The Witcher Season 1 Recap: The Summary and Story to Remember Before Watching Season 2

The Witcher the original Netflix production inspired by the famous saga of Andrzej Sapkowski, has been among the most successful series of recent years and has won a prominent place among the spearheads of the streaming broadcaster. The novels of the Polish writer had already achieved great success to the point of leading CD Project RED to create a videogame epic inspired by the famous Strigo, but the resonance of the Netflix series has taken the popularity of the works to a much higher level – even to mark new videogame records for The Witcher 3.

The show, produced and written by Lauren Schmidt Hissrich and starring Henry Cavill, reached the pinnacle of popularity while showing gaps and uncertainties that made several spectators turn up their noses. The material available, including books and video games, is enormous and for this reason the series wanted to try to combine the engaging narrative of books with the phenomenal attractiveness of video games.

If in the latter, however, Geralt of Rivia faces non-canonical adventures here the intention was clearly to take as much as possible from the original material to expand and deepen it in an order that even literary works lacked on several occasions. Let’s retrace what happened in the first season on Netflix, inspired by the two collections of short stories that introduce the literary saga, so as to prepare ourselves for the new episodes!

The Introduction of The Characters

The first two episodes introduce the three main protagonists, immediately making it clear that the story takes place in as many different temporal strands, but for reasons of clarity we will mix the chronological narrative with that of the plot presented in the course of the episodes.

In the first episode we meet Geralt of Rivia, a Witcher: belonging to a group of mutant fighters, trained to face all the monsters that roam the Continent after the “Conjunction of the spheres”. The Witcher is in Blaviken hoping to collect a reward. It doesn’t take long before he gets embroiled in a feud between the wizard Stregobor and a runaway former princess named Renfri. They both hope to get him to kill the other, and despite the initial reluctance Geralt ends up being forced to act. After causing Renfri’s death and executing all his men, the Witcher is turned against the villagers and earns the nickname “Butcher of Blaviken”. Before perishing in his arms, the woman leaves the Witcher a mysterious message: “The girl in the woods will always be with you. She is your destiny.”

Several years later, in the kingdom of Cintra and in the “present” of the narrative, Queen Calanthe is attacked by the army of Nilfgaard, who succeeds in besieging the city and eliminating almost all members of the royal family apart from Cirilla, his granddaughter and protected. The girl, in possession of special powers, is invited by her grandmother to “find her destiny, Geralt of Rivia” and after escaping from the clutches of Cahir, a Nilfgaardian captain, she manages to find refuge in the forests.

Last to be introduced is Yennefer of Vengerberg, a young women born deformed but possessing particular magical abilities. In the second episode, the fragile girl is sold to the director Tissaia De Vries for only four brands and taken to Aretuza to become a sorceress. After several vicissitudes, his path begins to evolve for the better and Yennefer manages to ingratiate himself with the teacher as well as Istredd, a student of Ban Ard with whom he enters into intimacy and maintains a relationship made of mutual concern and espionage. We soon understand that his growth takes place in a period even before the adventures of Geralt about 70 years earlier than the main events.

Misadventures and Vicissitudes

Developing the story in parallel between three time periods, as different as the main faces of the series, The Witcher gives Yennefer the role of glue between her past (more remote) and that of Geralt, waiting to rejoin both in the present (the time when Ciri finds herself fleeing from Cintra). After Yennefer overcomes her fears and decides to put power above everything, she manages to undergo the definitive treatment to become a sorceress, transforming herself into an imperishable beauty but losing the ability to procreate.

Although this aspect does not initially worry the sorceress, it will soon become a nuisance that she will want to remedy at all costs. While the sorceress serves for 30 years at Aedirn’s court, Geralt continued his travels far and wide: on the borders of Dol Blathanna, today’s Posada, he met the bard Jaskier and faced the Elves refugees in the mountains, forced to hide from the humans who tortured and exterminated them after having learned magic.

In the reign of King Foltest, Temeria, he discovered of a curse that made the illegitimate daughter of the sovereign and his sister a fearsome aberration known as Striga, putting an end to the problem with the help of the sorceress Triss Merigold, finally, he went to Queen Calanthe’s court in Cintra at Jaskier’s request. Here, at the banquet that included the choice of husband for Pavetta, daughter of the sovereign, the Witcher once again resolved things by letting true love prevail: the princess, Ciri’s mother, in fact fell in love with a cursed knight, Duny, who intends to reclaim the hand of his beloved by entrusting himself to the Law of Surprise a sharp blade of destiny that cannot be opposed.

Clashing against everything and everyone to protect him, Geralt and the queen discover Pavetta’s ancestral powers probably inherited from Cirilla herself later and puts an end to the matter by nullifying the curse. In exchange for the service, Duny himself grants Geralt what he has, but is unaware of, as payment, just as the Law of Surprise dictates. To everyone’s surprise, Pavetta reveals that she is pregnant and inextricably links the destiny of the unborn child (Cirilla) to that of the Witcher who, reluctantly, decides not to care and to continue on his way.

Of Wolves and Stars

Meeting Jaskier near Rinde again, Geralt finds himself grappling with a Djinn, a creature capable of granting wishes and a very dangerous spirit. During an altercation between the witcher and the bard, the Djinn is freed and Geralt finds himself without his knowledge controlling the spirit, which begins to satisfy his every request. After the first of these has made Jaskier ill, risking his voice and his life being lost forever, Geralt rushes into town in search of a wizard’s cures. Here the Witcher meets Yennefer, settled in Rinde after abandoning court intrigues and increasingly obsessed with regaining the privilege of being a mother, taken away too soon in exchange for something powerful, but ephemeral. Upon discovering the Djinn, it seems the best opportunity for the sorceress to take back what has been taken from her.
Yennefer knocks Geralt out of action, invoking the spirit for himself without being able to control him. After blowing up the head of his jailer with his second wish, Geralt reaches the sorceress in spite of the warnings of the healed Jaskier and saves her from the Djinn by expressing a last request that binds the fate of the sorceress to himself. Except for a miracle, the two begin a fiery relationship, surprising and overwhelming for both, albeit short.

After not having met again for some time, the witcher and the sorceress find themselves together with Jaskier in a hypothetical dragon hunt: after an initial reunion, the discovery of the desire expressed by Geralt leads the two to leave for good. and leads the latter to send away even Jaskier, a non-paying spectator of a sad show together with Borch Tre Taccole, the instigator of the research who turned out to be a Golden Dragon.

By Joining The Points

Coming thus to the present, a few days before the Nilfgaardian attack on Cintra, we discover that Geralt has gone to Queen Calanthe to claim the baby of Pavetta and Duny, promised him with the Law of Surprise. Having ascertained the death of both parents of the child, the Witcher also discovers that it is a girl and that the queen has no intention of depriving herself of her.

Ending up being imprisoned within the walls of the castle, Geralt finds himself forced to observe the siege of the city without being able to do anything to save the princess, who then flees into the forests as seen in the first episode. Once the waters have calmed down, ours sets off towards the north hoping to find traces of his passage.

The princess, after wandering in the woods, met a young elf, Dara, and then reached the forest of Brokilon, where the dryads gave her refuge just before the girl was deceived and taken away. While convincing himself to resume his own path, in fact, Nilfgaard devises a plan through the sorceress Fringilla and Cahir himself to capture the child, the real objective and motivation of the attack on Cintra. Using the powers of a Doppler, a creature that takes the form of others, Cahir and the sorceress have Ratbag killed, the druid who served Cintra for years after Queen Calanthe’s marriage to Eist of the Skelliges, and make the Doppler take his likeness for convince Ciri to follow him.

The plan only partially succeeds, because the Feathered Knight only caresses the idea of ​​leading Ciri to her Emperor Emhyr before she manages to escape once again. Faced with yet another failure, Nilfgaard decides to act big and definitively begins to move his forces north to begin his work of conquest.

Much More

With Geralt now on his way to Kaer Morhen, the Witcher fortress, and Princess Ciri wandering in the forests, fate decides to intervene by taking the girl to find refuge in a small isolated house and with a loving family. Yennefer, for her part, observes the division of the wizards into two opposing sides and decides to oppose together with Tissaia, Triss, the enigmatic Vilgefortz and a few others to the advance of Nilfgaard, standing up to protect the Northern Kingdoms.With the army in full force, a great battle erupts in the hills of Sodden, resolved by Yennefer herself on the verge of defeat before the latter vanishes without a trace after using the powerful magic of fire. Meanwhile, Geralt saves a merchant from attack by some scavengers but is wounded. Fortunately for him, the same trader, Yurga, takes him with him and manages to find a healer who can cure him. This lady turns out to be Visenna, a mother who abandoned Geralt at an early age, who in her sleep advises him not to leave behind what is waiting for him. Arriving at the merchant’s house, the Witcher manages to reunite with Ciri shortly after thatthe princess dreamed of him looking for Yennefer in the fields of Sodden.