3x01 Shaerrawedd

That 'Dear Friend' stuff was a spit in the face. I'd have rathered they just never included it.

10 minutes into the first episode, and the thing that strikes me most is just how off the tone of this show is compared to the source material. It has been a while since I saw season 2, but it feels like the tone is veering further and further into the YA sort of genre with every season. Even the action feels off to me. All the weird slow-motion effects and style to it... it just doesn't feel like I think The Witcher should feel. It seems entertaining enough, I guess, but it's just so frustrating and depressing to think how good this stuff could have been if they just kept the vision of the books rather than putting so many distant filters over it.

I'm also really struggling with Yen at the moment. I knew Anya was kind of too young already and not an imposing enough presence in previous seasons. But this is even more apparent as she's spending time with Ciri and trying to teach her magic. She simply isn't Geralt's equivalent in any way in this show. Henry has such gravitas and presence on screen, but Anya is just kinda... there. She looks like Ciri's sister, and it's not at all believable that she could ever be a mother figure to her. She's supposed to be a big presence - someone who Ciri looks up to and respects, not some young girl who is basically on her level. This isn't a knock against Anya (I think she's a great actress), it's just maybe a bit of a miscast. It probably wouldn't be bad if Ciri was younger and more accurate to how old she should look at this point. But as of now, Ciri looks the same age, if not older than she should at the end of the final Witcher book. Quite concerning considering how early on in the story we are.

Dijkstra and Philippa are kinda weird, and I definitely wouldn't say they were true to the source. But I don't actually mind them. I'll reserve judgement until I see more of them.

The scene in the maze missed the mark entirely for me. I'm really not enjoying any of the action thus far. I feel like the action peaked in the very first episode of season 1, and it has been all downhill ever since.

Although the music in the show has always been mostly pretty good, I think they use way too much of it. Every scene, every piece of action, everything just seems to be undercut with sudden dramatic music.

The Jaskier/Radovid stuff is truly abhorrent. Feels so wrong and out of place. It makes no sense.

Almost everything that comes out of anyone other than Geralt's mouth just sounds so generic, bland, and badly written. Ciri's speech at Sheaerrawedd felt so out of place, and the fight right after wasn't good. All the Rience stuff just makes me cringe. None of it even makes any sense. It's like they keep trying to have these big dramatic moments, but they just don't work because they haven't been earned. We're just jumping from big moment to big moment with subpar and rushed setups in between them. This would be less of an issue if they had actually just stuck to the books last season rather than having 95% of it be literal fanfiction. Instead, they've spent this entire first episode condensing all the big moments from Blood of Elves into 60 minutes. They literally had 8 episodes last season to fit this stuff in, but instead, the showrunner kept giving interviews about how "Blood of Elves doesn't have much content to adapt." Yeah, okay. If that's the case, why are you rushing and struggling to do it well or coherently in a single episode at the start of the next season? It's so frustrating.

Overall, this episode wasn't good. As an adaption of the source material? It'd be lucky to get a 2 or 3 out of 10. As a standalone episode of TV that is unrelated to The Witcher IP? A 5/10 is probably more than generous.