The Witcher S01 E08 – Destiny time

Previously: We caught up the timelines, just in time for the finale.
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Much More

Marines: Geralt examines Ciri’s room and has feelings about not having be let to protect her.

Outside of the ruins of Cintra, Geralt arrives at the camp where Ciri spent some time with Cintran refugees. There is a man there, hauling around the bodies. Geralt thinks he’s a grave robber, but the man is actually just trying to give them proper burials. Something nefarious is buzzing around and Geralt suggests the man, Yurga, get the heck out of here. Yurga won’t leave, but Geralt has no such qualms about leaving both the corpses and the Good Samaritan.

Unfortunately, the nefarious buzzing around is actually a bunch of skeletal monsters that burst from the ground and attack Yurga. Geralt has returned though, hopped up on Witcher Herbs and Spices and fights the necrophages back. He tells Yurga to go home and this sweet man is still insisting he can help. Geralt more forcefully tells him to go home because one bite from a necrophage could kill him. Yurga scampers off.

Geralt starts fighting the necrophages, but he’s outnumbered and gets knocked away from his sword. He has to resort to ripping the necrophages apart and using body parts to beat back the others. He kills them all, but unfortunately, he realizes he’s got a nasty monster bite on his thigh. He says this isn’t a happily ever after after all and collapses.

Catherine: Extremely normal day for a Witcher, if we’re being honest. Average stuff.

Mari: Ciri wakes up in the field where we left her. Zola is there, asking her what happened. Ciri looks around and sees that the horse she stole is dead and all of the men that came for her are impaled on nearby trees. Zola, bless her, is not at all scared because the men got what they deserved. She leads Ciri to her house and a wide, overhead shot shows up that the spot where Ciri blasted her power is charred.

Over the last 7 episodes, the title card has always been just a simple symbol. This week, we see those symbols transform and combine over an extended cut of the title music until they form the wolf on Geralt’s medallion. Love it. (C: It’s super cool.)

Yennifer, Triss, Tissaia, Vilgefortz and a number of other mages are sailing toward a keep on Sodden Hill to head Nilfgaard off as they undoubtedly continue north. Temaria and Kaedwen are sending forces and will join the mages in two days time. Vilgefortz says they’ll use that time to reinforce the keep. Yen says that’s a military strategy and they are mages. Okay… the reinforce the keep with magic. Better, Yennefer?

Triss asks if Nilfgaard really thinks they can take the whole continent, which gives Yen an opportunity to Previously On us re: Nilfgaard and their evil, conquering ways. Tissaia makes this also about Yen, though, and says that sometimes you have to fight back because you are sleeping in a pig pen. Maybe you are thinking that would’ve made more sense if I recapped the whole conversation, but no it wouldn’t’ve. Trust me.

On shore, Yen asks Vilgefortz why Nilfgaard would take Cintra first if they could’ve just pushed through Sodden Hill and surprised everyone. Vilgefortz doesn’t answer her, but instead asks why she decided to come. Yen doesn’t answer him either. This is just not how you conversation, you two.

When they arrive at the keep, the mages find that it’s full of refugees, run from their homes by Nilfgaard. Yen thinks it’s stupid to keep people here and suggests hiding the women and children elsewhere. Man in Charge says that there is no more hiding from Nilfgaard, but they can protect the keep with some help.

We montage through a bunch of preparations between the mages and the refugees, magical and mundane.

Night. Yen finds a woman up on the keep walls still setting up bows and arrows while the rest of the keep has a final celebration. The woman says she can’t join them because she just lost her farm to Nilfgaard and that after her husband died. She has to fight back, even if they don’t have as many supplies as they’d like since Nilgaard is blocking the roads. Yen picks up a feather and uses magic to create more for the woman’s fletching. The woman says she wishes she could do that. Yen sadly says that it’s only magic. It’s not real.

Catherine: Okay great pep talk, Yen. Thanks.

Mari: Triss joins Yen down in the courtyard. Yen asks if Triss really thinks King Foltest will send his armies. Triss knows he will because she helped him with his striga niece/daughter. Well, she and this Witcher named Geralt did. Triss wonders where fate took him. Yen assures Triss it was somewhere unpleasant and warns her away from Witchers in general as they are often disappointing.

Tissaia invites Yen to have some ale, which is not disappointing. Yen is being fatalistic, but Tissaia thinks their impending death should mean they live it up tonight. Yen assumes Tissaia plans on living it up with one Vilgefortz, and they share a little laugh. Tissaia asks if Yen is ready to die. Yen says yes. She’s lived several lifetimes already. Tissaia points out that she’s been unhappy in all of them. Yen says she’s tried, but she has no legacy. She’s ready to accept that life has no more to give. Tissaia tells her that she has more to give and walks away like Yen’s really depressing up this pre-death party. Totally harshing her buzz.

Ugh, Nilfgaardians. Cahir wants to push through Sodden Hill and take Temeria, but his field marshal suggests waiting until they get a boatload more soldiers in a couple of days when they arrive from Cintra. Frigilla walks in with the news that the Brotherhood has been spotted fortifying Sodden Hill. Field Marshal thinks that confronting unknown amounts of magic is another good reason to wait for backup, but Fringilla is confident that she can take all the mages on alone because she can use magic with no rules. Plus, Ciri might already be across the Yaruga River and they could be losing her. Cahir tells Fringilla to test the Brotherhood’s defenses.

Zola’s son is grooming a horse and trying to get Ciri to talk. Zola tells him to quit it because Ciri has been through a lot. Then, a fireball lights up the sky and Zola helpfully announces that Nilfgaard has arrived.

Yen is sleeping on the courtyard floor and we hear distant yelling. The fire lights up her face and she opens her eyes to see the fireball coming straight for her. She stands and uses her magic to hold it off and then redirect it.

Up on a hill, Frigilla tells a mage to send another one. The woman looks next to her where the last mage that sent a fireball is nothing but ashes. The woman creates a fireball and also goes to ashes. We watch as the fireball is also redirected. Fringilla uses her own magic to create or summon a small box that she hands off to another mage and a bag that she puts in her own robes.

At day break, only 22 mages are left, the others having run after Nilfgaard’s attack. They decide they have to fight. They watch as a dense fog comes towards them, summoned and controlled by the mage Fringilla gave the box to. Tissaia starts ordering her mages around and sends Yen to the tower to oversee the battle and preserve her magic.

Yurga has rescued a still in bad shape Geralt and is taking him back to his farm. Geralt is having flashbacks to his childhood and his mother, with a hallucination appearance by a tiny Borch dragon.

Because Yen is up high and the camera angle is down low, now is as good a time as any to mention that Yen’s dress is beautiful. It’s a black and white rope dress that is what I’d imagine a fashion forward mage would wear into battle, even though it has a really battle inconvenient neckline. But also if you are sure you are going to die, and you have that rack, I guess you take them out for one final spin

Catherine: I literally couldn’t agree more. It’s giving ‘I’m not going to be using my fists here,’ in the best way.

Mari: Yen uses her telepathy to tell Tissaia that Nilfgaard is closing in. Triss uses her earth magic to kill a bunch of soldiers with poisonous mushrooms. Next, she tells Coral that some soldiers are headed her way. Coral kills them all with a flick of her wrist, though it does give her a nosebleed. Next, Yen tells Sabrina to read her archers. When the Nilfgaardian soldiers are in range, they launch a bunch of glass bottles filled with a bunch of blue rocks of some kind. Then the archers break open the bottles with their arrows, raining glass and explosives over the soldiers. Yen smiles because this is going pretty well with 30 minutes left in the episode.

The field marshal asks Cahir what they do now, and he orders the soldiers to the other front. Everyone leaves Cahir, so Yen tells Vilgefortz it’s his moment. Vilgefortz and Cahir fight. Cahir disarms him multiple times, but Vilgefortz uses his magic to keep calling back his sword. Yen head-phones Vilgefortz to tell him to slow down and reserve his chaos, but he doesn’t and he quickly runs out of magic gas. Vilgefortz asks Cahir what he’s after. He says “to get to the center of it all” which is too close to how many licks to be very impactful.

Cahir kicks Vilgefortz down the mountain, and we watch him crash land.

Fringilla uses her magic to bust open the keep gate. She then opens up a portal and her archers send arrows through it to kill the Brotherhood’s archers. Neat, except for the killing the good guys thing. The mage with the silver box stumbles into the keep, but just barely, before he goes completely to ash. Yen head-phones Tissaia to tell her that Nilfgaard has broken through to the keep, and they need to stop Fringilla.

Tissaia actually meets Fringilla in the forest to tell her it isn’t too late to come back. Fringilla laughs because it is in fact too late. She’s really committed to this killing thing, as evidenced by the fact that she was the one who sunk all the Skelligen ships so they could sack Cintra. Fringilla fishes out the bag she stowed away and throws the contents of it in Tissaia’s face. It’s dimeritium, a magic blocker. Tissaia struggles for breath as Fringilla walks away, saying a magic word.

We see that this word opens the silver box that Fringilla conjured, releasing a disturbing amount of worm looking things that are also chittering. Anytime my closed caption says “chittering,” I know I’m in for a bad time. (C: That and ‘squelching.’)

Speaking of bad times, a still struggling Geralt is still a bit more conscious on the back of Yurga’s cart. The sounds of battle are in the background, so Yurga guesses that Nilfgaard made it to Sodden. Geralt gets a good look at his injured leg and demands his bag. He grabs a potion and drinks some of it and pours the rest of it on the bite. Geralt wants Yurga to take him to the Blue Mountains where someone, “he,” can heal him. Yurga asks who, but Geralt is already slipping back out of consciousness and into flashbacks. This time, we see Geralt’s mother, Vissena, sending a little boy Geralt to fetch water for her. When he comes back to the road, though, his mother is gone. We hear Vesemir’s voice tell Geralt that he’s been waiting for him.

Things are real bad at Sodden Hill. Atlan gets killed. Coral gets her arm chopped off. Triss tries to buy time by blocking the entrance with branches.

It works surprisingly well for branches, that is until a soldier uses fire to break through and burns Triss as well.

Sabrina is acting suspiciously, and she gives a suspicious nod to two young boys, handing them explosives in a bottle. The boys both climb to the top of opposite towers while Sabrina finds Yen and promptly stabs her in the stomach with an arrow. We see now that Sabrina and the boys have those worms in their ears. The boys drop their explosives and cause many more injuries and much more chaos. Yen and Sabrina also get blown off their tower. Yen is able to use magic to land on her feet, but Sabrina falls flat. Now free from the influence of the mind control worm, Sabrina apologizes. Yen tells her it’s okay. She’s going to find Tissaia.

Yen walks through the wreckage of the keep. It’s brutal. Near the gates, Triss is still alive but gravely injured. Yen uses her head-phone to see if anyone can hear her. She says if they can, they need to get to the front line. They can still fight. Yen proves this by killing two Nifgaardian soldiers with a flick of her wrist. She sees a dead Coral pinned to a tree. Fringilla uses her head-phone to tell Yen that she doesn’t need to fight anymore and Nilfgaard can give her everything she wants by unlocking her full potential.

Vilgefortz comes to and finds a bunch of dead Niflgaardian soldiers nearby killed by a mage who is beaten and bloody. He asks Vilgefortz for help, but instead, Vilgefortz brutally beats his skull in. Yen calls to Vilgefortz via head-phone, but he ignores her. Ruh-roh.

Tissaia also comes too. She struggles to lift herself up.

And Geralt also also comes to. He’s being nursed back to health by a sorceress that first appears to him as Renfri, then Yennifer and then a red-haired woman. She says that most of the other mages around are fighting at Sodden Hill, but she heard Yurga’s cry for help. Healing is the only thing she’s good at. Geralt is glad their paths crossed. She says that people linked by DESTINY! will always find each other, a thing his mother used to say. Geralt sits up and asks the woman to come closer. Sure enough, it’s Visenna. Geralt tells her to look into his Witcher mutated eyes. Does she know what they do to little boys’ eyes to make them see better? Does she know it doesn’t always work? Did she know before she dropped him off with Vesemir that only 3 out of 10 boys survive the Trial of the Grasses. Visenna says that none of the answers she can give Geralt will satisfy him. They will only hurt them both. Geralt accuses Visenna of trusting DESTINY! rather than finding him herself. There was sleeping stuff in the medicine Visenna gave him, so as he drifts off, with no answers as to why his mother abandoned him to near certain death, she tells him it’s time to move on and find what he let go of. Damn, even his deadbeat mom wants him to be a dad. She tells him that she was just a dream.

Catherine: She really said,  “I know I abandoned you but give me grandkids.”

Mari: The worst.

Geralt starts awake, and he’s still with Yurga. He asks where the woman is. Yurga only laughs because he called out for so many. Geralt gets up and asks how far it is to Sodden. They are about an hours’ horse ride away. Geralt hops back up on Yurga’s cart so they can get going. Yurga says that he doesn’t have the means to pay Geralt back for saving his life, but he can offer him the Law of Surprise. Geralt is like PLEASE. NO. I mean, I’m sure that’s what he’s like internally. He says an ale will do for payment.

The Nilfgaardians are still mowing down mages. Honestly how are any left. Yen finds Tissaia, but her magic isn’t back. Yen says they need her, but there’s nothing for it. Yen cries that she’ll never forget that Tissaia saved her. Tissaia says it’s Yen’s turn to save them all. It’s time to unleash everything she’s ever felt and kept buried and let her chaos explode.

Yen stands and her hands start glowing with fire as we hear flashback/voiceovers of village kids calling her pig girl, of Istredd saying she chose power, of Artorius saying if only she’d gone to Nilfgaard, of Kelis telling her she’s useless and of Tissaia asking if she has what it takes. Yen walks to a higher point and finally just lets her chaos out in a stream of fire. We see that she’s screaming as she does, but the soundtrack is all we hear as the fire mows down Nilfgaardian soldiers and bypasses Tissaia.

Cahir is also watching. And like an episode of ruthless death too late, King Foltest arrives with his army.

Ciri is laying awake, listening to the sounds of battle. Zora comes to check up on her and assure her that even though the battle is close, Nilfgaard is trying to go north and have no reason to come here. Of course, Ciri is the very reason they would come here, but Zola don’t know that. She’s too busy saying that she has everything she ever wanted… except a daughter. I like Zola, but this is coming on a liiiittle strong.

Catherine: For real. Maybe chill a little bit, Zola. See if the girl likes staying there first before you adopt her.

Mari: She has a dad waiting for her anyway.

Tissaia is in the smoldering battle field. She yells for Yennefer. Her yells are overlapped by Geralt’s. He’s also calling out for Yen, though it seems Geralt might not actually be there. These overlapping voices lead to Ciri jolting awake. She hears Calanthe telling her to go and find Geralt of Rivia, her DESTINY! We watch as Ciri sneaks out of the cabin and heads toward the forest.

AND THEN!!!! THEN!!!! YURGA rolls up with Geralt because Zola is his WIFE and Ciri has been here, at Geralt’s destination, this whole time. Yurga jumps down from his cart. Zola quickly tells him that she met a girl, an orphan she found in the woods. Geralt overhears, and he flashes back to Renfri telling him that the girl in the woods would be with him always, because she is his DESTINY! Geralt walks into the woods as Yurga calls after him.

In the woods, Geralt looks around until he sees Ciri running towards him. Finally. They hug as Geralt tells her that people linked by destiny will always find each other. I really, really wish they had played this moment a little longer and a little more emotionally. This is the culmination of 8 episodes and multiple timelines across decades. I wish they’d let Geralt show a bit more here, you know?

Catherine: I mean, can he? Is that on brand?

Mari: He totally can! Everyone tells him he’s emotionless but he ISN’T. And this moment in the books for real made me tear up. I just wanted a wee bit more time here, but we move on quickly as Ciri pulls away from the hug and asks, “who’s Yennefer?”

Cut to black.

This whole project was preceded by an episode of Snark Squad Pod in which we talk about overall feelings on the series. I will say that not much changes on a second watch through. Nothing gets deeper, but also nothing got meaningfully worse. So, podcast feelings stand.

 

Next time on The Witcher: Geralt in Ciri start on their journey and meet an old friend in S02 E01 – A Grain of Truth.