The Witcher Recap: Practical Magic

Let’s talk about how magic works in The Witcher. As Yennefer and her fellow students learned at Aretuza all the way back in season one, magic is rooted in chaos: a natural, powerful force that — when properly harnessed — can be drawn upon to do great and terrible things. Even for experienced sorceresses and wizards, chaos comes with a cost. The magical energy used to create a portal or launch a fireball needs to come from somewhere, and it’s usually the life of something else — everything from a flower or tree to a person.

Now: Consider the Cchaos required for Vilgefortz and his minions to attack Montecalvo, and consider the chaos required by Yennefer and her army to repel them.

Much of “Twilight of the Wolf” — an episode named not for the absent Geralt, but for his mentor, Vesemir — plays out like an elaborate strategy game, as Vilgefortz and Yennefer decide how and when to burn off their impressive reserves of magic and magic users. Vilgefortz, true to form, begins by leading a squadron that blasts magic so aggressively at the fortress that some of them crumble into bones on the spot. Yennefer, saving the energy of her heaviest hitters as long as possible, asks the novices-in-training to maintain a magical shield as long as possible — only ordering when their noses and eyes begin to bleed under the strain.

And that’s just the first wave of a multi-pronged battle. What separates The Witcher’s large-scale conflicts from similarly scoped set pieces like Lord of the Rings’s Battle of Helm’s Deep or Game of Thrones’s Battle of the Bastards is the plethora of weird strategies available to these mages. At one point, Triss Merigold transforms an enemy into a frog, which Vesemir promptly stomps on. At another, one of Vilgefortz’s more innovative mages uses telekinesis to grab an array of mounted swords from a wall and fling them, one by one, at their foes down the hallway.

There are heavy casualties on both sides. (We don’t really know anybody in Vilgefortz’s camp, but you can say good-bye to ancillary sorceresses Margarita and Nikita.) Still, this has always been a very personal conflict between Yennefer and Vilgefortz, which is why Vilgefortz finally stops letting his minions do all the fighting and jumps through the portal himself.

What he finds, on the other side, is his dead lover, Tissaia de Vries — hair still white but otherwise apparently unharmed and ready to fight to the death. This is, of course, a trap that Vilgefortz sees through very quickly: Yennefer has merely glamoured herself to look like Tissaia. But just when Vilgefortz thinks he’s gained the upper hand, Yennefer springs her actual trap: When his second-in-command enters the room, Vilgefortz spills the rest of his plan — only to discover that Philippa Eilhart has pulled her own trick by glamouring herself as his right-hand man.

With the upper hand, Yennefer takes the opportunity to dig into Vilgefortz’s mind and see what she can find. What she sees terrifies her: A future in which the mage has captured Ciri and is subjecting her to brutally painful experiments in an apparent effort to gain access to her power.

As the battle rages on at Montecalvo, a smaller battle, though no less consequential, is unfolding at Vilgefortz’s secret lair. Fringilla escapes her captors, weaker but no less determined, and rescues Istredd from his cell. Together, they reach the chamber where Vilgefortz is draining and sacrificing lower-level mages to maintain exclusive control of the portals. Having studied for so long, Istredd instantly grasps the answer: By sacrificing himself in the same way, he can shut down Vilgefortz’s control of the portals for good, giving Yennefer and her allies a much-needed tool back in their arsenal. There’s some hand-wringing by both Fringilla and Yennefer about whether the sacrifice is worth it, but with apologies to Istredd: Yes, losing one mage — even one we’ve been hanging out with since season one — is worth it if it means turning the tide of a war that could plausibly lead to the end of the world.

Back at Montecalvo, another fan-favorite character is making another sacrifice. After confronting Vilgefortz in one-on-one combat, just as he promised to do two episodes ago, Vesemir manages to stab Vilgefortz in the chest but pays with his own life. “For my son, Geralt,” Vesemir says with his dying words, a reminder that Geralt isn’t the only witcher who took a young orphan into his care.

After all that magical violence, the fight ultimately comes down to one last push. A late effort by Vilgefortz and his army to defeat Yennefer via fire magic is quelled when Philippa opens a water wheel. With Istredd’s sacrifice on the other side of the portal complete, Yennefer’s army teleports behind Vilgefortz, and with the advantage lost, the mage retreats to fight another day. It’s a victory, but a painful one; though Yennefer’s side struck a serious blow, they also suffered some heavy losses.

But regaining access to portals gives Yennefer a vital tool back in the search for Ciri, and to her credit, she doesn’t waste any time. After asking Fringilla where Emyhr would keep his most treasured possession, she teleports right into the heart of Nilfgaard and snarls the question that’s been at the heart of her mission all season: “Where the fuck is my daughter?”

Stray Arrows

• After all the cleverness and excitement of the magical battle at Montecalvo, it’s a little deflating when the episode suddenly cuts away to check in on the Rats. Having kidnapped a rich kid (and killed some guards in the process), Ciri celebrates by snorting her first line of fisstech. The other Rats are delighted, but Mistle finally confronts Ciri, rattled by the growing darkness she sees. “Accept me as I am, because all of this darkness … this is me,” Ciri replies, like any rebellious teenager might.

• Leo Bonhart watch: The bounty hunter kills some random dudes who are dumb enough to cross him and steals a Falka doll from some little girls who have adopted the Rats as folk heroes. It certainly seems like he’s narrowing in on his quarry.

• This is a nitpick, but what exactly are Vilgefortz’s minions hoping to gain by being on his side? He probably promised them a share of his ultimate power or whatever, but he’s not exactly a guy who seems to value loyalty, and there’s ample evidence that he’ll drain the life force of anybody if it means maintaining power.

• Vesemir’s death in the Netflix series deviates from the broader Witcher canon, where he remains a major character as late as the video game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.