The 5 Biggest Problems With Season 2 Of 'The Witcher'

This is what happens when you ditch the source material because you think you know better.

The Witcher’s second season on Netflix was, in many ways, a big step up from Season 1. The visuals, both in terms of costumes and CGI, were a huge improvement.

The sweeping shots of various strongholds, citadels and cities made for rich world-building and terrific visual storytelling. Clearly the budget was more ambitious.

Places like Kaer Morhen, Oxenfurt and Cintra really sprang to life in Season 2.

Geralt and Triss both got better hairdos, and Ciri got a leg up in both the hair and eyebrow department as well.

But in many ways, Season 2 was a big step down in overall storytelling quality from Season 1. The writing was more uneven. The story, while not divided into different timelines, was more jumbled and confusing. And a lot of the character motivations felt all over the place and sloppy.

I’m not particularly bothered by the changes from the source material (mostly) mainly because I began my Witcher adventure with the games, which are new stories that don’t follow the books and short stories, either (though they definitely follow the established lore and backstories). I sort of always assumed the show would do its own thing as well, and that adapting Andrzej Sapkowski’s writing would require a great deal of creative license.

But I am bothered by many of the choices made this season, many of which are indeed departures from the source material. What could have been a really great second season ended up being just . . . okay. It was perfectly fine, and even this list of problems don’t make it bad—just not as good as it ought to have been.

I was entertained throughout Season 2 but consistently found myself scratching my head, puzzled by character choices, by the downgrade in music, and by so much more.

You can watch my video review in the below YouTube video:

Here are my five biggest problems with The Witcher Season 2. Spoilers—obviously—follow.

1. The Whole Thing Felt Rushed And Contrived

There’s a season in the second to last episode of Season 2 when Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) has taken Ciri (Freya Allan) to the outskirts of Cintra at the behest of the Deathless Mother, Voleth Meir.

Yennefer is having doubts about her deal with the demon at this point. Voleth Meir, who we later learn rides with the Wild Hunt, has promised to give Yennefer back her powers if she brings Ciri to the monolith at Cintra, delivering the girl to her in exchange for Chaos.

But her doubts come too late. Ciri has seen the truth. Nilfgaardian riders are approaching to capture or kill them. All seems lost—and then Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill) shows up.

Just in the nick of time.

Was Geralt nearby all along? Had he meticulously followed Yennefer and Ciri’s tracks to this precise location? Not hardly.

Yennefer and Ciri had teleported from the Temple of Melitele in northern Temeria to a cottage near the outskirts of Cintra, hundreds of miles to the south. From there, the two women rode hard for the city, making good time despite some obstacles.

Geralt, meanwhile, had to go on foot and horseback, first from the Temple of Melitele in northern Temeria, northwest to the bustling Redanian city of Oxenfurt where he broke his old pal Jaskier (Joey Batey) out of jail. From here, the two presumably trekked south, back into Temeria where they came across the dwarf Yarpen Zirgin (Jeremy Crawford) and his band of fighters.

Zigrin gives Geralt a horse, but he and his companion join him, towing their cart along while Jaskier, as always, hoofs it alongside Geralt. In other words, they move rather slowly and have a much greater distance to travel. The distance from the temple to Oxenfurt alone is enormous, and even assuming Geralt went by way of riverboat the time to get to Jaskier and rescue him would be greater than the time it takes Yen and Ciri to reach Cintra via portal and horseback.

But Geralt shows up just in the nick of time to save Ciri from Yennefer and the Nilfgaardians, his pack of dwarves and trusty bard alongside him. What follows is a cool fight scene, but I was left shaking my head in disbelief. Yes, this is a fantasy with wyverns and witches and magical demons, but I still want some semblance of geography and time and space to apply. If Geralt had run into Triss and she’d used a portal to get them to Cintra just in time I wouldn’t have cared. Magic is magic, but the laws of physics still apply without it.

This kind of thing made Season 2 of The Witcher feel an awful lot like Season 7 of Game Of Thrones, when vast distances were traversed in mere hours with no explanation other than “deal with it” provided.

Other problems like this plagued Season 2 of The Witcher which, unlike Season 1, took place over a comparatively short span of time—weeks, not decades.

How do all these characters find one another so easily? The evil fire mage, Rience (Chris Fulton) tortures Jaskier to get information on where Geralt is but despite not getting said intel manages to make his way to the secret Witcher stronghold Kaer Morhen anyways. He then intuits, perfectly, that Geralt and Ciri are at the temple despite not ever being told this by anyone. Yennefer also finds them there, though I suppose we can chock that up to the Deathless Mother’s omniscience.

Still, to have Geralt and Ciri show up at Melitele and then—on the exact same day—have both Yennefer and Rience (and his thugs) show up all at almost the exact same time feels enormously contrived. A cool fight scene doesn’t make up for the contrivance, either.

Teleportation without portals, characters just popping up in the exact right place at the exact right time, all of this makes Season 2 feel badly rushed and ham-fisted, with a plot that’s bent to the needs of the writer’s room rather than unfurling organically.

There was also just too much going on to fit into 8 episodes. So many different factions, so much lore, so much backstory and history, so many people vying for power. It’s too much to consume in the amount of time we had and I’m not sure how anyone not familiar with the books and/or games can keep up.

Perhaps a couple more episodes could have helped this, but I think the real issue is showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich simply bit off more than she could chew—or more than she should have attempted to chew, anyways. Even with its confusing timelines, Season 1 was a more contained story that worked better because it didn’t attempt to juggle so many spheres.

2. Very Uneven Writing And Dialogue Throughout

On top of all the rush, Season 2’s writing was just all over the place.

Some of the dialogue is terrific, but it often devolves into expository dumps about Destiny and Chaos and other abstract ideas.

Then there are moments that are truly baffling. At one point, another Witcher, Lambert (Paul Bullion) gets upset with Geralt over the death of their brother-in-arms, Eskel (Basil Eidenbenz).

Lambert is angry with both Geralt and Ciri and acts as though Geralt’s decision to bring Ciri to Kaer Morhen led directly to Eskel’s death. But this makes no sense whatsoever.

Eskel had been infected by a Leshen, a terrifying tree monster that somehow implanted a piece of itself in Eskel’s torso. This grew and took over Eskel’s mind and body, and Geralt was forced to kill his friend to save his mentor, Vesemir’s (Kim Bodnia) life.

Until that point, both Vesimir and Geralt were doing their level best to stop Eskel-turned-Leshen rather than kill him. But when it came down to it, Geralt had to make a choice.

Is Lambert referring to that choice, perhaps? But then he’d be suggesting that Geralt should have let Vesemir die on the off chance he could have saved Eskel. Either way, this makes no sense.

(And why they chose to kill off Eskel, a very important character to both Geralt and Ciri, is beyond me).

Meanwhile, so much of the best writing is devoted to certain characters, like Geralt, Ciri and Nevellin, it’s almost like not enough is left over for everyone else. Nevellin gets the best lines after Geralt this season, actually, despite being a relatively minor character.

3. Character Motivations Are A Mess

Bad dialogue is one thing, but it’s the character motivations that troubled me the most about Season 2 (well, the character motivations and the rushed nature of the season).

Let’s use a few characters just to drive the point home:

Yennefer lost her “Chaos” after unleashing enormous amounts of fire magic on the Nilfgaardian troops at the Battle of Sodden. She wants to get her power back but can’t (it’s like writer’s block but magician’s block, basically). She’s offered a way to get her power back by the demon Voleth Meir but turns her down—at first.

Later she agrees to find Ciri (who she doesn’t know yet) and bring her to the demon, and even continues down this path once she realizes Geralt is basically her dad. As cunning and devious as Yen is, I don’t buy this for a second. Once she realized how important Ciri was to Geralt, she would have dropped it immediately. It’s not worth the drama to have her continue down a path that seems so out of character.

A better chain of events would have been for her to realize that she wanted to be a mother even more than have her magic, and once she realized this (and she could have still sacrificed herself for Ciri this way) her power returns. Instead, this betrayal makes Yen and Geralt’s relationship much more broken than it ought to be.

Jaskier is constantly going on and on about how much he hates Yennefer and how upset he is with Geralt in Season 2. He’s really quite angry much of the time, and I don’t think it fits his character very well. A little bitchy from time to time would have been fine, but he’s just endlessly griping about how awful Yen is and how unhappy he is with Geralt—and all for things that happened in Season 1 that seemed much too mild to engender such resentment.

Vesemir is a wise old Witcher who trained every other Witcher at Kaer Morhen. He’s understandably excited to learn that Ciri has Elder Blood since this can be used to make the mutagen necessary to create new Witchers.

But when he agrees to test the concoction out on Ciri, I had to roll my eyes. First of all, he’s too wise to make such a foolish choice. Second, if she dies there goes all her Elder Blood, the only source of the stuff Vesemir knows about. The mutation can kill someone and if Ciri were to die, that would be the end of the whole create new Witchers project.

And finally, Vesemir is very dear to Geralt and vice versa. There’s no way he would betray Geralt’s trust like this. Far from being the father figure and wise old mentor that Vesemir is supposed to be, the show’s portrayal makes him look weak, foolish and hasty.

Fringilla’s motivations throughout this season are bizarre. She wants to get into the Emperor’s good graces, but instead of searching for Ciri she brings the elves to Cintra. Her murder of the generals at the end of the season is inexplicable and pointless.

Her deal with Voleth Meir makes little sense (surely the demon could have simply asked her to find Ciri?) and she seemed to willfully ignore the advice of Cahir (Eamon Farren) who kept insisting they go fulfill their actual mission to find Ciri.

I’m also not sure why she visited her uncle at Aretuza and then went back and killed the generals and then just stuck around waiting for Emhyr var Emreis (Bart Edwards) to show up.

Francesca, the mage-leader of the displaced elves, is pregnant and eventually gives birth to the first full-blooded elf in decades—perhaps thanks to her deal with Voleth Meir (though it could be she would have given birth to a healthy baby regardless, such are demon’s promises).

Once she gives birth, she throws all caution to the wind and tells Fringilla and the Nilfgaardians that she’ll no longer help them in their war with the Northern Kingdoms, effectively ending their alliance. But this makes literally no sense!

While she herself might not want to go to war, choosing to stay with her newborn in safety, surely she wouldn’t want to risk having the Empire turn against her and her people. Surely she would still see the benefits of this alliance and the strength it would bring to the elves in their quest for independence and dignity. Simply saying “nope, never mind” all but ensures the elves’ demise, including her own child’s.

Emhyr ends up being the one who orders the death of the elven baby, and once again I’m just not sure why. Yes, this spurs the elves to action with Francesca leading her people into Redania to exact revenge on King Vizimir and his spymaster, Sigismund Dijkstra (Graham McTavish).

But honestly, if the elves were so weak that they needed refuge in Cintra and were so bad at military training, how much can they really be counted on in this capacity?

Surely the clever White Flame could have come up with a better plan and a more judicious use of his elven allies—and if they were truly stubborn even after he arrived, I have little doubt he would have had any trouble bending them to his will.

I could keep going but I’ll leave it at that. So many characters and storylines just didn’t make sense in Season 2.

4. Monsters, Witchers and Elves Oh My

Aside from the first monster, I felt kind of letdown by the monsters this season as well. Most of them were very samey and spawned from the monoliths. Instead of delving into Slavic lore and giving each monster a fascinating (and sometimes sympathetic) backstory, a lot of these beasties were just . . . monsters.

The Leshen was really cool and plucked directly from the books and games, but it was killed in an instant by a brand new monster that we learned later came from another sphere. In fact, the only really terrific use of monsters in Season 2 was in the very first episode.

In the Season 2 premiere, Geralt and Ciri make their way to the manor house of Nevellin (Kristofer Hivju) who has been cursed by a priestess and now is half-man, half-boar. In his house is a deadly creature called a bruxa, a vampire who has fallen in love with Nevillin and who he lets feed on him because he loves her back.

The bruxa storyline is classic Witcher, especially because it ends with the revelation of another monster: Nevellin himself—who, we discover, was cursed after he raped the priestess. This twist, the monster, the whole quirky, dark episode was my favorite of the whole lot.

Monsters aren’t the only element lacking in Season 2. I have to question the show’s choices around the elves. Elves in Netflix’s version of The Witcher are just . . . humans with pointy ears. There’s virtually nothing else to distinguish them. They’re just as ugly, even less magical, and can’t fight worth a damn. Basically, elves are totally lame in The Witcher, but that’s not how they’re portrayed in the books or the games.

Elves aren’t just humans with pointy ears who are rounded up and marched off to concentration camps. They’re long-lived, proud, beautiful and dangerous.

Likewise, the Witchers themselves leave much to be desired. They bring whores to Kaer Morhen, act like barbaric asses most of the time and are generally uncouth and unlikable, from Vesemir to Lambert to Eskel and all the rest. Geralt is a black sheep everywhere he goes, it seems, even when he’s home.

5. Ciri Is A McGuffin

Finally, we come to Ciri. Ciri is a terrific character and Freya Allan does a much better job portraying her this season than last, having clearly grown as an actor (and filled in those eyebrows, to boot!)

But by the end of Season 2, literally every single character in the entire show wants to find and capture her. Her would-be captors include:

• Her father, Emhyr the emperor of Nilfgaard (which makes sense)

• Vilgefortz of Roggeveen (Mahesh Jadu) the wizard who has hired Rience the fire mage to track her down (probably, I don’t think it’s been officially confirmed).

• King Vizimir and his spymaster, Dijkstra

• Francsesca and the elves, who are informed by the mage, Istredd (Royce Pierreson) of her Elder Blood and prophetic lineage

• Others in the Brotherhood

• And all this after Yennefer has given up wanting to capture her and the Deathless Mother has gone back to riding around with her homies in the Wild Hunt

• Oh yeah, the Wild Hunt also. Can’t forget them!

It’s too much. Too much of a focus on Ciri too soon in the show. She’s the Baby Yoda and the One Ring and the Holy Grail and the Maltese Falcon and Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase all rolled into one burgeoning MacGuffin and I want her to be more than that. I don’t mind Baby Yoda filling in that void so much because he’s a baby. He’s Elora Danan, basically. But Ciri is a young woman with a personality and ambition and powers of her own and she deserves a story that isn’t all about the people who want to track her down.

Hopefully at least some of these pursuits will be crossed off the list in Season 3 so we can get on to the less epic, less Destiny-driven stuff, like hunting monsters, ending curses and meeting unsavory Lords and learning of their sins and weaknesses.

What did you think of Season 2 of The Witcher? As I noted above, I still really enjoyed the series and the many ways it improved over Season 1, but I definitely walked away with more problems and annoyances than I did the first season. Let me know what you think on Twitter or Facebook.

Bonus: As I mentioned above, the music is a big letdown this season. It’s just not nearly as memorable as the first season, which hewed closer to the video games. Jaskier doesn’t have as catchy a ballad, either. It’s not a huge deal, I suppose, but it is a shame.

This post first appeared on my Forbes blog.

Please let me know what you thought of The Witcher’s second season in the comments below! Thanks for reading and subscribing!