The Witcher Season 3 Vol. II Is AWFUL TELEVISION!

This is an abomination to everything good and holy in this world. The Witcher Season 3 has finally come to a slow, excruciatingly painful end with Volume II literally being one of the worst pieces of fantasy media I have ever seen.

I really hope this Writer’s Strike ends up hurting both the writers AND the major studios (Netflix MOST IMPORTNATNLY) for the crap we’ve been force-fed.

Despite already having such low expectations and hype around the show and after the Volume I finale, The Witcher Season 3 Vol. II actually ended up being EVEN WORSE than anything put on screen for this franchise thus far…which is an incredible feat in of itself. And, being honest, I’m done with this series and Netflix in general.

Unlike my review yesterday of Secret Invasion’s series finale, I’m not going to go plot-by-plot point with this review as that not only would waste your time on a show unworthy of even a second of you attention, but it would be far too generous for me to give these writers and Netflix even an iota of respect for what they’ve done to The Witcher IP by talking about their show with actual care for the plot and characters.

So, I’m not going to…in this article (my rant needs to stew a little before I let it out).

Instead, I’m going to point out how PITIFUL the writers, direction, acting, set design, VFX department, and choreography was on display in this series as I literally thought I was watching a reject show from the CW. Starting with the VFX, set design, and choreography, are those guys on strike too as it looked like Netflix was forced to hire amateurs to create the sets, set up the fight choreography, and fill in the magic VFX.

The sets designs were either OBVIOUS green screens (Vilgefortz’s Redania castle and the desert scenes), poorly created CGI (landscape shots over the major cities), or some of the smallest, cheaply made sound stages known to mankind (Emhyr’s “office”, Emhyr’s throne room, Vizimir’s throne room, the Aretuza main hall, the undercroft of Vilgefortz’s castle, the undercroft of Aretuza , etc.).

NOTHING felt real or authentic to the world of The Witcher with nearly everything feeling like these producers wasted all of the show’s budget on hiring the world’s most diverse cast, so they had to round up a few plywood boards and build Emhyr’s throne room on the cheap. What the hell happened to all the cool concept ideas and settings we saw in Season 1?!?!

As for the VFX and choreography, these two were pretty much intrinsically linked with one another given how many mage battles and mage vs. human/mutant battles were on display. Yet, I really wish the show just skipped the Coup of Thanedd altogether for these writer’s only idea of how to use magic is making a bubble protection shield, casting down small little lightning bolts, throwing around some CGI flames (which is banned from in world use), or using the force.

You’d think an entire school and conclave filled with the brightest and most powerful mages in The Witcher world would have access to crazy magic spells and sequences (you know, stuff we see in the Witcher games and other fantasy games + shows like it), yet their go to move is using the force or making a bubble.

There’s NOTHING ORIGINAL OR CREATIVE about this show’s magic or fantastical elements, which is a MASSIVE SIN against The Witcher franchise and the fantasy genre as a whole.

Moving on over to the directing and acting, I just don’t know what else to say about this season other than it was the worst for both categories…by a wide margin.

In the last few years, the very least one could say about The Witcher was that it had really cool, complex action scenes and camera movements (aka: directing) and that the main core of actors was a solid (if not great) group capable of putting in a shift. That’s completely gone this season as apart from the opening battle sequence in Episode 1, every other action sequence/complex narrative technique fell completely on its face.

The action had WAY TOO MUCH shaky camera, different pieces moving in and off screen that confused the hell out of me as to who was fighting who, everyone looked pretty much the same (apart from the oh so clever Gestapo armbands the Redania mages wore for about five minutes), and the magic was, as I said, a carbon copy of some other show or movie we’ve all seen before.

And, in terms of the non-action narrative sequences, they might have been the worst in the fantasy genre of filmmaking as the showrunners used so many stupid, hard-to-pull off narrative devices (ex: the repeat scenes from Episode 5 and the hallucination sequences from Episode 7) that took me out of the show.

You can’t get lost in a fantasy epic series if you can’t follow what’s happening on screen or if the filmmaking choices are so hilariously stupid.

And when you have actual crap supporting actors (like Milva’s actor, Fringilla’s actor, Keira Metz’s actor, Triss Merigold’s actor, Radovid’s actor, etc.) and a core cast that is either given dialogue so outrageous stupid or has visibly just checked out (Henry Cavil…which I don’t blame him), you get the overwhelming melodrama and soap opera performances this season was plagued with.

You have to be really into melodramas and soap operas to watch these last three episodes as otherwise it’s unwatchable television. The acting and dialogue is that bad…which leads me right to my final point: writing.

These writers clearly have a vendetta against the tradition of storytelling, the fantasy genre, and The Witcher IP as they not only degraded and destroyed everything that made this franchise special and unique with the fantasy medium, but they also inserted some of the most braindead, stupid, and downright awful plot points, character motivations, and character depictions ever seen in an “adaptation”.

The writers should go on trial for mass murder for they butchered SO MANY CHARACTERS in an attempt to…well, I have no idea what they wanted by making up their own plotlines. We all now see why these people are lowly staff writers who couldn’t get a sole writing job (on a serious production) even if they were the last writers alive in this world, but it makes no sense why they would ruin their own reputations and careers like this.

This is career suicide.

And make no mistake that once this show is cancelled by Netflix (it won’t last two seasons without Henry Cavil as Geralt), everyone one involved in the production, directing, writing, casting, VFX, and costume design aspects of this show will be essentially blacklisted by the major studios (not including Netflix, obviously) for serious work. That’s how bad they butchered this IP.

Now, the only reason why I think they would ruin their reputations this spectacularly is out of some misguided belief this show will be a catalyst for some political or societal viewpoint/religious tenet they subscribe to, but that only makes their downfall even funnier as this show had the complete opposite effect. Everyone, both the casuals and hardcore fans, have left and moved on to better, more faithful adaptations and shows.

THEIR OWN WRITING AND WORLD TENETS HAS SCARED EVERYONE AWAY!

And at least that’s a happy note to leave this…whatever this article is…on. Please stay away from The Witcher to show Netflix this kind of blatant, vindicative destruction and vandalism of an established, beloved IP won’t be tolerated by us fans. I know I won’t tolerate it as I’m going on strike too…against this T.V. show.

Images Source: Featured Image: (Netflix) (The Witcher: Season 3 | Official Trailer #2 | Netflix – YouTube)

In Text Image 1: (Netflix) (The Witcher: Season 3 | Official Trailer #2 | Netflix – YouTube)

In Text Image 2: (Netflix) (The Witcher: Season 3 | Official Trailer #2 | Netflix – YouTube)

In Text Image 3: (Netflix) (The Witcher: Season 3 | Official Trailer #2 | Netflix – YouTube)

In Text Image 4: (Netflix) (The Witcher: Season 3 | Official Trailer #2 | Netflix – YouTube)