The Witcher Season-Finale Recap: A Knight’s Tale

If you needed to show somebody the sheer range of tones The Witcher is capable of juggling at once, the season-four finale would be a great place to start. In the span of a single hour, we get a rousing soldiers-and-monsters fight with Geralt and company; an earnest, forward-thinking political maneuver by Yennefer and her sorceresses; and a genuinely, horrifyingly violent fate for Ciri and her Rats.

Let’s start with Geralt. Having spent the entire season trekking toward Nilfgaard, the group has one last obstacle in their way: a raging river to cross. At first, it seems like good fortune when they stumble upon a ferry. But when a Northern army regiment sees the boat on the river and mistakes them for Nilfgaardian spies, they end up desperately floating down the river — only to encounter, on the opposite shore, a separate Nilfgaardian group just as eager to sink them.

Clever as it is, this set piece is just a preamble to the episode’s real action set piece, in which Geralt leads the floundering Northern army in a charge to defend a strategically vital bridge from Nilfgaardian soldiers. Though it can’t live up to the variety and strangeness of the mages vs. mages battle at Montecalvo a couple of episodes ago, there are plenty of clever flourishes throughout: Cahir putting a crossbow bolt through the eye of a former ally, Zoltan rolling logs down a hill to knock Nilfgaardians off their horses, and Geralt using fire magic to break the chain of a troll and kill it with its own weapon.

Back at Montecalvo — where the surviving sorceresses are still picking up the pieces after the battle with Vilgefortz — things are calmer, though the stakes are arguably even higher. Vilgefortz’s army may have been decimated, but he’s still out there and is already plotting his next move.

So Yennefer makes hers. After successfully pitching the survivors on forming a League of Sorceresses — with the goal of rebuilding Aretuza and securing a long-term future for magic in the Continent — she asks Triss to help her magically analyze the bloodstain left on Vesemir’s dagger to track down Vilgefortz’s location. It’s nice, after all, that Vesemir’s death wasn’t in vain, even if Yennefer is merely one step closer to defeating her archenemy once and for all.

But that’s a problem for next season. Ciri’s problems, unfortunately, are rooted in the present. As she races back to the Rats, too late to warn them about the trap they’re walking into, Leo Bonhart makes his move. Like most Witcher fans, I’m not especially big on the Rats — and the Netflix show didn’t do much to differentiate them, or make them more likable, than they were in the novels — but it’s still pretty horrifying to watch as Leo Bonhart casually slaughters them one by one. By the time Ciri arrives, only Mistle is left alive, and while Ciri valiantly battles against Bonhart, he ultimately knocks her out.

When she wakes up, Ciri discovers that her horrors are only beginning. Bonhart has cheerfully decapitated most of the Rats and dropped their heads in a barrel of water like he’s about to go bobbing for apples. Worse, he has waited until Ciri woke up before beheading Mistle, and he forces her to watch while he does the job. Ciri’s life has been characterized by trauma after trauma since the fall of Cintra; one must imagine this one will leave an especially deep scar.

Fortunately, the episode isn’t all despair. In the aftermath of his victory, Geralt is summoned by Queen Meve of the North to be honored for his heroism. Suddenly, his private childhood fantasy of being a knight is becoming a reality. And which Northern kingdoms does Queen Meve happen to rule over? Lyria and Rivia.

But even as Geralt finally, officially becomes Geralt of Rivia, The Witcher is making it clear that this is ultimately Ciri’s story. It’s right there in the return of the framing device from the season-four premiere, which practically shrugs as it reveals the endings of some of these stories. Yennefer, or at least her Lodge of Sorceresses, do manage to reform Aretuza, because that’s where young Nimue says she’ll be attending as Striborg gives her his history book. “Who knows if any of it’s true?” he shrugs. “But you said it: How this saga ends may depend on you.”

It’s a little odd that The Witcher is so intent on flashing forward to an era long past all the characters we’ve come to know, but to hear Nimue tell it, this story still isn’t over. “What happened to Ciri?” a child asks. For better or worse, that’s the part we still don’t know, and we’ll need to wait until The Witcher’s final season to find out how her story ends.

Stray Arrows

• In a closing stinger that’s clearly a setup for season five, Emyhr approaches some kind of horrible monster and puts it on Geralt’s scent. Okay!

• If season four wasn’t enough Witcher content for you, Netflix has finally shadow-dropped The Rats: A Witcher’s Tale as a 92-minute feature film. It’s a little bizarre to watch it after you know all the Rats end up as severed heads floating in a barrel, but check it out if you’re curious about the gang’s first encounter with Leo Bonhart, or this Brehan guy everybody kept talking about.

• And if you enjoyed your introduction to Queen Meve, you can control her yourself in the video game Thronebreaker: The Witcher Chronicles. The game even includes the scene where Meve knights Geralt of Rivia (albeit in a slightly different context than the TV series).

• In a sad development that’s treated, a little oddly, mostly like an excuse for Milva and Regis to sit out the big fight, Milva miscarries, with Regis staying by her side to give medical care.

• There are, however, several nice moments between Geralt and Milva. As he leaves to join the battle, he calls her “Maria” and reassures her that things will be okay. Later, when he asks how she’s doing, a Northern doctor remarks that the baby was lost; “How is she doing?” Geralt asks again, refocusing his concern on the well-being of his friend.

• Vilgefortz congratulates three of his survivors from the battle, then kills them and harvests a hand, tongue, and eyes for what must be some kind of dark spell. Again: Why would anyone volunteer to fight for this guy?

• It’s a pretty hoary gag, but I must admit, I laughed at the yokel ferrymen who confused baboons with “guerillas.”

• And that’s a wrap on The Witcher season four! Thanks, as always, for joining me on the path. I’ll see you again when The Witcher premieres its fifth (and final) season.