‘Toss a coin to your Witcher, O Valley of Plenty’

The Netflix adaptation of The Witcher is based on the various stories and novels by Andrzej Sapkowski. The first season is roughly based on the first two Witcher short story collections, The Last Wish and The Sword of Destiny. While they have adapted parts of it quite well, they have made some major changes. The books weren’t released chronologically, so the show has carved its own trajectory which makes the narrative often confusing and timeline tumultuous.

The Witcher is set in a medieval fantasy world (The Continent) divided into kingdoms that are menaced by monsters and require the services of a Witcher (a mutant) to slay them. The protagonist of the series is Geralt of Rivia (played by Superman actor Henry Cavill) who roams The Continent lending his services as a Witcher for anyone who can afford to pay coin.

For starters our protagonist; Geralt in the show is based more off Geralt in the games rather than the one in the books. Geralt in the books is much chattier while Geralt in the show replies with a few gruff words (comprising mainly of ‘Hmms’ and ‘****s’!) In appearance, he’s much more muscular while in the book he is lanky with an unpleasant and often frightening appearance. However, even with these changes Cavill’s Geralt is one of the show’s most faithful adaptations to the character. He has done an excellent job and you can see the passion he put into becoming Geralt of Rivia, White Wolf, the Butcher of Blaviken. Cavill is said to have actually lobbied hard for this role — being a Witcher fan himself, it must have been enjoyable if not easy for him to get into the character’s skin.

The showrunners created a really powerful and credible backstory for the love of Geralt’s life, the sorceress Yennefer of Vengerberg, played by British actress Anya Chalotra. Most of Yennefer’s backstory is only alluded to in the books so a huge chunk of the show isn’t actually from the source material.

The last member of the trio is Princess of Cintra, Cirilla ‘Ciri’ Fiona Elen Riannon (Freya Allan) and Geralt’s child of destiny. Geralt is bound to Ciri after invoking the Law of Surprise (give me that which you already have but do not know), twice. The first, after freeing Ciri’s father Dunny from his curse and second is the payment from Yurga, the merchant he rescues from a ghoul attack. Ciri is told by her grandmother Queen Calanthe to find Geralt of Rivia, for he is her destiny. No explanation, just a name and nothing else. Her arc is completely different from the books. In the books Ciri finds out about Geralt from her nanny, and firmly believes she is destined to become a Witcher. Queen Calanthe is outraged to hear this as she wanted to protect the child from almost certain death from the Trial of the Grasses (the qualifying test to become a witcher which is so difficult that only three out of ten boys survive it). Ciri runs away from home and wanders into Brokilon where she is attacked by a giant centipede. Geralt hears her screams and comes to her rescue and it is then that she meets Geralt for the first time. He is the reason that she doesn’t stay with the Dryad’s of Brokilon. Geralt leaves her with Mousesack (a druid advisor to Calanthe and Geralt’s childhood friend) who takes her back to Cintra. She goes back kicking and screaming and remains there until Nilfgaard attacks. From here the series more or less follows the books regarding Ciri. Her arc though is the weakest of the three. Ciri runs from battlefield to battlefield looking for Geralt, not really knowing who he is. We get a glimpse of her powers once but otherwise all that we see is a sheltered girl, who has a life upturned by a war she was the cause of. Her character progression is slow and felt stretched out. If they had expanded a bit more on her adventures in Cintra or fleshed out Brokilon a bit more (both the elf Dara and the Doppler were Netflix’s inventions and honestly felt like filler material) her character would have evoked more emotion as did the other female characters in the show. Her grandmother Queen Calanthe is also portrayed as a ruthless queen which is all right but what is hard to understand is that she would go on a rampage killing elves when she has elven blood running in her own veins.

Another female character who leaves quite an impression on you is Renfri. Renfri’s story in the books is like Snow White’s. Her stepmother Queen Aridea used Nehalenia’s mirror which revealed that Renfri would kill her and many others. Aridea called the sorcerer Stregobor to investigate. Stregebor claimed Renfri was indeed a mutant and cursed from being born during an eclipse. Aridea hires a mercenary to take the young princess out into the forest and kill her and return with her heart and liver. Instead, he robs and assaults her but Renfri manages to kill him by pushing her brooch through his ear and into his brain. In the following years she comes to be infamously known as the Shrike who impales her victims. She even leads a band of gnomes (much like the seven dwarves). Her story wasn’t altered too much, albeit the Snow White-esque element associated with her with gets lost in the show.

The whole character of Cahir (Eamon Farren) the Nilfgaardian Knight has been completely altered, including his past and even his goal. While in the books he does not mean Ciri any harm and proves a valuable companion to Geralt, in the series he is portrayed as nothing but a zealous face of Nilfgaard. Cahir is also given a more important role in the Netflix adaptation. In the books, he is not even present during the Battle of Sodden Hill, while in the series he leads the attack. Cahir’s armour is supposed to be one of his defining features and what Ciri remembers him most by. She is constantly plagued by nightmares, in which she is haunted by Cahir’s frightening visage, and his winged helmet. So, it was a little bit of a letdown that his armour wasn’t remarkable in the show.

Jaskier, (or Dandelion as he was known as in the translations and the games) played by Joey Batey, is Geralt’s loyal friend and provides the much-needed comic relief when things get too serious. He’s the reason that the entire world is tossing coins at Geralt. His love for adventure and steadfast determination to push his way into Geralt’s life and let the Witcher’s legend be known, coupled with his flamboyant personality, is what has makes him so popular (and his singing of course). He represents the human side of the Witcher. In the books, though, he is more useful to Geralt and hopefully we’ll see that depicted in the coming season. Jaskier’s song is also one of the reasons the show is going viral.

Those are just a few of the changes made from the original books. Given the fact that they had to fit in such a lot of the plot in eight episodes so as not to make the viewers wait for the main plot until the second season, they’ve done a good job. The choreography of the fight scenes is incredible, the movements reminiscent of the games (you could almost imagine yourself button-mashing to execute the same moves while playing the game). The use of Signs and Geralt actually drinking the potion (instead of magically imbibing it through osmosis as we see in the games) adds to the immersion. All that was left was for him to say was “How do you like that, Silver?” as he fought the striga! Personally, as a fan of the games I was surprised to see that Roach, Geralt’s trusty horse companion actually stuck by his side the entire time instead of teleporting and ending up on some poor villager’s roof.

Gwent, the iconic card game, is also missing from the scene but there’s always a chance it will show up in the later season. After all, what is the Witcher without Geralt demanding a round of Gwent?

The Witcher certainly isn’t a straightforward show — you hear all sorts of names being thrown around and are left wondering whether to remember them or not. The sheer quantum of backstory, naming conventions and motives may be abstruse for those not familiar with the lore. So, it may be a good idea to check out the books (or the games) if you are a little curious about the world of the Witcher. As someone who was introduced to the Witcher through CD Projekt Red’s amazing Witcher game trilogy, I had to do a lot of groundwork to figure out what was going on when I first started. It is a LOT to take in at first but really gives you a better perspective.

Overall, though, The Witcher does work and is definitely worth checking out. It’s opened up a whole new world for everyone to explore. So, be sure to toss a coin to your Witcher!