If we cross swords...
I won't be able to stop!
welcome back everyone it's Charlie this is going to be my Witcher Netflix top 10
video for the first half of the season it dropped this weekend but
because there's so much Star Wars stuff happening I think a lot of people have
only made it through the first part of the episodes but if you're new to the
channel be sure to subscribe to get everything I will be doing more videos
for this series through the next week just because it's the holiday so
everyone's slowly catching up with everything
obviously careful for spoilers from the first half of the episodes in The
Witcher Netflix it's pretty accurate to the books so if you've read any of the
books or you played the games and they deal with some of the back story during
the games you have a pretty good idea for what's going on during this I'll
explain what's going on with the timeline too because one of the big
changes they made is the way they tell the story so top 10 and Easter eggs
starting with number 10 the timeline there's a very important reason why it
seems like each of the three main characters Geralt ciri and yennefer have
competing timelines so a lot of what you see happening with ciri at the beginning
of the story is happening way later in geralt and yennefer
timeline because they're very long-lived because of their mutations that they
undergo or technically it's enchantments in-universe case all of the TV show is
adapting the books not the video games the video games story is a sequel to the
book story so think of this more as a game of Thrones situation where they're
adapting the novel's the story of the first season is largely
based on the two first short story books the last wish in sort of destiny so the
weird thing that happened in the United States is they didn't publish those
books till after the other books it was a bit of a Star Wars situation let's
start with episode 4 then we'll do all the backstory in the prequels a little
bit later all the monsters that he fights in the first couple of episodes
through the main season are right out of the books for example one of the names
of the early short stories is the lesser evil quote-unquote that's the story of
how Geralt became the butcher applicant so during episode one when they do that
story that's why the characters like Stregobor and Renfri keep repeating
that line of dialogue kill Renfri because it's the lesser
evil no-kill Stregobor because that's the lesser evil so all of geralt and
yennefer story in the first few episodes starts a long time ago in the past then
their timelines slowly catch up with series timeline so in the first episode
you watched Sentra gets sacked by nilfgaard they have that giant battle in
the field that's right out of the books serious escapes running off that's a
little bit of a change from the books in the book she actually ran off to escape
an arranged marriage but sintra later in the timeline after
that still gets sacked by nilfgaard so they're combining a bunch of things but
because Garrett's timeline has been catching up with Syria this whole time
you get the reveal about midway through the season the Geralt was here while
sintra was getting sacked he was just stuck in the dungeon the whole time but
that's also another big change from the books Geralt finds out about what
happened to central ater he meets ciri way later in the books the main reason
why they did the timelines this way is because both ciri and yennefer don't
really appear in those initial short stories that they're adapting till the
very very end the last wish is the name of the short story with the Djinn where
Geralt meets yennefer for the first time and that's much later in the first few
books and the writers wanted to have you follow all three main characters
starting in episode one so the only way to do that was to mess with the timeline
a little bit but the way they tell the story but number nine Geralt becomes
the butcher of blacken like I said this is basically the entire story of the
first episode based on the short story the lesser evil quote-unquote as they
repeated the line of dialogue during the episode they did change some of the
major plot points for the book like Geralt doesn't sleep with renfri in
the book they did that to get you to care more about her character so that
her death had more weight and it felt like a bigger sacrifice that Geralt was
making when he was forced to destroy her but it's the same basic plot as it is in
the books Stregobor is a total asshole mage working for the brotherhood of
sorcerers and he learns about the curse of the Black Sun a prophecy that says a
bunch of girls born under an eclipse will become possessed and destroy the
world so a long time ago he does what any crazy sorcerer would do he goes
around trying to destroy all the women that were born under the Eclipse he also
spends a lot of his free time vivisecting the bodies he really likes
poking around in people's innards so he's way worse in the books than what
the show made him out to be renfri just happened to be a princess born
under an eclipse so her mother the Queen just
gave her over to Stregobor to get rid of oh wow she's going to destroy the world
well we got to get rid of her the back story that she tells to Geralt during
the episode is pretty accurate to the books she escaped her captor then spent
the rest of her life plotting her revenge against her mother and against
Stregobor the reason Geralt is forced to destroy her even though he hates Stregobor
finds him deplorable is that ran free claims she's going to slaughter all of
the innocent townsfolk here on the street until Stregobor comes out of
his tower which he's definitely not going to do so Geralt has to stop her to
save all these innocent lives she's kind of turned into a monster in the episode
is meant to show you that sometimes people are worse than the actual
monsters that girls usually hired to fight that's why they juxtaposed it by
having him fight the key Kimura at the top of the episode like he's fighting a
monster but that monster might seem bad not quite as bad as the human monster
that Stregobor and Renfri are one of the tag lines of the show is also
sometimes the worst monsters are the ones we create as in Stregobor created
the monster that ran free turned into through his actions somatically that
will also play through the rest of the major storylines of the series like
sintra what's going on with no guards the reason why they sacked sintra what's
going on with Emperor Amir who you really only learn about halfway through
the season it'll become more clear once we get into season 2 there are a couple
things that they don't reveal during season 1 so I'll try to step around that
because it does get kind of spoilery so I'll be sure not to include that stuff
in this video number 8 like I said this happens much later in the books but
series storyline starts out way later in the timeline probably the biggest change
they make to this though is that Geralt is here for this stuff while it happens
where he is not in the books there are two major reasons why no guard is
attacking sintra one the main reason is because emperor emir of nilfgaard in the
north is trying to unify the entire continent so he's doing this with his
army all over the place it just happens that right now he's a sintra number two
though secondary reason is that he's coming for ciri there's a lot of
potentially super spoilery stuff early on with serious storyline so I will skip
that part and explain who Emperor Amir is at least right now maybe I'll cover
that later but he wants Ceri because of her special bloodline in
her power but while this is all going on you get a quick tutorial for her
grandmother a queen : the-- the lioness of sintra she's sort of a combination of
Brienne of Tarth and Cersei Lannister she winds up throwing herself off the
battlements at the end of the episode to prevent being taken captive you don't
really get the backstory on how we came to this moment though in this big battle
until a flashback episode is part of Jerrold storyline in the later episode
number 7 though meet ciri and her special special blood and powers but she
has what he would call the elder blood in her veins passed down through her
mother's side of the family her great-grandmother the Queen's mother had
the power but it skipped her grandmother queen : the-- and manifested in both
series mother pavetta and now ciri herself quick tutorial on what the elder
blood is and what it means so the elder blood is a genetic program
initiated by elven mages a long time ago for the purposes of creating an
extraordinarily gifted child whose power would exceed their own and they spent a
lot of time in the first half of the season explaining that elven mages are
the most powerful they're the original magic users of the
continent there's an elven prophecy about a child of the elder blood one day
saving the elves from Total Annihilation a long time ago in this genetic line one
of the elves mated with a human and created the line that ciri comes from so
that's how she wound up with the elder blood so throughout the series a lot of
competing interests both elven both human evil people good people all want
to get their hands on ciri to use her power really good example of
how powerful she is yennefer is one-quarter elf by blood that by itself
makes her way more powerful than a regular human mage ciri because of her
elder blood is like God Tyr powerful but very few people actually understand how
her power works one of those people that you meet later in the series
vil Giffords understands he's a mage he doesn't start out being super evil but
he's one of the main antagonists of the book series along with Emperor Emhyr but
if we're making videogame jokes here ciri is more of like the side fetch
quest for emperor Amir as part of his larger campaign to unify the continent
with all these Wars number six Yennefer's origin story you don't really
get Yennefer's backstory until episode 2 but
the big change they made from the books is that they give you Yennefer's back
story in the books she just shows up here in the last wish storyline during
the gin adventure as a full-blown sorceress like hello how's it going my
name is Yennefer for the most part all the back story that they give you for
yennefer is accurate to the books she was abused by her father she was born as
a hunchback she's taken in by the brotherhood of sorcerers to train when
she passes the necessary tests she undergoes her enchantments to get rid of
her deformities but at the cost of her ability to reproduce but eventually what
happens is because neither she nor Geralt can sire children because of
Geralt mutations as a Witcher and because of her enchantments is that
eventually they emotionally adopt ciri as their daughter so she becomes
something of a mother figure to Cirie Geralt becomes something of a father
figure eventually number five though yes Kieran Geralt so you meet yes gear in
Episode two just like you meet yennefer his character and personality the
version you see on the TV show is pretty accurate to the books he meets Geralt on
the road starts following him around and slowly wears him down until eventually
Geralt starts to think of him as a friend
most of the time he just annoys people though the TV show version is way less
hot for yennefer than the book version speaking of which number four Geralt
saves the in AFER's life by using the last wish so that's why the story in the
books that they're pulling from here is called the last wish because he uses
that third and final wish to save her from the Djinn and as part of that wish
that he doesn't speak out loud on the show is to bind their destinies together
forever during the episode he doesn't speak the wish out loud the jinn just
leaves Yennefer's body and she's saved flies
away but the wish was that their fates forever be intertwined
that's why later in the timeline when they go in the dragon monster hunt she
shows up in his life how come there are so few witcher's left in the world but
all of a sudden I keep running into you everywhere I go it's part of the magic
of the wish that keeps bringing them back together but number three Geralt
versus the Striga this is also right out of the books but the change that the TV
show makes is that in the episode they cross cut the string as transformation
back into the princess with Yennefer's transformation for dramatic effect if
you played any of the Witcher video games you probably recognize that this
advanced to the Striga is literally the opening
cutscene of the very first Witcher game the backstory that they give you in the
episode is pretty accurate to the books king foltest
and his sister go fool jaime and cersei lannister they have a baby but their
union was cursed as a result his sister died while pregnant with the child
before she gave birth she was buried in a tomb but because of the curse the
child in her womb slowly transformed into the Striga and then started
terrorizing tameria until Geralt broke the curse by keeping her from returning
to her tomb till sunrise but something that might not be clear from the episode
is that the child had been a striga-- for more than a decade so she's never
known life as a human the story and somewhat hopefully for her as king
foltest agrees to race her properly and care for her but it's going to take years
and years for her to recover from the mental trauma of being a monster that
ate people's hearts and livers for more than a decade number two the story
of Duney pavetta and series origin story they don't do the Duny and pavetta
flashback till around the middle of the season but you start to learn why sintra
eventually fell and where ciri came from and how she became Geralt child of
surprise but you meet series mother pavetta daughter of Queen kelantan II
the lioness of sintra who's just loving life without a husband doing what she
wants being a badass but needs more troops for her wards so she's going to
marry off her daughter pavetta to whichever neighboring Kingdom can
give her more forces pavetta is secretly in love with a man named Duny who
claims claims quote-unquote to be a knight that was cursed as a child he's
not lying about that part though it's a curse causes him to look like a hedgehog
during daylight hours only turning back into a man after midnight then changing
back into a monster at sunrise it just so happened that he met pavetta by
accident after midnight when he was in man form they fell in love
conceived a child as part of the law of surprise a long time ago he saved the
life of Queen Clancy's former husband the king who's now died the law of
surprise says that which he had but did not know of at the time which was his
future daughter pavetta so Duny has come back to claim what is his pavetta
but he's also in love with her they want to get married and have the child Queen
clan 'they predictably isn't having any of it because she wants to use pavetta
'he's arranged marriage to bolster her army but Geralt has to step
in to save Duny and beat some sense into everyone so number one Geralt
claims ciri as the child of surprise without really knowing what he's doing
you kind of learned through the episode that he's like okay whatever you know
laughs surprise I'll do what you did and then surprise surprise she finds out
that pavetta is pregnant oh crap I guess that means that I'm going to get a child
that I didn't expect so that's how series up becoming bound to Geralt
through the law of surprise in destiny they say destiny so many times drink
every time someone on the TV show says the word destiny you will be dead before
the middle of the season the big change they make from the books here though is
when all this stuff happens Geralt claims the law of surprise he saves Duney
his life that's all accurate to the books but he doesn't actually learn this
ciri exists that pavetta had a child till way later in the timeline there's a
whole bunch other stuff that's happening in these episodes but because the way
Netflix releases stuff dumps tile all at once it's just really hard for me to do
videos for each single episode so I will do more videos for the season and for
specific big moments but leave all your requests in the comments below
they've already renewed the show for season two they'll probably just adapt
blood of elves which is the first real novel that's when he actually starts
training ciri to become a Witcher just like him I'll be posting more witcher
more Mandalorian and more Star Wars videos this week so as long as you have
alerts enabled for my channel you should see all the videos when I post them but
everyone click here for my Star Wars rise of Skywalker top 20 video in
Easter eggs and click here for my Mandalorian episode 7 video thank you so
much for watching happy holidays everyone I'll see you guys tonight!