The headline of this article should make its purpose pretty obvious: Season 2 of Netflix’s The Witcher made some pretty liberal changes from its source material. Most went unnoticed, some have been widely lauded, and several are likely being bemoaned right now. What we mean to argue is that all of them are justified.
Before anyone interjects to say ‘that’s just your opinion’ – yes, this is just our opinion. What’s more, we also take issue with a major change we’re still trying to wrap our heads around. One of the most important things about art is that disagreeing with something doesn’t automatically invalidate it. If everyone wrote stories to your individual liking, the vast majority of the rest of the world would probably complain it wasn’t written to theirs. This is why criticism is extremely valuable when it is constructive, but pointless once it regresses to weird, unnecessary aggression on the internet.
Anyway, let’s talk about changes. Spoilers for season 2 of Netflix’s The Witcher follow.
The first and arguably most discussed change in The Witcher season 2 has to do with Eskel, a witcher who is basically Geralt of Rivia’s brother in every way except blood. To be blunt, Eskel dies early in the show despite living through the entirety of the books – he even plays a pretty sizable role in CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 3, the events of which transpire several years after the end of The Lady of the Lake (the last Witcher novel, for anyone unacquainted with Sapkowski’s saga).
This is obviously a point of contention: Why kill off a character who doesn’t die? We have history with a strikingly similar scenario in that we’re still annoyed about HBO’s decision to kill off Game of Thrones’ Ser Barristan Selmy at the hands of some amateurish thugs in unreasonable masks. We understand why people are concerned. But get this: Not every change is bad just because it digresses from the original story.
Let’s be reasonable adults and admit that most people who love Eskel feel that way about him because of how he’s portrayed in the games, which the show is explicitly not based on. Sure, he’s in the books alongside the likes of Lambert and Coën, but aside from being the witcher who is most like Geralt – he’s roughly the same age, is exceptionally talented but less renowned for it, and has his own Child of Surprise – the witchers in Kaer Morhen are all pretty similar to one another. That’s not to dismiss anyone’s personal preference or suggest they’re carbon copies of each other – what we mean is that for a casual viewer on Netflix with no preexisting knowledge of the universe, they’re just guys Geralt grew up with.
Except here’s the kicker: Of all the witchers in Kaer Morhen – aside from Vesemir, obviously – Eskel is the one the show makes a conscious effort to differentiate from the rest. Lambert is recognisable for his abrasive sense of humour and Coën becomes memorable for his relative sweetness, but Eskel is the one Geralt embraces at the dining hall door. Eskel is the one Geralt notices a change in and challenges. Eskel is the one Geralt is forced to fight, kill, and bury in a battle he’ll never forget or forgive himself for. He may have died, but his influence on the series will live on for years to come.
This is because there’s great power to this sequence. Eskel, infected by a leshy, is on the verge of turning into a monster, something that is expressed via his hyper-aggressive behaviour and complete disregard for the rules of Kaer Morhen. After inviting women to the witcher keep – something that is strictly forbidden – he retreats from a confrontation with Geralt and eventually transforms, losing himself in the process. Without going into laborious detail, he wounds Vesemir and Geralt retaliates by killing him out of irrefutable necessity. Vesemir, a father figure for Eskel since he was a boy, is devastated, but he appears to understand – more on that later.
Once the ordeal is over, Eskel is given a respectable sendoff and Geralt is forced to do some soul-searching, but the real reason this creative choice matters is because of how it impacts the season’s final episode, ‘Family’. Why? Because Ciri also transforms into a monster, but Geralt and Vesemir’s perspectives are reversed. It would be easy to write thousands of words on this specific scene – never mind the episode as a whole – but for the sake of brevity we’ll try to keep it to a couple of paragraphs.
Eskel’s death occurs early in season 2, but reverberates through every episode after it. Vesemir – who by the time of ‘Family’ has nearly attempted to make Ciri a witcher at the potential cost of her life, lost the relevant formula to Rience, and become completely unreasonable in the process of that sequence – thinks that killing Ciri is the same as killing Eskel. Geralt, however, is adamant it isn’t, and so Vesemir reluctantly agrees to help him with his attempt to free Ciri from Voleth Meir.
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So many moments throughout the season lead to this. Aside from Eskel’s death, we see Ciri tell Yen that Geralt is like “the father she never had,” which further accentuates the importance of her eventual escape from the Deathless Mother as she chooses to leave her previous family behind for a new one.
Before this happens though, Vesemir leaves Geralt’s side because he sees too many witchers dying. This is what ultimately leads to the old witcher making a radical attempt on Ciri’s life, which is driven by him wrongfully intuiting how he thinks Geralt thought about Eskel earlier. It sounds complicated, but the long and short of it is that Vesemir needs to see Eskel die in order to eventually – and after great difficulty – understand where Geralt is coming from.
Voleth Meir teases Geralt, asking him to show Vesemir he no longer needs him, which Geralt obviously does because it’s necessary to save Ciri. At this moment in time – if it wasn’t already established during several moments before – it becomes unequivocally clear that Ciri is the most important thing in the world to her surrogate father. He sees an opportunity to save her where others do not, and is willing to both risk his life and defect from his existing family to take it.
Among other things, his success highlights his commitment to Ciri, proves his equal – or superior – standing to Vesemir, and perhaps most importantly allows the remaining witchers to finally come to terms with why Eskel needed to die. It’s different to the books, but it culminates in a remarkably high payoff for a relatively low price, especially when you consider this is primarily for a television audience who probably didn’t read the books anyway. We know people whose favourite character in The Witcher is, in their words, “Em… The Witcher.” It’s fine to be upset about Eskel, but it’s really important to also recognise the reality of the situation and consider whether any possible counterfactual would work as well in the long run. If you’ve got an idea for how all of this and more could have been accomplished, we’d love to hear it.
So yeah, we’re pretty happy with the Eskel change. We think it exhibits creative courage and a real understanding of the source material – it’s one thing to adapt a story word for word, but another thing entirely to change whole scenarios while still staying true to the world at large.
This is why we can still appreciate one of the changes we’re less taken by: Yennefer’s first encounter with Ciri.
We can stand behind criticism directed towards this aspect of season 2 while also seeing several reasons for why it might have come about. We also feel obliged to say we didn’t necessarily dislike the way it was handled – we’re just a bit sceptical of how things might play out for two of our favourite characters, both of whom we still think played absolute stormers this season. To put it as plainly as possible: We have very complicated feelings about the foot Yennefer and Ciri’s relationship has started out on, but are still confident the writers at Netflix can build something very special out of it.
In the books, Yennefer’s cold exterior and ruthless disposition are ironically what make her the perfect person to eventually become a mother to Ciri. Yen, who has always wanted kids of her own, is enlisted to teach Ciri magic after multiple other people fail pretty horribly. We later hear Ciri confess that she didn’t like Yen at first. It takes a while for the two women to warm to one another, but when they eventually do we get what is arguably one of the single greatest scenes any two characters share in Sapkowski’s saga. To this day, we much prefer Yen and Ciri’s relationship in the books to Geralt and Ciri’s – although theirs is pretty great, too.
In the Netflix series, Yennefer comes to the Temple of Melitele, pretends to be on good terms with Geralt, and abducts Ciri to bring her to Voleth Meir in exchange for the Chaos she lost at Sodden. Yen in the books would never do this, but Yen in the books a) is invited by Geralt and Triss, b) is more aware of who Ciri is, and c) hasn’t lost the one thing in the world that’s most important to her in that moment.
We’ve seen lots of valid critiques of how the show handled their meeting, and have been inclined to agree with several of them, but we also think it’s invaluable to engage with this from various critical perspectives. Yen’s whole season 1 arc was an original story created by the writers at Netflix. Its entire purpose is to show how the two things she wants most in this world are power and family. Her abduction of Ciri to obtain the former and subsequent remorse at having possibly lost the latter in the process instigate one of the greatest points of tension you could weave into this version of this character.
Yes, she’s different from the books, and yes, her relationship with Ciri – at least so far – might not seem as organic, but we’ve still got a whole lot of seasons to get through. It’s not very fair for any of us to criticise something we reckon started off rough as if we’ve all already watched the entire story unfold. We can think of several ways Netflix might successfully build on this, and if we can do it, they can do it better. That’s not to mention the fact the book season 3 is adapting, Time of Contempt, is the best one in the series – especially for Ciri.
We’d also like to note that the genesis of this issue has more to do with Yen losing her magic than Yen considering the possibility of giving Ciri up to Voleth Meir. This is a slightly adjacent point, but consider that Francesca Findabair and Fringilla Vigo – both immensely powerful sorceresses – give into the Deathless Mother, who is quite literally an ancient demon who feeds on pain, immediately. Yen, meanwhile, successfully deflects her offers for an extremely long time while enduring immense hardship and the very depths of hopelessness. She is not in her right mind and snaps back into it extraordinarily fast as soon as she realises what’s happened. You might argue book Yen wouldn’t be this easily manipulated, although again, book Yen doesn’t lose her powers or face Voleth Meir.
We honestly think forcing Yen to behave the way she initially does towards Ciri in the books at this point in the show would be a real detriment to her character as it is depicted in this adaptation. It’s been vital to see this portrayal as different ever since it received an origin story that doesn’t exist in the books. It’s obviously fine to critique it, dislike it, or even resent it, but not without properly examining why it needs to first be seen as its own distinct take on who Yen is.
On top of all that, ‘Family’ as a whole testifies to just how integral the idea of family is to the series. There are so many instances in season 2 of people proclaiming the importance of blood ties that, in reality, aren’t all that important, which paradoxically accentuates the power of found family at the heart of the story. While Yen and Geralt long for their “something more,” Ciri lives in a world she can no longer trust. All of these problems become deeply rooted in the fact that all three of these characters are lost without either one of the other two – a truth they will each come to learn over the next few years.
This is why it makes sense, especially for Netflix’s predominantly casual audience, to focus on articulating these ideas instead of precisely adapting every single line from Sapkowski. While Blood of Elves is outstanding, it’s a dense book that’s inherently written to be read. Netflix’s The Witcher obviously differs from this in that it’s written to be viewed, which is an entirely different thing – especially in a series spanning just eight episodes per season. TV is more kinetic than literature. Scenes are more ephemeral than pages. Voices have more agency than thoughts. The Witcher is different because it fundamentally needs to be – even if you disagree with the creative choices the writers have made, the necessity for change is irrefutable.
There are loads of other changes to The Witcher season 2 – the monoliths aren’t in the books, there are new monsters everywhere, and the Wild Hunt appear much earlier here – although all these minor alterations are either justified or currently too unpredictable to complain about. It’s also worth noting that the Wild Hunt change is particularly well handled in that they don’t appear in the books until much later on. Because TV is a fundamentally different form, it makes sense to show them as early as possible so that people already know who they are when they inevitably play a key role several years from now.
The same logic applies to the Emhyr reveal – in the books, we don’t learn his true identity until The Lady of the Lake. It’s essential to communicate this kind of information much, much earlier in television – the best antagonists are the ones who truly believe they’re in the right, which means that in TV they need to be shown early for their arc to be done justice.
The biggest changes, though, are obviously Eskel’s death and the early stages of Yennefer and Ciri’s relationship, the former of which we totally condone. In terms of the latter, while we’re definitely still sceptical, we’re way more interested in where it will go and can appreciate that it was a pretty ballsy decision made by an even ballsier writers’ room.
What’s important to take from both of these scenarios is that while The Witcher is changing certain characters and events, it’s probably more accurate to say it’s juggling who and what specific emotions, themes, and stories are channeled through far more so than it’s removing key context. We would be shocked if elements of Eskel weren’t integrated into Lambert and Coën, for example. Putting the elves at the forefront this early on will make better sense of their roles later in the story. Regardless of whether you, us, or anyone else is personally invested in specific changes that have been made, this is a show that is clearly being driven by a talented team of creators who understand that adapting a book isn’t just taking the same words and slapping them on a TV screen.
The Witcher is a story that is extremely well-suited to a variety of different mediums. Like Geralt and Yennefer however, when it comes to making all of them work together… Well, ‘something more’ is needed. Until the credits of season 3, 7, or 27 roll, we’ll obviously be able to compliment and complain about individual creative choices, but to denounce them as wrong outright is to disingenuously bash a show that, so far, has exhibited a kind of ambition that any real fan of The Witcher should be immensely proud of.
Written by Cian Maher on behalf of GLHF.
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