It’s just unfortunate that it comes off the back of such a wild and wondrous assault on the senses. Liam Hemsworth will likely take centre stage in future seasons, but this all reads like an audition for more Ciri-centric stories down the line. On the plus side, it has cemented Freya Allan as a talent more than capable of carrying an episode – and a series. As cynical as it may seem, you can really feel the budget stretching at this stage of the season. Did it need to take up 90% of an episode? Probably not. It halts any momentum The Witcher may have had with an odyssey of little consequence, save for its final reveal.

The trope of internal monologues and ‘seeing’ dead characters to try and understand some obscured truth has long been the crutch of lazy, uninspired writing – and it’s the same again here. That absence is especially felt in the middle chapter of the second volume as Ciri wanders aimlessly through a mysterious desert for much of the runtime. But with the knowledge that he isn’t returning for season four heavy in the mind, it stings seeing how little he is given to do here. While his frustrating neutrality wanes as the season wears on ('I don’t give a shit about Brotherhood politics,' the White Wolf snaps in one scene), the Switzerland of The Continent is sidelined here, a mere bystander to Important People doing Important Things.Ĭavill at least gets some emotionally-charged scenes that, knowing what we know now, could be read as goodbyes. The trouble for much of the volume is that A) It never matches those heights again and B) It’s never Geralt’s story.

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