Totally agree, still enjoyed the show as this is Netflix we're talking about and ity could have been much much worse. That said I wished people who have written The Witcher 3 would have written this, it would have been a LOT better.
I thought after season 1 “oh ok so it’s not great, I don’t like all the stuff they’ve added in but hey, it’s not ruined anything and they can fix it all with season 2 onwards.” That’s not an option anymore. This season is so outrageously different and terrible that it’s not even resembling the same series I love and can’t possibly be fixed unless they remove this season somehow.
Season 1: quite a many deviations, some worked better, most of them not so much, but also some content from the books stayed. So-so result. Season 2: completely new story (no point comparing what is different - everything is!), that cannot even stand to critique on its own. Originally I was face-palming at the differences. In S2 I am just face-palming at the atrocious writing that does not work even as a stand-alone work, let alone adaptation.
I haven't read the books, only played Witcher 3, and watched the netflix show and anime. For me, I liked the show, the episode, and the entire 2nd season. Its only until after watching this guy's reviews that I realize how so much doesn't make sense. I guess the people running the show thought they could get by easy on casual fans watching the show not catching the plot holes. BTW, I'm on another Witcher 3 playthrough using Feline armor, alchemy/bomb build because of season 2.
I really wish they learned from Game of Throne's biggest mistake: If you're adapting a book into a series, the parts that are accurate to the source material are good, and the parts that aren't are bad. It really seems that simple
A little bit. I’ve read all the GOT books and there were several storylines that were tedious and therefore rightfully cut from the show. There were also several inventions in the show that were smart. It’s sort of a coin flip. The Witcher season 2, particularly the last four episodes, were just bad because they were bad. If the writing was better and the story was coherent, it wouldn’t have bothered me, so long as they didn’t mess with Geralt, yennefer, ciri, which they did.
As a long time fan of the books and games, I will not be jumping in and watching season 3. I’ll be starting with your reviews first. I was ok with with the first season and mostly enjoyed it. The second season however, I’m beyond disappointed. I was looking forward to a distraction from some personal issues going on and I just ended up being even more bummed out than before. Thank you xLetalis for keeping it real AND polite to Netflix. Although I don’t think they deserve it.
It's bad and the showrunners should feel bad. It's just not the Witcher anymore. It's another fantasy serie with the characters we know and loved destroyed.
What irritates me is just like Eskel the witchers at the end have no other point but to be red shirts to the raptor chickens in the final battle. You just turned badass monster slayers into stormtroopers against things they hunt professionally
@@leamhnachd4579 Chad Jerald of Rivia. Doesn’t even need to look at old master of Witchers Vesemir attacks either. Back handed block had me rolling my eyes
The whole Kaer Morhen fight seems like something my 9 year old self would day dream up after watching Lord of the Rings, and honestly that's an insult to the creativity of my 9 year old self
We saw how the game handled a Kaer Morhen fight and how the show handled it. And yeah, I’d say the games hit the hammer right on the nail and the show hit their own finger with the hammer. And I’m not even talking about the Witcher 3 battle of Kaer Morhen, I’m talking about the fight with the Salamandra and their giant insect.. in Witcher 1.. a game released in 2007
So.. There was a magical monolith on Kaer Morhen.. inside a tree.. The tree, on which Vesemir hangs medailons of dead witchers.. the medailons that are supposed to REACT to magic.. It really could not get more random than this.
because... let's say they vibrate when sb wears them and magic happens. or sth else. I don't care. It'd be nice if anyone anywhere state that limitation without blunt exposition but anyways. I'd gain years while reading each subsequent book while they'd been published and got quite pissed with the Season of Storms (or however Sezon Burz is translated). All that time waiting for the good TV version (the first approach - Polish one - failed spectacularly). Then almighty Netflix shows up in it's full on Stranger Things glory. "This must work" - I thought. "Not really" answered show's creators. Nobody cares about it anymore now. Meh...
Hate how humour in this show is simply, swear, uninspired nickname with swear, explicit and lengthy simile with, you guessed it, more swears. I mean come on, we’re not children, why do they assume we’d find that amusing
Simple swearing can be funny, however it has to be used rarely, when viewers don't expect it, not all the damn time to the point you can predict when it's about to be used...
Cahir is the elfiest elf I have ever seen. Which is not completely implausible, seeing as they seem to have mixed with humans a bit more in Nilfgaard than in the north, but it is a little odd. What bothers me more about this is that most elves just look like humans with pointy ears (regarding facial features and body shapes).
Tbh another thing that bothers me in this show it's the misplaced cast, like they have characters that look more like other character they choosed, while having in the same crew another one that looks and Even acts more according to said character, like they switched roles between the cast at last moment
They could have not shown him being Ciris dad, just shown him as Emhyr, or just having him communicate via proxy at least on this season. Maybe instead of Emhyr himself he could have send some other Nilfgardian raidboss to put Fingrilla and Cahir in chains.
“It would be a straight translation of the books… I think there's just so much material that I don't feel the need to start inventing my own to keep it going.” - Lauren Schmidt Hissrich Not only that they can't write a consistent logical story, and completely butchering the story and the characters of the books, but they continue to lie to the fans openly like that, trying to claim that the show is a faithful adaptation of the books.... What a disgrace!!!!
Sadly, Hissrich was right with that statement. The books offer so unbelievably much story material to use verbatim on screen. It's a shame she didn't stick to her word.
Only used it to gain trust and pull the wool over the fan base eyes. Would have been fine if it was good but she screwed it up badly. But her and Netflix will pull every skewed metric to show it was great. Need to keep that stock price high. Like I said before the recent Netflix MO is all about quantity over quality. The new CW except way worse. Way more filler crap in fewer than 10 episode than the typical 20+ episodes of CW. Netflix: But look how many "insert fake metric" have mindlessly watched this shite.
Honestly, these reviews are the best thing to come out of the Netflix Witcher. They make this show's existence a little more bearable. Thank you for a great job. Okay, coffee's brewing, and now I'm gonna go enjoy the last episode.
@@d0m574 "wouldn't care how much bad" People like you are part of the problem. Skin colour change, sex change, species change, wokeness etc. I simply can;t underst5and that people are after more of this sh eyt.
@@hadeseye2297 they're saying they enjoy these reviews so much that they wish there were more episodes solely so they could watch more reviews. Chill Winston
It's incredible how people defend this show with "It'S JuST aN AdaPTatiON, U maD iT IsNT liKe BOoK" when it doesn't hold to scrutiny as a stand-alone piece of media.
It's not even a adptation anymore. I would have been fine if they were honest from the beginning and write the show as a free interpretation of the books instead of having the nerve to tell fans they would strictly adhere to the books.
Ciri's possession and her killing of other Witchers could have huge impact on continuation of her relationship with witchers of Kaer Morhen. Like how the hell are these guys or Ciri even look back with nostalgy on those couple years at Kaer Morhen when: "possessed Ciri murdered half of witchers and basically turned half the castle into ruin with magic." - kind of memory in their heads... If I were Vesemir I would be like: "No harsh feelings girl I know you weren't yourself, but I trained all of those guys and I knew them since they were kids and these were literally some of the last witchers in this world, so please don't you ever come close to this place ever again."
IKR like even if they know she wasnt in control, when someone kills ur sons/brothers that you've known all ur life conciously or not, i imagine at THE VERY LEAST you would never want to see that person again.
It's such a shame that they hired such talentless writers to adapt this. I wasn't aware of what the dragon told them and what happened, Jesus, they are even starting to make this along the way.
Whenever you put clips of Ciri or Yen swearing Idk why but it makes me laugh 🤣 Largely cause it’s so out of character but it’s also so perfectly edited into your video
"Why even call this character Fringilla Vigo" - now that's a good question. One might ask it about basically any character in the show. Actually, why do you call it the Witcher in the first place? Is there any hidden reason?
yeah. they want the witcher name but they didn't want to write a witcher show (because they wanted to get on the GoT express as well) so they have to use the names and locations
This episode basically blew up my hopes for the Witcher Netflix. It felt so contrived and “Hollywood,” as if they needed to rush and get in all the Easter eggs, like seriously we have Emhyr, Eredin and the wild hunt, ciri exploring new worlds, epic fight between faceless witchers and generic dinosaur creatures, the main character geralt taking down a beast twice the size but solo. They showed basically all the endgame twists from the books in one episode, that only means we’ll probably have more original writing from Netflix as the series progresses. I don’t know, I’m just so disappointed, even after season 1 I felt some hope because it resembled the books If you squinted, before they had the excuse of cramming 2 books into 8 episodes. Blood of elves should have been great on television but they ruined it, threw the source material in the fire and rewrote everything. Pointless references that make no sense like the “dear friend” thing, just ugh.
Don't listen to the other commenter here. It has already been announced that the direction of the writing of the next season is up to sapkowski. He will be involved as much as he wants to be which can be nothing but positive.
I just feel sadness.. This show could have been much better.. The whole series is a wasted pontential. I am not sure I will able to watch another season from "this". The outro is gold.
Yeah, I felt hollow inside at the end. Actors are competent, visual effects guys are competent, stunt performers are quite excellent, etc. But the writing is letting the show down big time. They have the budget to make solid gold, but they've failed more than they've succeeded, especially in season 2 past the first episode.
I'm sad you didn't mention that after what Yen was attempting to do Geralt would have killed her, full stop end of story. At least if they made him accurate to himself
@@xLetalis It's like they forgot how angry Geralt was at Yennefer in last episode and at the start of this one and suddenly for fuck all reasons Geralt is fine with her. But yea the biggest insult was definitely Yennefer claiming that she suddenly feels some sort of motherly love towards Ciri and is somehow good fit for that position after being willing to sacrifice her last episode. Like god what?! They can't even stay consistent with their own writing -__-
@@KanohiVahi I literally have no idea what you're talking about. Geralt is still extremely mad at the beginning of the last episode he even shows it very clearly, barely giving Yen time to explain herself and refusing her help. In fact, even after she sacrifices herself, he is still mad at her and says he doesn't forgive her. Also, considering that Yen didn't sacrifice Ciri and recognized the error of her ways bc of her love for Ciri, I fail to see how it is an "insult" or "inconsistency". Yes, she intended to sacrifice her when she was desperate, she started caring about her so she gave up on that idea and now she intends to protect her to make it up to her. What's not clicking?
@@jjnull8108 yes in a world with robots that all would make sense. But they are supposed to be human beings. I don‘t know about you. But if somebody literally trys ro murder my child i don‘t suddenly go „Yeah you can have her and teach her stuff cuz i don‘t know anybody else that can teach her that“ You don‘t come back from that. That is a end ofthe line szenario. You simply cut that person away from your life.
@@TjderGeraet See in a world where all Yen did was try to sacrifice Ciri that all would make sense. But that's not all that happened in the show. Yen was going to sacrifice her due to desperation but actually didn't last minute. She also sacrifices herself for Ciri at the end, basically giving her life for hers. There's also the fact that only Yennefer was capable of teaching Ciri so far.
This is just my opinion but the show, especially season 2, feels like a generic American fantasy that is piggybacking off the success of CDPR without matching the quality. The producer knows that the popularity and huge success of the existing Witcher IP is obviously going to greatly appeal to Netflix, and that they gave her the opportunity to create the show because of this success. But she also wants to pursue her own ideas which don’t necessarily fit with Sapkowski’s books, despite how much she claims to love his writing. So we are left with a show that is Witcher in name only. That’s why so many of the characters are written _out of character_ in the show (Yennefer, Fringilla, Eskel etc). They could have added new characters, like Dara, if it was so important. But it’s a way to capitalise on familiar names that fans recognise, to prove that this is still a Witcher adaptation, whilst pursuing an entirely different, non-canon narrative that appeals more to the producers than actual fans.
Well so much for literally all of Ciri's story in Lady of The Lake. How do they add so much filler and disregard so much core material at the same time? I am genuinely confused how they plan to adapt the other books. Also, do the writers not understand that someone rapidly switching between doing nothing wrong and being pure evil *isn't* nuanced?
It is not about them adding filler and disregarding core material. They are not even capable of building up the alternative plot that they built in the 1st season and the Witcher anime movie. They are literally going back and forth between original content and alternative content. The entire season 2 feels disjointed. Flashbacks and recalls to stuff that were not said or were not even presented. On top of that they ruined ruined entire character developments, even core characters. At this point the entire Witcher Netflix series is BIG mess. I just could not keep up with it anymore towards the end.
In regards to the second part of your comment, the writing feels utterly soulless to me. It seems the writers fail to understand what makes humans human and what we can connect with and relate to as an audience.
@@jackbeckett2838 That's to be expected. These Hollywood elites are completely removed from the rest of the world and they think the whole world is exactly the way they live in their bubble.
Kind of a sidenote but I really appreciate these reviews you've been doing, very great and detailed work, plus very entertaining. Let's hope season 3 is more serious overall and actually makes sense while staying true to the books. Loving the content bro!
I personally won't watch it, I'm done with this show and it annoys me that we won't have a legitimately good The Witcher show in years because of this crap
I love how It seemed you were running out of patience for the bad writing in each episode 🤣 i Don't know how they managed to do this so badly. I mean, they had a story to base It on, but it's not just that - it's about general rules of writing, which they utterly ignored. I watched half this season and couldn't stand It anymore. Your reviews are the only good thing out of this show, and certainly MUCH better than any of the episodes 🤣
I stopped watching when Geralt said, "Where the fuck are my swords?" Huh? uh uh...NOPE! I could only take so much of that shite. I've enjoyed these reviews from xLetalis though. Watching vicariously through him was only slightly less arduous than what I would've endured otherwise. But, by the sound of his pained observations, not by very much. lol, Oh and the..."Fancy a fuck?" bit. Damned funny bastard made me spit Wheet-Bix all over my monitor and shit.
I love how you try to make sense of the story, like the deathless mother being an elf, but I feel like they 100% didn‘t think about any of that and just tried to have a cool looking scene
Exactly, I have mentioned it already at previous reviews: Where I think "this is just total BS, makes no sense at all", xLetalis comes with the only far-fetched explanation that could somehow work. I think he gives the script-writers more credit than they deserve.
As someone who didn't read the books i tought Vereena was possesed by the deathless mother too and that it s why they had that scene were before she dies she warns her: it will turn against you too and Ciri is wearing that dress she gave her while beeing possesed...woops
Hold up now, were any of the events of Blood of Elves actually in the season? I mean I guess Ciri training at Kaer Morhen, but since that could easily be repeated, even improved with stronger bonds between the witchers and Ciri (despite her having killed half of them), this means that they could literally pick of season 3 like it happens after the last episode of season 1 and still have the storyline somewhat make sense. This shows how fricking useless this season was, it has absolutely no impact on the story or the characters whatsoever and can be completely skipped when it comes to making the next one Honestly this season was so godawful that I wish they'd actually done that and pretend this entire thing didn't happen, though I suppose as long as Lauren runs the circus I shouldn't expect any writing decisions this good I frankly don't even know what's worse, the fact that this terrible show makes the people who could've been new fans of the universe, but are actually capable of noticing it's flaws look at The Witcher with not much love (basically the show repelling potential fanbase/degrading The Witcher's quality in many people's eyes) or the fact that there are people who enjoy it and fuel the entire thing by bumping up the showrunner's opinion about herself and the series (after the scene where they basically told the audience to fuck off by saying "if they don't like it they can try and make something better" I have no doubts she's the kind of person to only look at the positive reviews, thus thinking everything is fine with the show and we're just a small hateful bunch of haters) Oh boy, I wrote a lot
Yes, long post but I agree with everything. Ciri's training, her relationship with Geralt and other witchers? Close to non-existent or terribly twisted. Her sister-like bond with Triss? Gone. Her initially complicated mother-daughter relationship with Yen? Also gone. Ciri's mage training? Reduced to an accidental teleportation to the other side of a river (WTF?). World-building? Gone. Character-building? Either gone, or characters that are completely inconsistent between episodes or even single scenes. Humour? Gone, replaced by f* f* f*... It is pointless to continue.
Netflix removed the wisdom and reverence of Vesemir and instead replaced it with bitterness and obstinance. While the books didn't explore his character as much as the games, they did do a decent job of implying his gravity. This episode was shameful all around and has more than confirmed my suspicions about this series.
They did that to everyone. Vesemir? A joke. Yennefer? Mentally unstable teenager instead of confident smart sorceress and mother to Ciri. Mother Nenneke? No relationship with Geralt whatsoever. The witchers? They did not know much about bringing up an early-teenage girl, but they certainly loved her and tried their best, within the limits of their knowledge. And they could actually fight monsters. Bah, this is just a disgrace. Maybe Henry can convince someone to re-shot this BS it once it's over.
I'm terribly sorry Letalis, but I don't think I'll manage to suffer through your reviews of season 3. Not because they are bad, far from it! It's just... It's bad enough to see the franchise butchered like this, but no humor can cover for the fact that some untalented nobody got handed millions to adapt a story, decided they could "make it better" and then churned out this turd - to the acclaim of countless mouth-breathing troglodytes. The whole series is an insult to not just the Witcher, but to good writing in general.
I can't believe that Sapkowski was dissatisfied by the games and he's totally okay with this fuckfest? It looks like money means more to him than his own saga.
Agreed, disregarding any money, with the Netflix series comes more book sales from the exposure, and the number of books sold is probably important to him.
I absolutely hate the "you just hate it, because it isn't like the books" excuse, people always use when defending the show. We aren't complaining because they changed stuff from the books, we're complaining because the changes they made didn't improve the story, it just made it WORSE. For god's sake, the video games are completely made up but almost everyone loves them, hell some fans even love them more than the books.
I remember that in the books there was this scene that almost made me cry of how powerful it felt. It was when Ciri said that she wants to be called Cirilla of Vengerberg, daughter of Yennefer. The relationship between them developed to the level, where Ciri would be proud to be Yen’s daughter. And I can’t express how sad and angry it makes me feel when I see the relationship between these characters in the series. I can’t even imagine this type of bond between them. I mean, one episode Yen wants to sacrifice Ciri for power and the next one she’s ready to sacrifice herself for the girl? She’s so consistently inconsistent that I just can’t stand her at this point. And Yennefer is my favorite character in the books. On the bright side, we have Henry Cavill who is trying his best and your reviews... so that’s something good about this show
Fringilla is one of my favorite characters from the books, but now, in this, she's just... Unbearable and boring. The female characters in the books were smart, intelligent, driven, had their own plots and goals and desires, but the series portrays them all as highly emotional women who have no self control. It's saddening, really.
Fringilla is one of your favorite characters from the books?! Lol, she's barely in it and all she does is delay Geralt by having sex with him. Odd character to be a favorite. No judgement. Just expressing surprise.
@@roachmonk she's more complex than that, but you're right in general. She was forced by other sorceresses to have sex with Geralt and she slowly felt in love with him and she basically saved his life by giving him a medallion.
@@michachojnacki8447 Pretty much saved the whole trio of them... but she did spy on Geralt and he was right to not trust her with Vilgefortz' castle's location.
Great work reviewing the season! I thought it had some good moments like Rience and Nivellen. But the thing about the bond between characters being forced is so frustrating. The book spends so much time on making sure that their bond is earned and even Lauren said that family as a theme is the main reason she wanted to do the show. How did it go so wrong?
She said what she needed to get the job. She either doesn’t care about the books or is spineless and willing to allow the original material to be warped out of familiarity.
Hisrich said, that Baba Yaga is there just so they can have a big bad guy of the season. She was afraid that the watchers wont care if there wont be enough action and the easiest way for them was creating new bad guy for one season to get an action climax. She also complained that Blood of Elves is hard to adapt and there isn't much action, which is true, but there is so much character development and estabilishing relationships that she ignored for the sake of few action sequences, that weren't even that good. Truly a shame.
I know how this is going to sound, and I mean no disrespect to the actors playing Istredd and Fringilla, they are doing a good job with the script they have been given, but it is my personal opinion that the showrunner took very minor characters, cast actors of color, and turned the very minor characters into very major ones for reasons most of have our suspicions of. That's not horrible by itself (slightly annoying), what is bad is that they are disregarding most of the story as it was written, and on top of that the story they have given us is vastly inferior to the written one and that is terrible. And that has nothing to do with any characters being black, white, green, whatever.
This season left me with almost no connection to the characters and what happens to them. Unlike the books and the games where certain events to characters took an actual emotional toll on you.
Oh my, I cannot help myself but I want to scream from pain any time when they try to push so hard to push Dara character into the plot... I want to scream to screen. Just forget about him! He is totally irrelevant. Nobody cares!
@@andyhx2 lol, he's way more interesting and a much better actor than Francesca Findebar. I'd much prefer to have the whole elf plot told from his perspective. Likewise I'm so glad Istredd is still around, there's so much potential there with a unique perspective potential for drama with Geralt and Yennefer, plus he's a good actor and really sells the character - loved all his scenes! Recurring characters are good, they allow actual character development rather than just stereotypes dropped in and then discarded. Fingilla's actress unfortunately is terrible, and her character doesn't make any sense.
I mostly agree with that. Most of the bad stuff is their own addition and the rest is the being unable to read the books. However, although I would have prefered them to follow the books, I feel like the way they used Istredd was well done : Geralt wasn't investigating on who is Ciri or why Rience wants to find her, so they had the Historian character do it instead. There are several things they did to tie up loose ends that I found not bad. For example Yennefer burning Rience without magic, the way Geralt saying Yennefer is his *dear friend* was not as good as the letters, but it conveyed the same awkwardness and Geralt's inability to handle his relationship with Yennefer.
Among many other things, the reason why mother-daughter bond between Ciri and Yen will forever be unbelievable is because of their almost non-existing age difference. Ciri is too old and Yennefer is too young. Can we also talk about how Geralt simply forgot that Yen was trying to sacrifice Ciri like 5 minutes ago??? I honesty don't even want to comment further because this entire season was a joke. I felt like script was written by a 13 year old under the influence of Mortal Combat.
Lol.. yennefer is 109+ years old. What your actually saying is that you perceive the actors real age as the narrative age. And want to fix that by CHANGING the narrative. Which i think would be bad. If you think she doesnt portray her age well then that is just criticism of her acting but your focused on looks.
My words exactly. But there's always idiots who would defend this garbage and say how it's better than the games and whatnot. Hell, even The Hexer from 2002, which had a really low budget, is still better than whatever this is.
It's extremely weird how in the beginning of the episode Yennefer is yelling "Geralt! Geralt!" while they're riding on horseback as if they JUST took off seconds ago, not days ago. What are they doing?!
I do really agree on Fringilla being a completely different character. It makes no sense to catapult her to a main role when she’s really not. This episode made me mad I kept screaming at my husband that Vesemir and Yennifer would never hurt her. 😡 I understand they have to add more action and stuff for tv but they really went out there with all the added stuff. We shall see where it’s going
I can relate to you on this and I had two relatives to watch this show with me. What makes me sad is they keep comparing this show to the game of thrones. I kept explaining to them the things that happened in the books to prove that the witcher is actually a good story.
ikr. i was watching this with my boyfriend and i couldn't stop complaining. all people in the whole series, except for geralt, seemed like they wanna hurt ciri, physically or mentally, which is totally bullmanure.
Why is it that it takes the other Witchers forever to kill two basilisks while juiced on potions, but it takes Geralt 10 seconds with no potions to kill the big boss basilisk? The whole power of love theme at the end of this episode just makes zero sense for the Witcher world really.
Season 2 was such a disappointment. Watching episode 1 my hopes were high, Henry was even better as Geralt, Ciri and Geralt were finally together and interacting well, and they stayed fairly faithful to source material, that’s all I needed to enjoy the show. But then the rest of the season happened. Netflix yeeted the book story line out the window, and did whatever they wanted, and the few points they kept from the books were significant dumbed down and oversimplified. I was willing to give season 1 grace for its faults, after all the show was trying find it’s footing, and most shows have a rougher first season, but I can’t do that for season 2. I don’t think I’ll be watching season 3, I want the Witcher we know, not what ever Netflix churned out and just slapped the title on.
There must be better written fan-fiction than this thing out there, more deserving of becoming a tv show. How on earth--who do they know, that they got funding for this catastrophe?
Chances are the execs who signed off on it don't know a thing about the Witcher franchise other than it makes a lot of money. And that is the entertainment industry in a nutshell.
@@BL00DYME55 wouldn't the industry be more interested in investing in good writers? So they can get more return? They are doing a bad job adapting the original material, they write really bad scripts and generally poor dialogue. I don't think that is the entertainment industry that is making dark fantasy today--think of GOT, for instance. Look at their awards list. Why GOT worked and TWN is not working? Writing. Pacing. Dialogue. They are not expanding the universe correctly (as very well explained by xLetalis).
There is, actually. A collection of short stories loosely related to the main plot called "Fangs and Claws" but with more sense and logic than this Netflix monster
I am so glad it has been throughly pointed out that Netflix ruined Vesemir 🥺. So I know I wasn’t just being picky. We have crappy Netflix Vesemir trying to turn Ciri into a Witcher then trying to kill her and we have < video game hero Vesemir sacrificing his life for Ciri 😭.
All I can say is the way you come up with possible explanations almost makes me hope the writers actually had the same train of thought. But yeah. Just full of disappointments. Cool to look at; leaves nothing to hold on to. They might as well just go even more ridiculous next season. They might just hit on something accidentally. P.S. I can't not mention how they butchered the Geralt-Ciri-Yen plot. My biggest disappointment in the show.
20:11 Perfect Netflix correctness in it's full glory : We've got: Asian girl, black girl, Norn elf, arabian guy, white guy and white girl. That's how I imagined Witcher when I was reading/playing. xD
The Wild Hunt is already revealed as space elves instead of having their proper Wraith-like forms to have the Aen Elle reveal later, and Emhyr (played by a pretty boy no less) is openly admitting his relation to Ciri, destroying two of the series biggest twists in one episode. All while further disrespecting the Witchers and Kaer Morhen, reducing them to bumbling, inept Redshirts and likely eliminating Emhyr's, the Lodge's, the Aen Elle's and Vilgefortz's evil plots to impregnate Ciri and make them more sympathetic than they should be. Because we all know evil villains would never cross revolting immoral lines or anything, they are known for being progressive and politically correct. This is about the level of respect Lauren Hissrich and the other woke, talentless hacks she's hiring through pure nepotism have for this property. Hurry up already, CDPR. Continue the franchise.
They are in the show. A bunch killed by a teenage girl, a bunch killed by two dino chickens. Then they're like a hundred year old super humans, but can't resist bullying a young girl and can't start a winter without an orgy inviting a bunch of stangers to their hidden castle. And then a fire mage just teleports in and out of their castle while a witcher has a heart attack from his medallion humming. I'm surprised they've lasted this long 😄
I'd like to say that I'm fascinated by the way you edit your videos, every single second is consistent with what you're saying and a lot of times I burst into laughter with the clips you include as a joke or with an underlying sarcasm. I wish the producers and writers of The Witcher watched your reviews as they seem so eager to "respond to fan concerns and open up dialogue to improve the show." It would be interesting to see their reactions and responses when they´re presented with well-founded and respectful opinions like yours. I think I can speak for a lot of fans when I say you really represent our thoughts on this project that, unfortunately, hasn't lived up to the quality and magic the source material offers.
I've seen some interview with the creator Lauren Hissrich where she "addresses" fans' concerns about the series in the past, and all her explanations and justifications for the choices/changes they made in the series are just laughable. So if she actually saw xLet's reviews, I sincerely doubt her reaction and response would clear things up. Just like in the past, should would likely get defensive and give us some narrow-minded answers or change the subject half way through the answer or something else along those lines. I personally, already lowered my expectations for this show, and from now on will be watching it as a standalone rendition of the Witcher franchise that's very loosely based on the books. That's just to save me the frustration and disappointment in the future, so I can enjoy it like I enjoy an average mindless Hollywood adventure movie.
yen participation in the last fight: "jaskier, take this kidney to them its a plot device!" but actually does nothing "im gonna spend the whole fight brewing a potion" that does nothing amazing really
I cant describe it in any other way but i think the biggest problem with the show is that its to "american". When you read the books its clear that a slavic person (or at least a non anglo saxan european) has written them as a complex charakter novel. Their is no clear good and evil, every person feels at least ten diffrent emotions and behind each action is a motiv. But Hollywood shows cant have that. Everything has to be cristal clear and obvious, their has to be a good and a bad side. You need a few action seence and romance sprinkeled here and their so you audiance dont get bored and it shoud never be to complex. And of course some wokenes.
I wouldn't be so judgy about culture it arose from. There were many anglo-saxon writers with complex character novels. (At the very least well known like ASOIF or LOTR come to mind) Also I'd personally guessed if I wouldn't know that the author of the novels come from Celting background since a lot of mythology that inspires lore is from Celtic or Germanic mythology not only Slavic, the Elven language in books is basically Welsh too.
yeah, this tv series is a huge departure from the source material. I just can't get over the fact that it is possible to change characters, their motivations, amazing dialogues, intriguing plot and all heartbreaking or lovely scenes that sapkowski putted on paper. Someone will say it is adaptation so things like this happens, but in reality close to everything is wrong, "upside down". The script is inconsistent and simply stupid. episodes of second season should be more like fundaments for building soft and touchy emotions between main characters (father/mother figures for lost and overwhelmed by harsh reality little girl), but instead we got what? action-packed "something", drained off them. blind folded re-creation of a close to perfect story. in my opinion even with bad factors they created - elves, politics, vilgefortz, witchers (netflix vesemir will hunt me for ages), yennefer, nenneke, fringilla, francesca, deathless mother, nilfgard, human bad others GUT.... this list could be long enough to fill my room, so i will cut it here :) - there was a slightly chance for a big improvment at the begining of production; changed age of ciri/meeting in the past and why editing this is a ground shaking move. Mainly because of forced way she is connected with geralt. In the books you just fall in love in emotional sequence when they interrupt each other day in the wild and dangerous place called brokilon forest, situations such as a fairy tale to sleep. It was so moving... in one sentence whole background of their feelings is scratched. Netflix version lacks of that. Everytime they talk to each other it's just empty words. No matter how much they will expand that, it won't evolve to something extraordinary. Next 8 hours of watchtime is wasted, there is no bond between them. Sadly at the same time it is a key component of future events flow. Now i can't imagine that im supposed to feel any emotion about journey of rescue with epic company - milva, regis etc. or fight in the thanedd coup finale. Without this relation the book can't exist, show either. ughh, it is completly messed up, fingers crossed for hbo "the last of us" - this story has many similarities to witcher plot so maybe it will fill my pain a bit and break vision of bad adaptations nowadays. It is what it is man
Oh wow, I didn't catch the inconsistency in regard to the golden dragon lines. The writers are so thoughtless they don't even know what they wrote. I really hope Henry Cavill gets more impact on the direction and next season is actually the Blood of Elves/Time of Contempt adaptation we expected to get this season.
I’m just so frustrated because I absolutely love Vesemir but his writing made no damn sense this whole season. Like where is book Vesemir or game Vesemir? I don’t think he would have ever tried to kill Ciri and so many of his decisions made no sense like trying to turn Ciri into a Witcher without talking to Geralt. I swear each episode I was more and more disappointed. My only comfort is that I’m not alone because a lot of us feel like our favorite characters have been done really dirty.
You right the dialogue of this season is pathetic is written by people who writing scenario for first time, she's remind me game of thrones seasons 5,6,7,8 dialogue
@@restitudororbis8235 it's actually amazes me how people who never wrote anything significant in their lifes can open the book of well known beloved author of bestseller who created one of the best fantasy universes in the world and say "i will fix it"
well im mostly disappointed, but also mad and upset that i got promised that this would be an adaptation. a very mixed up feeling of negative emotions bc i was quite hyped and even after a meager season one i still saw potential (mostly due to henry cavill). now im dead inside...
At this point, it would have made more sense to have changed the name of the series and the name of the characters. Serie's Yennefer isnt even close to the real Yennefer. This Fringila is a completly different character (not only the huge difference in appearence), Vesemir is a disappointment and the plot choices are just ridiculous (Yennefer is an elf???). This series is simply NOT The Witcher With that being said, these are great reviews. Looking forward to season 3 just to watch them
It bothers me that Ciri seems to be quite capable of using magic already when in the book she had to undergo a lot of training to even be able to draw energy from water veins. In season 1 the mages also had to get the energy they needed for incantations from other objects (Fringilla with the stone and the flower), just like in the books, but now in season 2 it seems to be irrelevant suddenly. In the books Ciri had to practice every day to get something as simple as the hand gestures right and now she can almost build bridges with nothing but her mind. Yennefers lessons in the books are so important for her relationship with Ciri, I don't know how they will make up for it since they decided to remove it entirely. I hope we get at least something alike in season 3.
I was really dissapointed about this season. I still had hopes after the 1-st episode, but then everything didn’t go very well, although there were good moments. I don’t argue, but they are awfully few, they don’t outweigh the minuses and I’m sad about this. I want this show to be good, but some of the creators do not want to (although I'm sure there are people who care about what is happening)
We’re just going to have to pretend that Yennefer isn’t directly responsible for killing most of the remaining witchers for the rest of the series, aren’t we?
Again, one of my biggest critiques (in terms of just the show as it's OWN entity) is there is no sense of competent coherent world-building whatsoever. You very rightly bring up all the geography issues, but just to build on that. What are the Northern Realms? Where are they? What are they like Who are all the different rulers? What makes Nilfgaard differ from these places? And so forth. I never get any sense of the world of the Witcher netflix, and it just seems to assume you know everything from the books or the games (and then tries to say it can be unfaithful because it's its own thing) They even CHANGED the Henselt actor half way through this season so I can't even try and get who is who just from appearance! As usual, stellar work getting through this and putting this videos together, XLetalis! Have a good one!
No, I'm serious... Can a *petition* start to fire whoever is writing this? The books are incredible. It's unbearable to see how they're deliberately bastardizing this gem.
Ok, I was kinda joking... But apparently, this petition exists and it's called: "Petition to dismiss Lauren Schmidt Hissrich from the position of showrunner of the Witcher". Over 12K people signed it. Honestly, I'm happy. This series needs someone competent - she is not.
@@marinomele4575 Do you know of a single instance when petitions actually did anything? There have been petitions for almost every possible cause, and unfortunately nothing every comes off it.
Thank you for your Critique of these series analysis, it was awesome! I agree with most of the points and arguments in general everything is to the point and fair! I hope there will be a reviews season 3 too (and Blood Origin or other projects)
@@yazi7790 the games take place after the books and still managed to keep the spirit of the characters and actually expand them in a good way unlike the Netflix show.
@@tweetugwe1270 no. Even Sapkowski says so, the guy who wrote the books. But he too understands if the media change you can't expect the material to be the what you have come to expect of the previous ones. We are coming mostly from first the games and then the books. The show is already 2 layers deep in change of medias. Now we don't like it cause we are used to the books and games. It's natural for us to not like it. But at the same time we should be mindful that other people do like the show especially new comers from the show. Overall this show will only bolster the Witcher universe consumer domain which is good for even us nerds. We don't need to belittle the show for every single thing. If one want to convey something constructive criticism would be much more beneficial for the community and the show.
Despite what Dominic Toretto said, there is one thing stronger than family: my hatred of and disgust by Netflix and their poor, soy-infused excuse of a series about the Witcher
@@leamhnachd4579 Honestly I'm not interested in it the slightest at this point and I don't want to again feel the same anger and frustration I felt over this season
I think it was really counterproductive to the story. I was so angry at the fact they started killing off more witchers at the get-go. Like we already lost Eskel and even though they are "extras" it still is infuriating that they couldn't even fight back. Then the whole, love is what saves us as the end of the curse essentially is very Disney Brother's Grimm take on the witcher. Plus Vessimir as a mentor was really bad in this scene and even through it followed with the whole "We are the last witchers and I have to protect them" I doubt he would hurt Ciri. They absolutely massacred all of Ciri's growth in Season 2 and sent her back to like S1E3 when all she wanted was to go back home when her new home is Kaer Morhen. Plus that whole body snatching thing is overly lazy and tropey, it has been done so many times in every YA fantasy it's lazy. Also the Wild Hunt's armor, yuck.
I havent seen this season, but I’ve read the whole series. I do not have the slightest clue on what the fuck is going on in this show. Like so much is changed here It’s more like a fanfiction
It's funny. Your reviews shed so much light for someone like me who's never read the books. Half the time I don't know what character's motivations are or what they're talking about. And this show expects to draw people that haven't read the books with its absolutely shoddy writing?
As someone who has only started reading the books after season 1 came out i have to say its really worth it. There are also audiobooks if you dont like reading. It's an amazing story and so much better than you could imagine from the show
The reality is that a lot of the casuals love this series. I have a lot of friends who haven't read the books or who are familiar with the games laud the greatness of this show.
I hope Henry Cavil apologises to all witcher fans then takes his sword and storms the Netflix server and hacks this miserable piece of garbage out of existence
@@carlschildhauer6889 Why would he apologise? He didn't write any of it, it's not his fault. He's a big fan of the books and games, but he's only an actor in the show. Doesn't have much say in the production. @ fiel81 I don't want it to be cancelled. It's another Witcher related thing I can do. Even though it's far from being faithful to the books, at this point I've lowered my expectations enough that I can just enjoy it as a mindless Hollywood adventure flick loosely set in the same universe. They have some good looking monsters, and fights. I'll just have to turn off my brain when it comes to the story lol. If I want a good Witcher story, I'll listen to the audiobooks. If I want to actively immerse myself in the Witcher world, I'll play the games. And if I want some mindless Witcher action, I'll watch the netflix show. I'm the "cup half full" kind of person haha
"Aretuza: the adventures of Yennefer and Company" doesn't sound like a good show. I guess thank God i stopped at season one. The only good thing it brings is your videos.
Young sexy Emhyr showing up just to say that he's the one who ordered the elven baby killed is the most shoehorned piece of exposition I've seen in media. It comes out of nowhere. Emhyr is given little to no screen time or characterization, and then he just shows up to deliver this line and the audience is supposed to be shocked, but we don't know anything about him as a character, other than "he did it to find his daughter", which doesn't make a lot of sense either. I wasn't shocked, I was downright baffled. But it did make me laugh a lot, so props to the writers for that. It's so silly. Imagine playing HoS without meeting GoD at all, and then GoD shows up outta nowhere at the end of the story and he's like: "Haha you fools, I was behind this all along".
I honestly believe that xLetalis put more effort and thoughts into his reviews than writers into their own series.
Indeed, I'm wondering if he should be hired as a Consultant, but I guess next Season is already finished...
+1
Totally
Totally agree, still enjoyed the show as this is Netflix we're talking about and ity could have been much much worse. That said I wished people who have written The Witcher 3 would have written this, it would have been a LOT better.
Absofuckinglutely he does. Why can't XLetalisX write the show? He'd do SO much better. :(
I thought after season 1 “oh ok so it’s not great, I don’t like all the stuff they’ve added in but hey, it’s not ruined anything and they can fix it all with season 2 onwards.” That’s not an option anymore. This season is so outrageously different and terrible that it’s not even resembling the same series I love and can’t possibly be fixed unless they remove this season somehow.
Season 1: quite a many deviations, some worked better, most of them not so much, but also some content from the books stayed. So-so result.
Season 2: completely new story (no point comparing what is different - everything is!), that cannot even stand to critique on its own.
Originally I was face-palming at the differences. In S2 I am just face-palming at the atrocious writing that does not work even as a stand-alone work, let alone adaptation.
Kuddos for making it through--after the third episode I couldn't handle the terrible writing anymore.
You and me both
yeah the writing was questionable in this one ;[
@@xLetalis honestly, it's been questionable for a while, it's just getting progressively worse...
Same here, I dropped in the second episode and now I just hope they end this fanfic in third season.
I haven't read the books, only played Witcher 3, and watched the netflix show and anime. For me, I liked the show, the episode, and the entire 2nd season. Its only until after watching this guy's reviews that I realize how so much doesn't make sense. I guess the people running the show thought they could get by easy on casual fans watching the show not catching the plot holes. BTW, I'm on another Witcher 3 playthrough using Feline armor, alchemy/bomb build because of season 2.
I really wish they learned from Game of Throne's biggest mistake: If you're adapting a book into a series, the parts that are accurate to the source material are good, and the parts that aren't are bad. It really seems that simple
A little bit. I’ve read all the GOT books and there were several storylines that were tedious and therefore rightfully cut from the show. There were also several inventions in the show that were smart. It’s sort of a coin flip. The Witcher season 2, particularly the last four episodes, were just bad because they were bad. If the writing was better and the story was coherent, it wouldn’t have bothered me, so long as they didn’t mess with Geralt, yennefer, ciri, which they did.
6:22 The BIG Emhyr reveal
As a long time fan of the books and games, I will not be jumping in and watching season 3. I’ll be starting with your reviews first. I was ok with with the first season and mostly enjoyed it. The second season however, I’m beyond disappointed. I was looking forward to a distraction from some personal issues going on and I just ended up being even more bummed out than before. Thank you xLetalis for keeping it real AND polite to Netflix. Although I don’t think they deserve it.
A part of me wishes I knew nothing about the Witcher lore so I could enjoy the show a bit more. Ignorance is truly bliss
Lol the season finale was so bad I laughed. It was so cheesy I can't believe the writers thought this was ok.
Showrunner be like :
"Hey Ciri, how long does it take to go through 1500 km ?"
"Less than a day"
"Thanks Ciri"
kinda sad to see your review series end :( Love your content Keep it going!
It's bad and the showrunners should feel bad. It's just not the Witcher anymore. It's another fantasy serie with the characters we know and loved destroyed.
What irritates me is just like Eskel the witchers at the end have no other point but to be red shirts to the raptor chickens in the final battle. You just turned badass monster slayers into stormtroopers against things they hunt professionally
Yeah, that irked me a lot.
and then Geralt comes around and easily slaughters one.. making every other witcher seem like a joke in comparison
Can we be honest with ourselves and admit that this season was .. pretty bad
@@leamhnachd4579 Chad Jerald of Rivia. Doesn’t even need to look at old master of Witchers Vesemir attacks either. Back handed block had me rolling my eyes
Yea the witchers went form monster slayers to rancor food.
The whole Kaer Morhen fight seems like something my 9 year old self would day dream up after watching Lord of the Rings, and honestly that's an insult to the creativity of my 9 year old self
True lol 😂
“Ok but stay there, now i will hit you with my superpower punch but we still be friends and good wins and bad loses”
We saw how the game handled a Kaer Morhen fight and how the show handled it. And yeah, I’d say the games hit the hammer right on the nail and the show hit their own finger with the hammer. And I’m not even talking about the Witcher 3 battle of Kaer Morhen, I’m talking about the fight with the Salamandra and their giant insect.. in Witcher 1.. a game released in 2007
@@Dieregorn All that + awkward mouth sounds. It would be awesome!
@@andyhx2 🤣🤣🤣
So.. There was a magical monolith on Kaer Morhen.. inside a tree.. The tree, on which Vesemir hangs medailons of dead witchers.. the medailons that are supposed to REACT to magic.. It really could not get more random than this.
LMFAO DIDNT EVEN THINK OF THAT
because... let's say they vibrate when sb wears them and magic happens.
or sth else. I don't care. It'd be nice if anyone anywhere state that limitation without blunt exposition but anyways.
I'd gain years while reading each subsequent book while they'd been published and got quite pissed with the Season of Storms (or however Sezon Burz is translated).
All that time waiting for the good TV version (the first approach - Polish one - failed spectacularly).
Then almighty Netflix shows up in it's full on Stranger Things glory. "This must work" - I thought. "Not really" answered show's creators.
Nobody cares about it anymore now.
Meh...
@@salty_tech you overcomplicate every sentence you type for the sake of impact
Hate how humour in this show is simply, swear, uninspired nickname with swear, explicit and lengthy simile with, you guessed it, more swears. I mean come on, we’re not children, why do they assume we’d find that amusing
:(
Well, I guess we're not their target audience. :D
"Why do they assume we'd find that amusing?"
You've already answered your own question. Assumptions.
Simple swearing can be funny, however it has to be used rarely, when viewers don't expect it, not all the damn time to the point you can predict when it's about to be used...
@@likeyou3317 But that cannot be the case because if they produced it for children there could not be swearing...
Has anyone adresses Cahirs looks? He looks more like an elf than the elves. He could've been a great Wild Hunt character.
He could've been a nice Eredin
yeah
Cahir is the elfiest elf I have ever seen. Which is not completely implausible, seeing as they seem to have mixed with humans a bit more in Nilfgaard than in the north, but it is a little odd.
What bothers me more about this is that most elves just look like humans with pointy ears (regarding facial features and body shapes).
Tbh another thing that bothers me in this show it's the misplaced cast, like they have characters that look more like other character they choosed, while having in the same crew another one that looks and Even acts more according to said character, like they switched roles between the cast at last moment
Noticed that, too. But Netflix would never stoop so low and cast people who actually look the part. That would be racist.
The true identity of Ciri's father wasn't even revealed until the 7th damn book
Which would never work on a tv show bc you actually see the characters.
And Yennefer never tried sacrificing Ciri for personal gains but ... :)
@@xLetalis i think you are the last person to complain here, as often as you sold her to emhyr in your vids :)
They could have not shown him being Ciris dad, just shown him as Emhyr, or just having him communicate via proxy at least on this season. Maybe instead of Emhyr himself he could have send some other Nilfgardian raidboss to put Fingrilla and Cahir in chains.
@@maxmustermann369
“It would be a straight translation of the books… I think there's just so much material that I don't feel the need to start inventing my own to keep it going.”
- Lauren Schmidt Hissrich
Not only that they can't write a consistent logical story, and completely butchering the story and the characters of the books, but they continue to lie to the fans openly like that, trying to claim that the show is a faithful adaptation of the books.... What a disgrace!!!!
Sadly, Hissrich was right with that statement. The books offer so unbelievably much story material to use verbatim on screen. It's a shame she didn't stick to her word.
SAdly it seems that in vocabulary this means opposite thing.
Only used it to gain trust and pull the wool over the fan base eyes. Would have been fine if it was good but she screwed it up badly. But her and Netflix will pull every skewed metric to show it was great. Need to keep that stock price high. Like I said before the recent Netflix MO is all about quantity over quality. The new CW except way worse. Way more filler crap in fewer than 10 episode than the typical 20+ episodes of CW.
Netflix: But look how many "insert fake metric" have mindlessly watched this shite.
@@gownerjones thing is she was was referring to Time of Contempt, not Blood of Elves. You’re taking it out of context on purpose
@@ethanangmar3549 It doesn't matter what book she was talking about. She didn't stick to any of them.
Honestly, these reviews are the best thing to come out of the Netflix Witcher. They make this show's existence a little more bearable. Thank you for a great job. Okay, coffee's brewing, and now I'm gonna go enjoy the last episode.
man if there only were more episodes, wouldn't care how much bad, we'd have more of reviews
Enjoy? How you can enjoy this woke dumpsterfire. Tomorrow they will make Japanese feudal cinema with Africans only. So go. And enjoy.
@@d0m574 "wouldn't care how much bad"
People like you are part of the problem. Skin colour change, sex change, species change, wokeness etc. I simply can;t underst5and that people are after more of this sh eyt.
@@hadeseye2297 they're saying they enjoy these reviews so much that they wish there were more episodes solely so they could watch more reviews.
Chill Winston
I found Emhyr very underwhelming. Lord Farqaad looked more intimidating
Funny that you mention it. I just recently watched Shrek out of nostalgia, and honestly: even that had more in common with The Witcher than this show.
Pretty funny thought. Imagine if Kaer Morhen is in a swamp alongside trolls & ogres
@@marty.m2933 the fact that you're right upsets me greatly
He was, he did not have the presence you'd expect. And in my humble opinion, that has ruined the last scene.
Should have been voiced by Charles Dance at least.
It's incredible how people defend this show with "It'S JuST aN AdaPTatiON, U maD iT IsNT liKe BOoK" when it doesn't hold to scrutiny as a stand-alone piece of media.
The way they keep forcing their changed storyline to match the major points of the original just hurts me
This show can't even adapt their own story well
also taking loved characters from a popular franchise to lure in fans to finance your fan fiction is morally soo questionable
It's not even a adptation anymore. I would have been fine if they were honest from the beginning and write the show as a free interpretation of the books instead of having the nerve to tell fans they would strictly adhere to the books.
People are mad it isn't like Witcher.
Ciri's possession and her killing of other Witchers could have huge impact on continuation of her relationship with witchers of Kaer Morhen. Like how the hell are these guys or Ciri even look back with nostalgy on those couple years at Kaer Morhen when: "possessed Ciri murdered half of witchers and basically turned half the castle into ruin with magic." - kind of memory in their heads... If I were Vesemir I would be like: "No harsh feelings girl I know you weren't yourself, but I trained all of those guys and I knew them since they were kids and these were literally some of the last witchers in this world, so please don't you ever come close to this place ever again."
IKR like even if they know she wasnt in control, when someone kills ur sons/brothers that you've known all ur life conciously or not, i imagine at THE VERY LEAST you would never want to see that person again.
It's such a shame that they hired such talentless writers to adapt this. I wasn't aware of what the dragon told them and what happened, Jesus, they are even starting to make this along the way.
lauren (((schmidt)))
What a bad writing when you cannot even be consistent with the BS you wrote yourself.
Lauren is to blame.
It doesn't matter who they hire, the political climate matters more than good writing.
@@Eth77930 it’s still understandable.Are you a professor?
Whenever you put clips of Ciri or Yen swearing Idk why but it makes me laugh 🤣 Largely cause it’s so out of character but it’s also so perfectly edited into your video
Lol.
My favorite one was:
“Fancy a f ______?”
@@babbaganush9659 true🤣🤣
"Fancy a fuck?" ..timing of that got me real good. I Sprayed weet-bix all over the monitor.
Though it's not so out of character for Ciri who would then get reprimanded by Yennefer, Geralt or Vesemir.
"Why even call this character Fringilla Vigo" - now that's a good question. One might ask it about basically any character in the show. Actually, why do you call it the Witcher in the first place? Is there any hidden reason?
I know I am going to be dubbed 'Captain Obvious' but... for promotion of course...
Eskel is the worst case. What difference would it have made for them to give him any other name?
@@Attilablabla I think Eskel is happy to be dead. They did far worse with the other more important characters..
@@pavel6688 🤣 oh man. Well you may be right 😅
yeah. they want the witcher name but they didn't want to write a witcher show (because they wanted to get on the GoT express as well) so they have to use the names and locations
This is video was originally a little longer but I honestly thought I've complained enough throughout the series so I shortened it a bit :)
I like hearing you complain. It’s way more entertaining to me 🤣
I do quite enjoy your complaining lol
will you watch the third season?
i still haven't decided, really pushed through this season
You could put it in another video with just all you're complaints
Totally deserved complaints and it’s good to know everyone else has as many issues with it as I do lol
This episode basically blew up my hopes for the Witcher Netflix. It felt so contrived and “Hollywood,” as if they needed to rush and get in all the Easter eggs, like seriously we have Emhyr, Eredin and the wild hunt, ciri exploring new worlds, epic fight between faceless witchers and generic dinosaur creatures, the main character geralt taking down a beast twice the size but solo.
They showed basically all the endgame twists from the books in one episode, that only means we’ll probably have more original writing from Netflix as the series progresses.
I don’t know, I’m just so disappointed, even after season 1 I felt some hope because it resembled the books If you squinted, before they had the excuse of cramming 2 books into 8 episodes. Blood of elves should have been great on television but they ruined it, threw the source material in the fire and rewrote everything. Pointless references that make no sense like the “dear friend” thing, just ugh.
I wonder how Andrzej Sapkowski (books writer) feels about this
@@Ryder056 as I understand it he doesn’t care, and even if he did he has no power. They don’t even consult him I believe.
@@Ryder056 the bloke doesn't care. He just wants his paycheck
Once a decent witcher show is released it will certainly be neither a netflix nor an amazon prime production. I hope the day will come
Don't listen to the other commenter here. It has already been announced that the direction of the writing of the next season is up to sapkowski. He will be involved as much as he wants to be which can be nothing but positive.
I just feel sadness.. This show could have been much better..
The whole series is a wasted pontential. I am not sure I will able to watch another season from "this".
The outro is gold.
Yeah, I felt hollow inside at the end. Actors are competent, visual effects guys are competent, stunt performers are quite excellent, etc. But the writing is letting the show down big time. They have the budget to make solid gold, but they've failed more than they've succeeded, especially in season 2 past the first episode.
It is even more heartbreaking if you go back and read blood of elves
I'm sad you didn't mention that after what Yen was attempting to do Geralt would have killed her, full stop end of story. At least if they made him accurate to himself
I mean he said he would last episode but... yeah :(
@@xLetalis It's like they forgot how angry Geralt was at Yennefer in last episode and at the start of this one and suddenly for fuck all reasons Geralt is fine with her. But yea the biggest insult was definitely Yennefer claiming that she suddenly feels some sort of motherly love towards Ciri and is somehow good fit for that position after being willing to sacrifice her last episode. Like god what?!
They can't even stay consistent with their own writing -__-
@@KanohiVahi I literally have no idea what you're talking about. Geralt is still extremely mad at the beginning of the last episode he even shows it very clearly, barely giving Yen time to explain herself and refusing her help. In fact, even after she sacrifices herself, he is still mad at her and says he doesn't forgive her. Also, considering that Yen didn't sacrifice Ciri and recognized the error of her ways bc of her love for Ciri, I fail to see how it is an "insult" or "inconsistency". Yes, she intended to sacrifice her when she was desperate, she started caring about her so she gave up on that idea and now she intends to protect her to make it up to her. What's not clicking?
@@jjnull8108 yes in a world with robots that all would make sense. But they are supposed to be human beings. I don‘t know about you. But if somebody literally trys ro murder my child i don‘t suddenly go „Yeah you can have her and teach her stuff cuz i don‘t know anybody else that can teach her that“
You don‘t come back from that. That is a end ofthe line szenario. You simply cut that person away from your life.
@@TjderGeraet See in a world where all Yen did was try to sacrifice Ciri that all would make sense. But that's not all that happened in the show.
Yen was going to sacrifice her due to desperation but actually didn't last minute. She also sacrifices herself for Ciri at the end, basically giving her life for hers. There's also the fact that only Yennefer was capable of teaching Ciri so far.
This is just my opinion but the show, especially season 2, feels like a generic American fantasy that is piggybacking off the success of CDPR without matching the quality. The producer knows that the popularity and huge success of the existing Witcher IP is obviously going to greatly appeal to Netflix, and that they gave her the opportunity to create the show because of this success. But she also wants to pursue her own ideas which don’t necessarily fit with Sapkowski’s books, despite how much she claims to love his writing. So we are left with a show that is Witcher in name only.
That’s why so many of the characters are written _out of character_ in the show (Yennefer, Fringilla, Eskel etc). They could have added new characters, like Dara, if it was so important. But it’s a way to capitalise on familiar names that fans recognise, to prove that this is still a Witcher adaptation, whilst pursuing an entirely different, non-canon narrative that appeals more to the producers than actual fans.
Well so much for literally all of Ciri's story in Lady of The Lake. How do they add so much filler and disregard so much core material at the same time? I am genuinely confused how they plan to adapt the other books.
Also, do the writers not understand that someone rapidly switching between doing nothing wrong and being pure evil *isn't* nuanced?
Well, they don't plan to adapt it (as we already saw for 2 seasons) , I am sure the writers think they can write better than old man sapkowski
It is not about them adding filler and disregarding core material. They are not even capable of building up the alternative plot that they built in the 1st season and the Witcher anime movie. They are literally going back and forth between original content and alternative content. The entire season 2 feels disjointed. Flashbacks and recalls to stuff that were not said or were not even presented. On top of that they ruined ruined entire character developments, even core characters. At this point the entire Witcher Netflix series is BIG mess. I just could not keep up with it anymore towards the end.
In regards to the second part of your comment, the writing feels utterly soulless to me. It seems the writers fail to understand what makes humans human and what we can connect with and relate to as an audience.
@@jackbeckett2838 That's to be expected. These Hollywood elites are completely removed from the rest of the world and they think the whole world is exactly the way they live in their bubble.
Like they're rushing to get to the videogame content to fuck that up, too.
Kind of a sidenote but I really appreciate these reviews you've been doing, very great and detailed work, plus very entertaining.
Let's hope season 3 is more serious overall and actually makes sense while staying true to the books.
Loving the content bro!
Thank you :) I'm not sure what to hope for really, we all thought S2 will be better ;[
@@xLetalis true that, S2 completely went off track, really sad.
Henry's passion is our only hope I'm afraid😂
I personally won't watch it, I'm done with this show and it annoys me that we won't have a legitimately good The Witcher show in years because of this crap
How is that a sidenote? haha
I don’t want to sound like a pessimist, but I don’t see this show ever staying true to the books, I think this season completely ruined those chances
I love how It seemed you were running out of patience for the bad writing in each episode 🤣 i Don't know how they managed to do this so badly. I mean, they had a story to base It on, but it's not just that - it's about general rules of writing, which they utterly ignored. I watched half this season and couldn't stand It anymore. Your reviews are the only good thing out of this show, and certainly MUCH better than any of the episodes 🤣
I stopped watching when Geralt said, "Where the fuck are my swords?"
Huh? uh uh...NOPE!
I could only take so much of that shite. I've enjoyed these reviews from xLetalis though. Watching vicariously through him was only slightly less arduous than what I would've endured otherwise. But, by the sound of his pained observations, not by very much.
lol, Oh and the..."Fancy a fuck?" bit. Damned funny bastard made me spit Wheet-Bix all over my monitor and shit.
I love how you try to make sense of the story, like the deathless mother being an elf, but I feel like they 100% didn‘t think about any of that and just tried to have a cool looking scene
ikr I was kind of amazed at what explanation xLetalis came up with. So amazed I doubted the writers thought that far ahead.
Exactly, I have mentioned it already at previous reviews: Where I think "this is just total BS, makes no sense at all", xLetalis comes with the only far-fetched explanation that could somehow work. I think he gives the script-writers more credit than they deserve.
As someone who didn't read the books i tought Vereena was possesed by the deathless mother too and that it s why they had that scene were before she dies she warns her: it will turn against you too and Ciri is wearing that dress she gave her while beeing possesed...woops
Hold up now, were any of the events of Blood of Elves actually in the season?
I mean I guess Ciri training at Kaer Morhen, but since that could easily be repeated, even improved with stronger bonds between the witchers and Ciri (despite her having killed half of them), this means that they could literally pick of season 3 like it happens after the last episode of season 1 and still have the storyline somewhat make sense.
This shows how fricking useless this season was, it has absolutely no impact on the story or the characters whatsoever and can be completely skipped when it comes to making the next one
Honestly this season was so godawful that I wish they'd actually done that and pretend this entire thing didn't happen, though I suppose as long as Lauren runs the circus I shouldn't expect any writing decisions this good
I frankly don't even know what's worse, the fact that this terrible show makes the people who could've been new fans of the universe, but are actually capable of noticing it's flaws look at The Witcher with not much love (basically the show repelling potential fanbase/degrading The Witcher's quality in many people's eyes) or the fact that there are people who enjoy it and fuel the entire thing by bumping up the showrunner's opinion about herself and the series (after the scene where they basically told the audience to fuck off by saying "if they don't like it they can try and make something better" I have no doubts she's the kind of person to only look at the positive reviews, thus thinking everything is fine with the show and we're just a small hateful bunch of haters)
Oh boy, I wrote a lot
Yes, long post but I agree with everything.
Ciri's training, her relationship with Geralt and other witchers? Close to non-existent or terribly twisted. Her sister-like bond with Triss? Gone. Her initially complicated mother-daughter relationship with Yen? Also gone. Ciri's mage training? Reduced to an accidental teleportation to the other side of a river (WTF?). World-building? Gone. Character-building? Either gone, or characters that are completely inconsistent between episodes or even single scenes. Humour? Gone, replaced by f* f* f*... It is pointless to continue.
Netflix removed the wisdom and reverence of Vesemir and instead replaced it with bitterness and obstinance. While the books didn't explore his character as much as the games, they did do a decent job of implying his gravity. This episode was shameful all around and has more than confirmed my suspicions about this series.
They did that to everyone. Vesemir? A joke. Yennefer? Mentally unstable teenager instead of confident smart sorceress and mother to Ciri. Mother Nenneke? No relationship with Geralt whatsoever. The witchers? They did not know much about bringing up an early-teenage girl, but they certainly loved her and tried their best, within the limits of their knowledge. And they could actually fight monsters.
Bah, this is just a disgrace. Maybe Henry can convince someone to re-shot this BS it once it's over.
I'm terribly sorry Letalis, but I don't think I'll manage to suffer through your reviews of season 3. Not because they are bad, far from it! It's just... It's bad enough to see the franchise butchered like this, but no humor can cover for the fact that some untalented nobody got handed millions to adapt a story, decided they could "make it better" and then churned out this turd - to the acclaim of countless mouth-breathing troglodytes.
The whole series is an insult to not just the Witcher, but to good writing in general.
Your comment cured my depression! :D
Entirely true, man.
I can't believe that Sapkowski was dissatisfied by the games and he's totally okay with this fuckfest? It looks like money means more to him than his own saga.
Agreed, disregarding any money, with the Netflix series comes more book sales from the exposure, and the number of books sold is probably important to him.
@@pusher4814 still respect lore more than the show
@@pusher4814 Storywise Witcher 1 was very good too. You're speaking from a gamer's perspective, gameplay and all.
I absolutely hate the "you just hate it, because it isn't like the books" excuse, people always use when defending the show. We aren't complaining because they changed stuff from the books, we're complaining because the changes they made didn't improve the story, it just made it WORSE. For god's sake, the video games are completely made up but almost everyone loves them, hell some fans even love them more than the books.
The ending is basically The Witcher: Friendship is magic.
😂😂😂😂
I remember that in the books there was this scene that almost made me cry of how powerful it felt. It was when Ciri said that she wants to be called Cirilla of Vengerberg, daughter of Yennefer. The relationship between them developed to the level, where Ciri would be proud to be Yen’s daughter. And I can’t express how sad and angry it makes me feel when I see the relationship between these characters in the series. I can’t even imagine this type of bond between them. I mean, one episode Yen wants to sacrifice Ciri for power and the next one she’s ready to sacrifice herself for the girl? She’s so consistently inconsistent that I just can’t stand her at this point. And Yennefer is my favorite character in the books. On the bright side, we have Henry Cavill who is trying his best and your reviews... so that’s something good about this show
:(
Fringilla is one of my favorite characters from the books, but now, in this, she's just... Unbearable and boring. The female characters in the books were smart, intelligent, driven, had their own plots and goals and desires, but the series portrays them all as highly emotional women who have no self control. It's saddening, really.
✨feminism✨
✨feminism✨
Fringilla is one of your favorite characters from the books?! Lol, she's barely in it and all she does is delay Geralt by having sex with him. Odd character to be a favorite. No judgement. Just expressing surprise.
@@roachmonk she's more complex than that, but you're right in general. She was forced by other sorceresses to have sex with Geralt and she slowly felt in love with him and she basically saved his life by giving him a medallion.
@@michachojnacki8447 Pretty much saved the whole trio of them... but she did spy on Geralt and he was right to not trust her with Vilgefortz' castle's location.
Great work reviewing the season! I thought it had some good moments like Rience and Nivellen. But the thing about the bond between characters being forced is so frustrating. The book spends so much time on making sure that their bond is earned and even Lauren said that family as a theme is the main reason she wanted to do the show. How did it go so wrong?
Well the theme is there, it's just very badly written.
She said what she needed to get the job. She either doesn’t care about the books or is spineless and willing to allow the original material to be warped out of familiarity.
Check her CV and those of her writers. How could it work is a question you should ask yourself
Because "family" is the best excuse to escape blame.
Because she is an untalented writer.
Hisrich said, that Baba Yaga is there just so they can have a big bad guy of the season. She was afraid that the watchers wont care if there wont be enough action and the easiest way for them was creating new bad guy for one season to get an action climax.
She also complained that Blood of Elves is hard to adapt and there isn't much action, which is true, but there is so much character development and estabilishing relationships that she ignored for the sake of few action sequences, that weren't even that good. Truly a shame.
I know how this is going to sound, and I mean no disrespect to the actors playing Istredd and Fringilla, they are doing a good job with the script they have been given, but it is my personal opinion that the showrunner took very minor characters, cast actors of color, and turned the very minor characters into very major ones for reasons most of have our suspicions of. That's not horrible by itself (slightly annoying), what is bad is that they are disregarding most of the story as it was written, and on top of that the story they have given us is vastly inferior to the written one and that is terrible. And that has nothing to do with any characters being black, white, green, whatever.
This season left me with almost no connection to the characters and what happens to them. Unlike the books and the games where certain events to characters took an actual emotional toll on you.
Oh my, I cannot help myself but I want to scream from pain any time when they try to push so hard to push Dara character into the plot... I want to scream to screen. Just forget about him! He is totally irrelevant. Nobody cares!
@@andyhx2 lol, he's way more interesting and a much better actor than Francesca Findebar. I'd much prefer to have the whole elf plot told from his perspective. Likewise I'm so glad Istredd is still around, there's so much potential there with a unique perspective potential for drama with Geralt and Yennefer, plus he's a good actor and really sells the character - loved all his scenes! Recurring characters are good, they allow actual character development rather than just stereotypes dropped in and then discarded.
Fingilla's actress unfortunately is terrible, and her character doesn't make any sense.
I mostly agree with that. Most of the bad stuff is their own addition and the rest is the being unable to read the books.
However, although I would have prefered them to follow the books, I feel like the way they used Istredd was well done : Geralt wasn't investigating on who is Ciri or why Rience wants to find her, so they had the Historian character do it instead.
There are several things they did to tie up loose ends that I found not bad. For example Yennefer burning Rience without magic, the way Geralt saying Yennefer is his *dear friend* was not as good as the letters, but it conveyed the same awkwardness and Geralt's inability to handle his relationship with Yennefer.
Among many other things, the reason why mother-daughter bond between Ciri and Yen will forever be unbelievable is because of their almost non-existing age difference. Ciri is too old and Yennefer is too young. Can we also talk about how Geralt simply forgot that Yen was trying to sacrifice Ciri like 5 minutes ago??? I honesty don't even want to comment further because this entire season was a joke. I felt like script was written by a 13 year old under the influence of Mortal Combat.
Lol.. yennefer is 109+ years old. What your actually saying is that you perceive the actors real age as the narrative age. And want to fix that by CHANGING the narrative. Which i think would be bad. If you think she doesnt portray her age well then that is just criticism of her acting but your focused on looks.
This show ain’t even based on the books it’s just fanfic garbage
My words exactly. But there's always idiots who would defend this garbage and say how it's better than the games and whatnot. Hell, even The Hexer from 2002, which had a really low budget, is still better than whatever this is.
It's extremely weird how in the beginning of the episode Yennefer is yelling "Geralt! Geralt!" while they're riding on horseback as if they JUST took off seconds ago, not days ago.
What are they doing?!
I do really agree on Fringilla being a completely different character. It makes no sense to catapult her to a main role when she’s really not. This episode made me mad I kept screaming at my husband that Vesemir and Yennifer would never hurt her. 😡 I understand they have to add more action and stuff for tv but they really went out there with all the added stuff. We shall see where it’s going
I can relate to you on this and I had two relatives to watch this show with me. What makes me sad is they keep comparing this show to the game of thrones. I kept explaining to them the things that happened in the books to prove that the witcher is actually a good story.
Haha I was doing the same thing to my wife
ikr. i was watching this with my boyfriend and i couldn't stop complaining. all people in the whole series, except for geralt, seemed like they wanna hurt ciri, physically or mentally, which is totally bullmanure.
Why is it that it takes the other Witchers forever to kill two basilisks while juiced on potions, but it takes Geralt 10 seconds with no potions to kill the big boss basilisk? The whole power of love theme at the end of this episode just makes zero sense for the Witcher world really.
Season 2 was such a disappointment. Watching episode 1 my hopes were high, Henry was even better as Geralt, Ciri and Geralt were finally together and interacting well, and they stayed fairly faithful to source material, that’s all I needed to enjoy the show. But then the rest of the season happened. Netflix yeeted the book story line out the window, and did whatever they wanted, and the few points they kept from the books were significant dumbed down and oversimplified. I was willing to give season 1 grace for its faults, after all the show was trying find it’s footing, and most shows have a rougher first season, but I can’t do that for season 2. I don’t think I’ll be watching season 3, I want the Witcher we know, not what ever Netflix churned out and just slapped the title on.
I completely agree
Cheers to that
Same here.
"What the fuck" is a pretty good way to summarize this entire... er... "adaptation". Thanks for the reviews and the laughs!
I'm so happy I didn't waste my time watching season 2. I'm 1000% more entertained watching your reviews of each episode.
There must be better written fan-fiction than this thing out there, more deserving of becoming a tv show. How on earth--who do they know, that they got funding for this catastrophe?
Chances are the execs who signed off on it don't know a thing about the Witcher franchise other than it makes a lot of money. And that is the entertainment industry in a nutshell.
@@BL00DYME55 wouldn't the industry be more interested in investing in good writers? So they can get more return? They are doing a bad job adapting the original material, they write really bad scripts and generally poor dialogue. I don't think that is the entertainment industry that is making dark fantasy today--think of GOT, for instance. Look at their awards list. Why GOT worked and TWN is not working? Writing. Pacing. Dialogue. They are not expanding the universe correctly (as very well explained by xLetalis).
"There must be better written fan-fiction"
Ironically, there is
There is, actually. A collection of short stories loosely related to the main plot called "Fangs and Claws" but with more sense and logic than this Netflix monster
I am so glad it has been throughly pointed out that Netflix ruined Vesemir 🥺. So I know I wasn’t just being picky. We have crappy Netflix Vesemir trying to turn Ciri into a Witcher then trying to kill her and we have < video game hero Vesemir sacrificing his life for Ciri 😭.
All I can say is the way you come up with possible explanations almost makes me hope the writers actually had the same train of thought. But yeah. Just full of disappointments. Cool to look at; leaves nothing to hold on to. They might as well just go even more ridiculous next season. They might just hit on something accidentally.
P.S. I can't not mention how they butchered the Geralt-Ciri-Yen plot. My biggest disappointment in the show.
20:11 Perfect Netflix correctness in it's full glory : We've got: Asian girl, black girl, Norn elf, arabian guy, white guy and white girl. That's how I imagined Witcher when I was reading/playing. xD
I saw that episode and went
WHAT TA F*CK?
The Wild Hunt is already revealed as space elves instead of having their proper Wraith-like forms to have the Aen Elle reveal later, and Emhyr (played by a pretty boy no less) is openly admitting his relation to Ciri, destroying two of the series biggest twists in one episode. All while further disrespecting the Witchers and Kaer Morhen, reducing them to bumbling, inept Redshirts and likely eliminating Emhyr's, the Lodge's, the Aen Elle's and Vilgefortz's evil plots to impregnate Ciri and make them more sympathetic than they should be. Because we all know evil villains would never cross revolting immoral lines or anything, they are known for being progressive and politically correct. This is about the level of respect Lauren Hissrich and the other woke, talentless hacks she's hiring through pure nepotism have for this property. Hurry up already, CDPR. Continue the franchise.
OK. The way the possessed Ciri kills sleeping witchers is ridiculous to me! Makes witchers seem very weak!
They are in the show. A bunch killed by a teenage girl, a bunch killed by two dino chickens. Then they're like a hundred year old super humans, but can't resist bullying a young girl and can't start a winter without an orgy inviting a bunch of stangers to their hidden castle. And then a fire mage just teleports in and out of their castle while a witcher has a heart attack from his medallion humming. I'm surprised they've lasted this long 😄
@@Evija3000 Perfect review my friend! hahaha
I'd like to say that I'm fascinated by the way you edit your videos, every single second is consistent with what you're saying and a lot of times I burst into laughter with the clips you include as a joke or with an underlying sarcasm.
I wish the producers and writers of The Witcher watched your reviews as they seem so eager to "respond to fan concerns and open up dialogue to improve the show." It would be interesting to see their reactions and responses when they´re presented with well-founded and respectful opinions like yours. I think I can speak for a lot of fans when I say you really represent our thoughts on this project that, unfortunately, hasn't lived up to the quality and magic the source material offers.
I've seen some interview with the creator Lauren Hissrich where she "addresses" fans' concerns about the series in the past, and all her explanations and justifications for the choices/changes they made in the series are just laughable. So if she actually saw xLet's reviews, I sincerely doubt her reaction and response would clear things up. Just like in the past, should would likely get defensive and give us some narrow-minded answers or change the subject half way through the answer or something else along those lines.
I personally, already lowered my expectations for this show, and from now on will be watching it as a standalone rendition of the Witcher franchise that's very loosely based on the books. That's just to save me the frustration and disappointment in the future, so I can enjoy it like I enjoy an average mindless Hollywood adventure movie.
thank you :)
yen participation in the last fight: "jaskier, take this kidney to them its a plot device!" but actually does nothing
"im gonna spend the whole fight brewing a potion" that does nothing
amazing really
I cant describe it in any other way but i think the biggest problem with the show is that its to "american". When you read the books its clear that a slavic person (or at least a non anglo saxan european) has written them as a complex charakter novel. Their is no clear good and evil, every person feels at least ten diffrent emotions and behind each action is a motiv. But Hollywood shows cant have that. Everything has to be cristal clear and obvious, their has to be a good and a bad side. You need a few action seence and romance sprinkeled here and their so you audiance dont get bored and it shoud never be to complex. And of course some wokenes.
I wouldn't be so judgy about culture it arose from. There were many anglo-saxon writers with complex character novels. (At the very least well known like ASOIF or LOTR come to mind) Also I'd personally guessed if I wouldn't know that the author of the novels come from Celting background since a lot of mythology that inspires lore is from Celtic or Germanic mythology not only Slavic, the Elven language in books is basically Welsh too.
yeah, this tv series is a huge departure from the source material. I just can't get over the fact that it is possible to change characters, their motivations, amazing dialogues, intriguing plot and all heartbreaking or lovely scenes that sapkowski putted on paper. Someone will say it is adaptation so things like this happens, but in reality close to everything is wrong, "upside down". The script is inconsistent and simply stupid. episodes of second season should be more like fundaments for building soft and touchy emotions between main characters (father/mother figures for lost and overwhelmed by
harsh reality little girl), but instead we got what? action-packed "something", drained off them. blind folded re-creation of a close to perfect story. in my opinion even with bad factors they created - elves, politics, vilgefortz, witchers (netflix vesemir will hunt me for ages), yennefer, nenneke, fringilla, francesca, deathless mother, nilfgard, human bad others GUT.... this list could be long enough to fill my room, so i will cut it here :) - there was a slightly chance for a big improvment at the begining of production; changed age of ciri/meeting in the past and why editing this is a ground shaking move. Mainly because of forced way she is connected with geralt. In the books you just fall in love in emotional sequence when they interrupt each other day in the wild and dangerous place called brokilon forest, situations such as a fairy tale to sleep. It was so moving... in one sentence whole background of their feelings is scratched. Netflix version lacks of that. Everytime they talk to each other it's just empty words. No matter how much they will expand that, it won't evolve to something extraordinary. Next 8 hours of watchtime is wasted, there is no bond between them. Sadly at the same time it is a key component of future events flow. Now i can't imagine that im supposed to feel any emotion about journey of rescue with epic company - milva, regis etc. or fight in the thanedd coup finale. Without this relation the book can't exist, show either.
ughh, it is completly messed up, fingers crossed for hbo "the last of us" - this story has many similarities to witcher plot so maybe it will fill my pain a bit and break vision of bad adaptations nowadays.
It is what it is man
Oh wow, I didn't catch the inconsistency in regard to the golden dragon lines. The writers are so thoughtless they don't even know what they wrote.
I really hope Henry Cavill gets more impact on the direction and next season is actually the Blood of Elves/Time of Contempt adaptation we expected to get this season.
I’m just so frustrated because I absolutely love Vesemir but his writing made no damn sense this whole season. Like where is book Vesemir or game Vesemir? I don’t think he would have ever tried to kill Ciri and so many of his decisions made no sense like trying to turn Ciri into a Witcher without talking to Geralt. I swear each episode I was more and more disappointed. My only comfort is that I’m not alone because a lot of us feel like our favorite characters have been done really dirty.
Book Vesemir doesn't do anything, he speaks like 5 sentences in the entire series. Peopl love Vesemir from the game that's it.
What I truly hate about the dialogue is how modern it sounds, someone should be put on a pyre for that blunder
You right the dialogue of this season is pathetic is written by people who writing scenario for first time, she's remind me game of thrones seasons 5,6,7,8 dialogue
@@restitudororbis8235 it's actually amazes me how people who never wrote anything significant in their lifes can open the book of well known beloved author of bestseller who created one of the best fantasy universes in the world and say "i will fix it"
It's incredible how a video game managed to do a way better job in that regard.
Netflix Witcher series, is the definition of the old say. I'm not mad or upset just disappointed
well im mostly disappointed, but also mad and upset that i got promised that this would be an adaptation. a very mixed up feeling of negative emotions bc i was quite hyped and even after a meager season one i still saw potential (mostly due to henry cavill). now im dead inside...
At this point, it would have made more sense to have changed the name of the series and the name of the characters. Serie's Yennefer isnt even close to the real Yennefer. This Fringila is a completly different character (not only the huge difference in appearence), Vesemir is a disappointment and the plot choices are just ridiculous (Yennefer is an elf???). This series is simply NOT The Witcher
With that being said, these are great reviews. Looking forward to season 3 just to watch them
It bothers me that Ciri seems to be quite capable of using magic already when in the book she had to undergo a lot of training to even be able to draw energy from water veins. In season 1 the mages also had to get the energy they needed for incantations from other objects (Fringilla with the stone and the flower), just like in the books, but now in season 2 it seems to be irrelevant suddenly. In the books Ciri had to practice every day to get something as simple as the hand gestures right and now she can almost build bridges with nothing but her mind.
Yennefers lessons in the books are so important for her relationship with Ciri, I don't know how they will make up for it since they decided to remove it entirely. I hope we get at least something alike in season 3.
I don't know how you felt about Emhir, but to me he just seemed laughable.
True
yeah... i think it was the way he edgily stared into the camera
Games covered him perfectly, netflix is a joke as always.
He had a very villain voice that I kinda liked. The rest seemed underwhelming so far.
Same
The very fact that in Netflix Witcher Vesemir was all too keen to kill Ciri just shows that the writers know nothing about the books or his character
I was really dissapointed about this season.
I still had hopes after the 1-st episode, but then everything didn’t go very well, although there were good moments.
I don’t argue, but they are awfully few, they don’t outweigh the minuses and I’m sad about this.
I want this show to be good, but some of the creators do not want to (although I'm sure there are people who care about what is happening)
For me the good moments after the first episode: some Geralt-Ciri interactions, Jaskier's spoon song, seeing a leshen. That's about it.
We’re just going to have to pretend that Yennefer isn’t directly responsible for killing most of the remaining witchers for the rest of the series, aren’t we?
0:25 Book readers for last 3 episodes.
Again, one of my biggest critiques (in terms of just the show as it's OWN entity) is there is no sense of competent coherent world-building whatsoever.
You very rightly bring up all the geography issues, but just to build on that.
What are the Northern Realms?
Where are they?
What are they like
Who are all the different rulers?
What makes Nilfgaard differ from these places?
And so forth.
I never get any sense of the world of the Witcher netflix, and it just seems to assume you know everything from the books or the games (and then tries to say it can be unfaithful because it's its own thing)
They even CHANGED the Henselt actor half way through this season so I can't even try and get who is who just from appearance!
As usual, stellar work getting through this and putting this videos together, XLetalis! Have a good one!
No, I'm serious... Can a *petition* start to fire whoever is writing this?
The books are incredible. It's unbearable to see how they're deliberately bastardizing this gem.
Ok, I was kinda joking... But apparently, this petition exists and it's called:
"Petition to dismiss Lauren Schmidt Hissrich from the position of showrunner of the Witcher".
Over 12K people signed it.
Honestly, I'm happy.
This series needs someone competent - she is not.
@@marinomele4575 Do you know of a single instance when petitions actually did anything? There have been petitions for almost every possible cause, and unfortunately nothing every comes off it.
D&D's writing can he considered legendary comared to this nonesense
Why does Emhyr announce that Ciri is his daughter when his whole thing is to marry her to put a baby in her?
Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy was a more faithful adaptation of its source material than the Netflix Witcher series.
And that's saying a lot!
Thank you XLetalis, I didn't have to waste my time watching the entire thing.
1:46 ah yes, the famous witcher red bull.
Legit can’t decide if yennefer or vesemir is a worse character in this season
Thank you for your Critique of these series analysis, it was awesome!
I agree with most of the points and arguments in general everything is to the point and fair!
I hope there will be a reviews season 3 too (and Blood Origin or other projects)
It’s okay Letalis, you never have to watch season 2 of The Witcher again
But then what will he cry about to his subs ?
Reminds me of the people who were hating the games cause they weren't true to the books.
@@yazi7790 games are true to the books lol
@@yazi7790 the games take place after the books and still managed to keep the spirit of the characters and actually expand them in a good way unlike the Netflix show.
@@tweetugwe1270 no.
Even Sapkowski says so, the guy who wrote the books.
But he too understands if the media change you can't expect the material to be the what you have come to expect of the previous ones.
We are coming mostly from first the games and then the books.
The show is already 2 layers deep in change of medias.
Now we don't like it cause we are used to the books and games.
It's natural for us to not like it.
But at the same time we should be mindful that other people do like the show especially new comers from the show.
Overall this show will only bolster the Witcher universe consumer domain which is good for even us nerds.
We don't need to belittle the show for every single thing.
If one want to convey something constructive criticism would be much more beneficial for the community and the show.
Despite what Dominic Toretto said, there is one thing stronger than family: my hatred of and disgust by Netflix and their poor, soy-infused excuse of a series about the Witcher
i am honestly scared for blood origins at this point
@@leamhnachd4579 Blood origins?
@@user-hd1ul6od2x the witcher blood origins, a prequel
@@leamhnachd4579 Honestly I'm not interested in it the slightest at this point and I don't want to again feel the same anger and frustration I felt over this season
@@hopethishelps91 If there’s going to be non-white actors in it, I’m not interested.
Honestly the best thing with this season was your videos about them. Thanks
The main reason i watched this season is because i wanted to be informed before watching these amazing reviews 😆
This show is just luaghable. I dont even want to hear about season 3 after this.
I said the same thing after watching the first season
Once again, I give credit to you for having the patience to watch this crap.
I think it was really counterproductive to the story. I was so angry at the fact they started killing off more witchers at the get-go. Like we already lost Eskel and even though they are "extras" it still is infuriating that they couldn't even fight back. Then the whole, love is what saves us as the end of the curse essentially is very Disney Brother's Grimm take on the witcher. Plus Vessimir as a mentor was really bad in this scene and even through it followed with the whole "We are the last witchers and I have to protect them" I doubt he would hurt Ciri.
They absolutely massacred all of Ciri's growth in Season 2 and sent her back to like S1E3 when all she wanted was to go back home when her new home is Kaer Morhen. Plus that whole body snatching thing is overly lazy and tropey, it has been done so many times in every YA fantasy it's lazy. Also the Wild Hunt's armor, yuck.
I havent seen this season, but I’ve read the whole series. I do not have the slightest clue on what the fuck is going on in this show. Like so much is changed here It’s more like a fanfiction
It's funny. Your reviews shed so much light for someone like me who's never read the books. Half the time I don't know what character's motivations are or what they're talking about. And this show expects to draw people that haven't read the books with its absolutely shoddy writing?
As someone who has only started reading the books after season 1 came out i have to say its really worth it. There are also audiobooks if you dont like reading. It's an amazing story and so much better than you could imagine from the show
The reality is that a lot of the casuals love this series. I have a lot of friends who haven't read the books or who are familiar with the games laud the greatness of this show.
Didn't watch any of it, but I love watching this dumpster fire intensify through your critique videos
i’m glad to see netflix adapted the fast travel post from the games
What a disaster this season was, here's hoping they improve in the future
I'm hoping that they just cancel it
@@fiel81 not enough, i hope they erase it from my memories as well as the internet...
I hope Henry Cavil apologises to all witcher fans then takes his sword and storms the Netflix server and hacks this miserable piece of garbage out of existence
@@carlschildhauer6889 Why would he apologise? He didn't write any of it, it's not his fault. He's a big fan of the books and games, but he's only an actor in the show. Doesn't have much say in the production.
@
fiel81 I don't want it to be cancelled. It's another Witcher related thing I can do. Even though it's far from being faithful to the books, at this point I've lowered my expectations enough that I can just enjoy it as a mindless Hollywood adventure flick loosely set in the same universe. They have some good looking monsters, and fights. I'll just have to turn off my brain when it comes to the story lol. If I want a good Witcher story, I'll listen to the audiobooks. If I want to actively immerse myself in the Witcher world, I'll play the games. And if I want some mindless Witcher action, I'll watch the netflix show. I'm the "cup half full" kind of person haha
can somebody show these videos to Lauren Hissrich? maybe she won't do the same mistakes in the next season....oh who am i kidding she probably will
"Aretuza: the adventures of Yennefer and Company" doesn't sound like a good show. I guess thank God i stopped at season one. The only good thing it brings is your videos.
Young sexy Emhyr showing up just to say that he's the one who ordered the elven baby killed is the most shoehorned piece of exposition I've seen in media. It comes out of nowhere. Emhyr is given little to no screen time or characterization, and then he just shows up to deliver this line and the audience is supposed to be shocked, but we don't know anything about him as a character, other than "he did it to find his daughter", which doesn't make a lot of sense either. I wasn't shocked, I was downright baffled. But it did make me laugh a lot, so props to the writers for that. It's so silly. Imagine playing HoS without meeting GoD at all, and then GoD shows up outta nowhere at the end of the story and he's like: "Haha you fools, I was behind this all along".
:D
Oh yeah, brain of a drowner and blood of ghoul dissolved in 90% vol alcohol. The best thing I've ever drunk.