The Witcher Season 1 Recap: What you need to know before watching Season 2
Season 2 of “The Witcher” will air on Netflix on Friday, December 17. It’s very good (this is our review), and it started right at the end of the first season. There is no time to jump this time.
Well, except for the time jump between the first season and now. Season 1 was released two years ago, at the time of the decline of “Before Times”. When you return to the world of monsters, prophecies, and Henry Cavill’s biceps, you will be a bit lost, which is forgivable. We have you. Before you dive into Season 2 of The Witcher, you need to know the following.
Super short review
Geralt is a witcher: a mutant who fights monsters for gold. He is the rude but secretly sweet type, who usually endures Jaskier’s abdominal pain, a bard who follows him to turn his adventure into a song, and Yennefer’s plan, a powerful witch who goes in and out of his story as she pursues her Own purpose.
The following is the basic sequence of events for the first season of “The Witcher”, omitting more details of Geralt’s personal adventures, focusing on the larger plot that will unfold in the second season:
🦔 Geralt saved a cursed knight, He reciprocated him with the “law of surprise,” a tradition that gave Geralt the right to obtain what the knight had but didn’t know he had. It turned out to be the daughter, Hililla, Princess of Sintra.
👧🏼 Despite the new connection between him and the unborn princess, and his friends warned him not to defy fate, Geralt left Sintra. Hilly’s parents were later killed, and she was raised by her grandmother Queen Karanthe.
đź—ˇAn expansionist empire named Nilfgaard (black armor, cult) ransacked Sintra and killed Queen Carrance and the rest of the family of Princess Hiri. However, Ciri used her uncontrollable mysterious, newly discovered power to escape and wandered around looking for the famous witcher Geralt, her grandmother told her to look for it.
🧙🏻‍♀️ Long before that moment (everywhere in the first season), Yennefer was an illegitimate child, taken away from an uncaring peasant family and trained as a witch in the cruel magic school Aretuza. Over the years, she and Geralt have had intermittent things (due to mutations and magic, the two will not grow old more or less), but their relationship may or may not be Geralt’s rescue of Yenifu The result of the wish comes from djinn, which is a fact that is not suitable for her.
🔥 When Nilfgaard marched northward, a large group of mages, including Yenif, decided to abandon their long-standing neutrality that had been arguing throughout the war and proceeded to defend. Fringilla is a sorcerer appointed to advise Nilfgaard, she chooses to fight for the empire. Yenifu became a Super Saiyan more or less, using illegal fire magic to burn the Nilfgaard army, preventing the advance.
👨‍👧 Geralt missed the fight, but eventually reunited with Hilly before the end of the season.
This is a lot of proper nouns.Let’s break it all down, starting from…
wizard
Geralt, our hero, is a demon hunter. They are humans (somewhat) voluntarily undergoing dangerous mutations and absorbing supernatural potions, giving them special powers, such as being able to see in the dark, so they have a pair of ghostly eyes. In this world, they are widely hated and distrusted, but they also play an important role as travel and free prey. You are spitting and yelling until someone has a banshee in the outhouse, and then they kneel in front of you with a coin in their hands. In Season 2, we will meet with some other witchers, including Geralt’s teacher Vesemir, and learn more about their history and training methods.
Wait, monster?
Yes, the scene is a dark fantasy with horror, ghosts and goblins inspired by myths haunt unlucky villagers in the countryside, vampires hiding in the sewers of big cities, and ordinary people who get up every day and choose to become bastards. “People are real monsters” is not the most anti-genre theme, but “The Witcher” takes it into some very interesting directions and uses it to produce huge effects.
You also have so-called ancient races, they are your Lord of the Rings standard, just like dwarves and elves. However, they cannot coexist peacefully with human beings. They were persecuted, and some even joined guerrilla resistance organizations. These wooden revolutionaries are not an important part of the first season, but please pay close attention to them. I have a feeling that they will soon become very important.
Nilfgaard and the Northern Kingdom
The main political conflict that defined most of the wizarding world took place between the Nilfgaard Empire and the Northern Kingdom. Nilfgaard is reminiscent of the Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages. They really like black, they like to go to war, and stand against the torch in the rain at night. They have recently begun to conquer the Northern Kingdom-a group of loosely connected and culturally similar feudal territories, where most of the actions took place-for some reason, and the “Nords” did not care much about them. However, there are some nuances here, because they have at least less prejudice against groups such as elves and wizards. At least when it benefits them.
magician
People who can perform magic are rare but prominent in the wizarding world, and can be called wizards or sorcerers or any other similar things. Some applications of magic, such as a sign used by a wizard to fire or push an enemy hard, can be taught like dancing or baking pies. But only a few people are born with the ability to do things, such as teleporting or catching lightning in a bottle. The ambitious Yenifu of Wengerburg, Geralt’s intermittent lover, was the main point of our contact with that world in the first season, although we also met some of her colleagues and classmates, such as the brave Triss Merigod and Fringeira of Nilfgard.
These talented few people study in magic academies, which are a bit unlike private boarding schools. If you fail the final exam, you are more likely to turn into an eel and use it as a battery. Aretuza is the key school in the first season. The ruthless Tissaia de Vries teaches Yennefer spells, some difficult life lessons and other hot girl shit. As the war with Nilfgard heats up, the mages find themselves in an uncomfortable situation because they have political connections on both sides to test their loyalty to each other, but vowed to remain neutral.
feature
Another big problem that we have not yet solved is the young girl Shiri, whom the Nilfgaards are very interested in, and the reason may soon become clearer. She is the daughter of Pavitta, the princess of the Kingdom of North Sintra, and Donny the Hedgehog, who is unpopular at her lover’s family gatherings. Hilly’s grandmother, Queen Carrance, was about to execute him, and Geralt stepped in and invoked a cultural custom called the “Law of Surprise”. This resulted in him being owed to Duny’s eldest son, like the villain in a fairy tale, and linked the fate of Geralt and Hiri – even though they didn’t actually meet until the end of the season, and Hiri fled Nifoga many years later. German.
She has some special abilities that are not a mage or a demon hunter, such as being able to scream and create earthquakes, which she doesn’t really understand. Nilfgard seemed to be bent on catching her, part of the reason has not been revealed. She will begin training as a wizard in the second season.
Battle of Sok Mountain
Much of the first season was spent preparing for this key event in the Nilfgaardian conflict, where most of our main characters met at a major turning point in favor of the Northern Kingdom. With the help of the initially reluctant wizards, Tamoria, Kodwin, Redania, and the Kingdom of Aden united to prevent Nilfgaard’s offensive and put an end to what would become known as the First Northern War. Things have kept their independence… temporarily. This also marked a split between the caster team, because Fringeira decided to stand with her fellow Nilfgard instead of her colleagues, and the wizard Wilgerforz changed his position in the middle of the battle.
What should we do now?
Geralt and Ciri finally found each other, and they will head to the wizard fortress in Kyle Morhan, where Ciri can start her training. However, Nilfgaard never stopped looking for her. Or want to conquer the whole damn world.
It is said that the second season is mainly based on the novel “Elven Blood”, telling about the aftermath of the first Northern War, continuing conflicts between mages, prophecies that may involve Xili, political differences between various northern monarchs, and guerrillas. The rise of the team Scoia’tael-Elves and other marginal races began to strengthen their movement against humans. The beginning of Hilly’s wizard training will be a major plot point, as well as the ongoing complex relationship between Geralt and Yenifu, who have been together and broke up at least once.
(If you are interested in these books, please go to our wizard book reading order guide.)
toss a coin
Oh, we can’t leave here without mentioning Jaskier. He is Geralt’s bold bard partner and the author/performer of the number one hit song Toss A Coin to Your Witcher in 2019. He and Geralt did not break up in the best possible way, but it seems that he is doing well to himself and has become a rock star in the Middle Ages during this period-mainly talking about the glorified story of his time with the famous wizard . However, the two have not yet seen each other’s last side. Although he usually does not directly participate in big politics or world-changing prophecies, he provides a relevant perspective for ordinary people to witness such epic events.