Netflix’s The Witcher series follows Geralt of Rivia, the titular witcher. Witchers are once
normal humans who were ruthlessly conditioned and experimented on to create perfect monster
slaying hunters. Witchers possess many heightened abilities like enhanced senses,
speed, and strength, and can perform minor magical spells. Throughout season one, Geralt,
alongside his trusty steed Roach, is traveling the Continent and using his witcher skills to take up
various bounties and quests. Along his journeys, he crosses paths with several notable figures,
like the mage Triss Merigold and Jaskier the bard, who, much to Geralt’s annoyance,
accompanies the witcher on several quests and even writes a song about him.
When Geralt and Jaskier attend a feast for Princess Pavetta, the daughter of Calanthe,
Queen of Cintra, things get a bit complicated. A cursed knight named Duny arrives to ask for
Pavetta’s hand in marriage. With his lowly status and cursed, hedgehog-like features,
Queen Calanthe turns him away despite Pavetta’s profession of love. When a fight ensues and
Pavetta unleashes her magical abilities in anger, Geralt steps in to resolve the situation.
A reluctant Calanthe agrees to allow Pavetta and Duny to marry, and as thanks, Duny offers Geralt
the Law of Surprise, which would grant Geralt something Duny owns, but does not yet know about.
And that’s when it was revealed that Pavetta was pregnant with Duny’s child. That child,
to be named Ciri, was now forever entwined with Geralt’s destiny, whether he liked it or not.
Geralt leaves Cintra, assuring the royal family he wanted nothing to
do with claiming the new princess, and continues on his witching ways.
Meanwhile, season one also follows the story of Yennefer, a young woman with severe physical
deformities who is an outcast of both her village and her family. Her father sells her
to the mage Tissaia de Vries who takes Yennefer to her school in Aretuza to train her to become
a mage. As Yennefer grows more powerful in her magic, she also gains more confidence
in herself and even secretly begins a love affair with the sorcerer Istredd. Yennefer
also discovers that some of Tissaia’s initiates are turned into eels to help power Aretuza.
Upon the initiates’ graduation day, the new mages are to be assigned to separate kingdoms to advise
the ruler. When Yennefer is assigned Nilfgaard instead of her home in Aedirn, Yennefer refuses
to attend initiation and discovers she was assigned Nilfgaard due to being a quarter elf,
a secret she had only told Istredd. Upon confronting Istredd over his betrayal,
he confesses that he had told the mischievous mage Stregobor about Yennefer’s lineage, who
in turn persuaded the Mage Chapter to assign her to Nilfgaard. Istredd promised to do everything
in his power to right his wrong, but it was too late. Yennefer had missed her initiation.
And so, Yennefer pays a visit to the enchanter, who uses magic to make her beautiful, but at
the cost of fertility. The now reborn Yennefer crashes the Aretuzan ball and charms the Aedirn
king into making her his mage. And so, Tissaia sends the mage Fringilla to Nilfgaard instead.
As the years pass, Yennefer shirks her mage duties and grows bitter
over having her fertility taken from her. She desperately searches for a way to have a child,
and that’s when she first crosses paths with Geralt and Jaskier.
When Geralt and Jaskier stumble upon a Djinn, a genie-like creature that grants its master
three wishes, Yennefer intervenes and wants the wishes for herself to wish for her fertility back.
Geralt realizes the Djinn will kill Yennefer and intervenes, making his own secret wish and
causing the Djinn to leave. Yennefer is upset, but finds comfort in Geralt, and the two enter
into a romance. But when it’s later revealed that Geralt’s wish bound his and Yennefer’s fates,
she begins to doubt whether her feelings for him were real or magic and chooses to leave him.
This causes a hurt Geralt to lash out at Jaskier, telling the bard he never wanted to see him again.
By this point, years have passed and Princess Pavetta and Duny have been lost at sea,
leaving the now teenage Princess Ciri to be raised by her grandmother, Calanthe. The political power
of Cintra had become dire, and the kingdom of Nilfgaard was sending an army to invade.
Fearing for Ciri’s life, Geralt returns to Cintra to invoke the Law of Surprise, begging Queen
Calanthe to allow him to protect the princess. Calanthe refuses and has Geralt imprisoned.
And that’s when the Nilfgaardian army attacks Cintra, who were no match for invading forces.
Geralt escapes from his cell as Cintra devolves into chaos. Queen Calanthe and her husband Eist
are killed, but before succumbing to her wounds, Calanthe tells Ciri to find Geralt. And so,
the young Ciri flees from her home in the search of Geralt of Rivia. On her journey,
Ciri befriends an elven boy named Dara and the dryad people of Brokilon forest.
In hot pursuit of Ciri is Cahir, the commander of the Nilfgaardian army. He has the mage Fringilla
at his side who tasks a creature known as a doppler to shapeshift into Mousesack,
Calanthe’s now deceased friend and mage, to trick Ciri and capture her. When the
doppler fails to capture Ciri, it fights Cahir before running away.
Yennefer returns to Aretuza where the Mage Brotherhood are holding a vote to
determine whether or not they should intervene in Nilfgaard’s invasion,
fearing that once they capture Cintra they would move on to all of the other Northern
Kingdoms. Stregobor leads the majority into voting for the Brotherhood to remain neutral,
but Yennefer joins a small faction of mages that includes Tissaia, Triss Merigold,
and Vilgefortz in traveling to Cintra to push back the Nilfgaardian army.
It appears that the mages’ attempts to hold off the Nilfgaardian army were futile,
and Vilgefortz even reveals himself to be a traitor, but just as all hope seems lost,
Yennefer unleashes the full breadth of the chaos magic inside her,
incinerating the invading forces with a giant blast of fire before mysteriously vanishing.
With the battle seemingly over, but a war very much beginning,
an injured Geralt stumbles through the forest and at long last finds Ciri,
their fates finally bringing them together. And as season one comes to a close, Ciri’s
first words to Geralt remind him of the other fate entwined with his, as she asks “Who is Yennefer?”