Geralt and Ciri’s Heartfelt Bond Anchors a Political Third Season of The Witcher

Netflix’s The Witcher is truly so much better than it has any right to be. The tale of magically enhanced monster hunter Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill) who slays a variety of horrifying creatures in a vaguely medieval-inspired kingdom and loves baths, the series—which is based on a series of popular novels that has already inspired a successful video game franchise—is loud and ridiculous, leaning into familiar fantasy tropes even as it gleefully subverts most of them, giving its female characters plenty of depth and agency alongside a hulking hero with a decidedly old soul. 

Season 3 retains much of what makes The Witcher so enjoyable, mixing over half a dozen major characters, complicated relationships, and blockbuster storylines together to form something that’s simultaneously smart, self-aware, and loads of fun to watch. The show has always trusted its audience to come along for the ride, whether that means embracing significant changes from the source material, rolling with a non-linear narrative, or following an increasingly fractured and complicated plot that often doesn’t involve our titular hero in any direct way.

This latest season is far and away The Witcher’s most political outing yet, trading in gnarly monster fights for exposition-heavy negotiations, secretive plotting, and backroom dealing between a wide variety of elves, mages, and human kings, all with their own goals and agendas. (Though it must be said the show’s most disgusting monster yet does appear this season.) Betrayals and back-stabbing abound and there are moments where it feels utterly impossible to know who we, as viewers, should trust at any moment. But despite its occasional bursts of action, it’s a remarkably slow-moving season, and the connections between its various pieces aren’t entirely clear after five episodes. And thanks to an influx of unexpected external factors, it’s also difficult to know how to feel about Season 3 as a whole at this point. 

We’re coming into this run of episodes already knowing that Henry Cavill will be departing the series after this season, with Liam Hemsworth replacing him for the already-greenlit fourth outing. (A choice that many viewers already worry is a somewhat questionable move, and which another reminder of how exceptional Cavill is in this role is unlikely to assuage.) And in a season that relies so much on the relationships between our three leads, the specter of Cavill’s impending absence hangs over every key moment, a ticking clock counting down to everything we’re about to lose. What’s worse, is that Netflix has made the rather baffling decision to split The Witcher’s third season into two (unequal!) parts. 

The first five episodes of Season 3 premiere this week (and were made available to screen for critics), with the final three installments slated to arrive in July. But it’s glaringly apparent that this release schedule was made with more of an eye to business needs—primarily how such a popular series landing in two separate pieces might impact overall streaming numbers—than narrative necessity, and as a result, the overall execution is incredibly clunky.  (Can you even call three episodes a second “volume”??) The split ultimately makes it feel as though Netflix simply decided to stop the story just as some of the season’s slow-burn narrative hints finally began to pay off.