SPOILER ALERT: The following review contains details and spoilers from Netflix's The Witcher Season 1.
Wanting to have your own Game Of Thrones isn't as big of a priority as it once was thanks to the poor reception for the craptacular Season 8, but a ton of networks still want an epic swords and sorcery series to call their own. This is especially true for streaming platforms, as Amazon is going big with its future Lord Of The Rings show, while Netflix has 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Witcher, which touts the most rece👍nt former Superman as its lead.
Like a lot of people, I became a fan of The Witcher through the excellent video games from CD Projekt Red and not the long-running series of novels from author Andrzej Sapkowski. While the games draw a lot of inspiration from those books, they also chart their own course through the Witcher mythos. This adaptation is more inspired by the works of Sapkowski, but even if you only know this world by means of controlling Geralt and playing Gwent, you should still be able to see where the story is going. If this first episode is any indication, this could verꩵy well end up being a show worthy of the Butcher Of Blaviken.
Starting Off With A Bang
The series starts exactly how it should: Geralt fighting a giant monster to the death. He and a pretty good-looking kikimora do battle in a swamp, and while I don't necessarily think this production is getting a massive HBO-sized budget, the special effects and fight choreography still look great, violent, and legit. This is probably the best way to show how Geralt makes his living, and the scene is capped off with a nice display of Geralt's pragmatic nature, as he comes upon a wounded baby deer after the beast is slain. W🐼hen asked later if he wants breakfast, he replies that he had already eaten some venison.
One of the most pressing concerns of Netflix's The Witcher series was whether or not Henry Cavill could pull off the role. The Geralt of the games is a grizzled, dry-witted, stoic🐈 man who hesitates to take sides or make friends. He simply wants to do his job and move on, until he's forced against his will into political events beyond his control.
This is only the first episode, but so far Cavill is doing a pretty solid job with his portrayal of the White Wolf. He's a bit more of a pretty boy then yo💜u ⛦might have wanted from a live-action Geralt, but he seems to have a good grasp on the character going by his mannerisms and cold facial expressions. He does try a little too hard to adopt the gravelly-voiced, loner persona, but the moments where it cracks and he lets out a sardonic quip show that there's real potential for Cavill to carry this show.
His end of the plot in this episode resembles something that likely could have made for an interesting side quest in one of the games. Geralt arrives in Blaviken - so you can already predict that some butchering is about to go down - where a wizard named Stregobor wants Geralt to kill a supposedly cursed princess. Meanwhile, the princess herself - named Renfri - wants him to kill the very same wizard because he ruined the regal life she should have had by declaring her cursed an♐d banishing her. It's surprisingly complicated as both s𒀰ides are questionable in terms of their morality, what with Stregobor living in a sleazy tower full of magically conjured nude women and Renfri running around with a vicious gang of bandits.
The culmination of this storyline leaves you wondering whether Geralt made the right decision, while also setting up a pretty great reason for him to be even more curmudgཧeonly and surly when he eventually meets up with the rest of the main cast. I was quite impressed by the shades of grey displayed here, but that being sai🍃d, if we spend several episodes with Cavill continually barking that he's not a hero, that could grow old fast.
Ciri-ously Intrigued
The other side of "The End's Beginning" takes us to the kingdom of Cintra where we're introduced to Princess Cirilla, aka Ciri, played by Freya Allan. We first see her playing with some common street kids, immediately showing us that she's going to be an Arya Stark-like tomboy member of the royal family. She's soon found by the royal guard and taken back to the palace where she stands behind her grandmother Queen Calanthe as she knights various soldiers, and trades sarcastic barbs with the rogueish King Eist. Soon after, it's revealed that the armies of their southern neighbor, Nilfgaard, are planning a full-scale attack on Cintra, and needless to say🙈, things get real bloody real fast.
Similarly to Cavill, it's too early to say for sure if Allan is perfectly cast as Ciri. Even though a lot of her role essentially follows the petulant, rebellious young teen archetype, I thought she did a splendid job of making Ciri likable enough that you were concerned foꦉr her safety when things start to fall apart in Cintra. I'm hoping that she won't fall into the trap of being the annoying "I am the Queen and you shall do as I command" type of character, but Allan seems like a very strong actor, so hopefully, my fears are unfounded.
So Far, So Good
If this pilot is any indication, The Witcher isn't going to have the same slow pace that the early seasons of Game Of Thrones had. This is just the first episode, and already we get a monster fight, some Witcher sword combat, a massive scale army clash with plenty of death and dismemberment, and tons of nudity. We also get plenty of story set-up for the future. While Geralt's plot is just there to introduce us to him and see why he📖's so grouchy all the time, Ciri is given the bulk of the big reveals. Her storyline sees Cintra all but burned to the 𒉰ground, Calanthe telling her to seek out Geralt, and the discovery that she has a Black Canary-esque sonic screaming power that may be the reason why the armies of Nilfgaard have attacked in the first place.
Overall, "The End's Beginning" got me invested in this world and I'm pretty intrigued so far. We now know who Geralt is, we know that Ciri needs to find him and that their destinies are tied together in some way. Although I have a feeling I'm going to have to s🗹tart keeping a tally of the word "destiny" in this show, as I swear it's uttered about ten times in this episode alone.
The next episode introduces us to the third main cast member, Yennefer. From there, we'll likely begin the journey towards the three of them finally meeting. Until that happens, I'm cautiously optimistic that The Witcher is yet another reason to keep my Netflix subscrip💛tion going.