed sort of way.

Now for the poorly executed stuff. Princess in hiding Freya Allan is still in the magical forests of Endor playing with the… oh, wait, wrong franchise. She’s still in hiding with the forest Amazons and since they’re warriors, the bad guys can’t get in. This episode finally gives chief bad guy Eamon Farren a lot to do. Shame he’s terrible. At least when he’s on horseback wearing his silly bird head—it looks like something Gonzo would wear—he’s not emoting or delivering dialogue. He gets off the horse this episode and gets some shapeshifting monster to help him go after Farren.

Adam Levy’s back as the Allan family mage; he’s good. Wilson Radjou-Pujalte’s around as Allan’s young elf friend. He’s not good.

Shame there are only three episodes left, as the teaming up of Cavill, Chalotra, and Batey has paid off better than anything else in the show so far.

Last thing—apparently there are songs (bard Batey’s) over the end credits now. His “Witcher” theme song was a few episodes ago but this one has what the wife described as a poorly written Nick Cave song over the end credits. What’s strange about the songs is they’re done without fanfare, like they promised Batey to put his songs in without paying him for exposure.