Warning Spoilers for the episode “Of Banquets, Bastards and Burials” below

I have been very lukewarm on Netflix’s The Witcher; in the first three episodes I have criticized the writing, CGI, muddled story and confusing timeline, to name a few things. I was afraid that the show would achieve nothing more than being mediocre at best, and though those feelings still linger on with the fourth episode, I truly feel that The Witcher has finally delivered its first great episode with the episode “Of Banquets, Bastards and Burials”. 

Last week, I felt that the show was finally starting to focus on the main characters and make them feel important to the overall narrative. That statement rings true here in the show’s fourth episode. The opening scene begins where last episode left off, with Ciri wandering into the forest following a strange voice. Ciri’s story does a good job at slowly introducing lore to the audience instead of the earlier ham-fisted dialog dumps. However, her story crawls so slowly that it feels like a soap opera instead of a fantasy series.

Ciri finds herself in the forest of Brokilon and in the company of Dryads with vague magic powers. Here she is given some water to forget her struggles and past. Unfortunately the first attempt doesn’t work. she needs to drink water straight from the source for her to get an acid trip that puts her in a vision. Her story ends as soon as things get interesting but that part is the last scene of the episode. It is frustrating with how slow her story goes, since at times she seems to be the only character with an over-arching narrative.

Geralt has his strongest adventure yet as he teams up with Dandelion to protect him at a royal party. Here we get to see that signature Witcher humor at its finest. At times I found myself laughing to a point were I forgot how annoying Dandelion was in the second episode and here they made up for all of his previous faults.

For the past three episodes, Geralt’s story has been a monster-of-the-week formula. This week shakes things up a bit as finally we see how the timelines intersect and how Ciri and Geralt’s Destinies intertwine. We also see why Ciri was given a quest to find him. The party is throne by Queen Calanthe and her daughter, to find a suitable bride for the princess. When a mysterious cursed knight shows up and claims that the princess was promised to him for saving a king, he starts a massive brawl that brings back the fantastic sword choreography from the first episode.

Yennefer’s story is the weakest of the three, it’s been 30 years since she has gone under the magical cosmetic surgery and has graduated from abusive Hogwarts. Life isn’t what she wanted or imagined, she’s tired of being a vassal to be manipulated, and the best way to sum up her portal hopping adventure is that she is trying to escape an assassin. This does give us some awesome fight sequences with magic but it leaves a lot to be desired story wise. However if it’s one thing I have learned through The Witcher is that all of the seemingly meaningless sidelines will eventually payoff later…hopefully.

This episode was a great one and after I finished it, I immediately wanted to continue on to the fifth episod., I can feel the show picking up steam and now I am excited to see where the story goes from here. Even if I am familiar with the short stories and the world with the books the screen adaptation was slow to start, but midway through I feel like this show will end with a bang and make the mediocre episodes worth what could have been a slog.

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The Witcher

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• Humor
• Great action
• Starting to tie into an overall narrative

Cons

• Ciri’s story is slow and uninteresting
• Timeline still is confusing with Yennifer