The Witcher Season 2, Episode 1 Review: "A Grain of Truth"

The Witcher’s second season premiere plays the hits.

Of all the episodes in The Witcher’s sometimes uneven first season, most observers seemed to agree that the third episode was among the best of them. Apart from representing a big jump in production value from the first two episodes, it was just fun to see Geralt break out the fine silver and hunt a solid monster of the week. It was a fight that most viewers — video game fans and book readers alike — agreed was great.

It appears the producers noticed. The Witcher’s second season premiere takes pains to recapture the look and feel of that episode, spinning a twisted version of Beauty and the Beast while laying the groundwork for what’s to come.

Like so much of Season 1 before it, Witcher Season 2’s premiere adapts one of the collected short stories, specifically A Grain of Truth. It begins in proper monster of the week fashion, with a group of travelers wandering into a wintry abandoned village and being immediately slaughtered by an unseen monster. It’s a classic X-Files cold open, emphasis on cold.

The rest of the episode picks up from where Season 1 left off, jumping between Geralt, Ciri, Tissaia, and Yennefer as they collectively deal with the fallout from the previous season’s events. Yennefer, whose fate was left in doubt after Season 1 (but c’mon, we all knew she would be fine), is being held captive by Fringilla — her former classmate turned Nilfgaardian ice queen. Tissaia is close behind, frantically sifting through the ruins of the battlefield in the search for her former protege, and performing the mind meld from hell on Cahir, one of the major villains from Season 1. But the main focus is on Geralt and Ciri, who are united at last after a season-long buildup.

Going into this new season, one of my key questions was whether Ciri — played by relative newcomer Freya Allan — would be able to hold her own against the rest of the cast. Ciri’s arc was unquestionably one of the weakest elements of the first season, and while some of that was due to the uneven pacing, her performance also left her scenes feeling curiously inert. That’s still the case in Season 2, but paired with Henry Cavill and Kristofer Hivju, who plays the boisterous beast Nivellan in the opener, it’s at least not quite as noticeable.

Hivju, it’s worth mentioning, provides plenty of energy for two as Nivellan, mugging relentlessly in his monster makeup as he prowls about his scenes with Geralt and Ciri. It transpires that Nivellan desecrated a temple as a young lad, whereupon he was cursed by one of the priestesses. “I was a gormless young twat, fell in with the wrong crowd,” Nivellan moans.

The Witcher begins its second season by playing the hits.

The story provides somewhat on-the-nose exploration of just who the real monster is — Geralt, Nivellan, or the vampire living in Nivellan’s attic — which in turn is useful for establishing the framework of Geralt’s relationship with Ciri. Nivellan is presented as charming and charismatic, expressing genuine regret over the actions that led him to being turned into a monster, and constantly performing little magic tricks for the amusement of his guests. But in the course of revealing what he actually did in that temple, the episode takes a sharp turn in saying that, no, actually, Nivellan really was the monster all along. No amount of pathos or charming shadow puppetry will absolve him.

Nivellan winds up being the episode’s most interesting -- and uncomfortable -- character, demonstrating a level of self-awareness over why’s been cursed (“Deeds make the monster. What I did was unforgivable,” he admits at one point), but also willingly allowing an entire village to be slaughtered in part because he’s lonely. In the end, he’s every bit as monstrous as his physical form suggests, leaving Geralt to coldly suggest he “do it yourself” after he begs the Witcher to end it.

On that note, we get a glimpse of Geralt the remorseless killing machine in this episode. His foe is a vampiric bruxa, who befriends Nivellan and even Ciri, offering trinkets and blinking with her wide, sad eyes. The ensuing battle in the manor’s courtyard keeps up The Witcher’s strong tradition of monster battles to this point, pitting Geralt against a vaguely pitiable and yet extremely dangerous vampire sporting row after row of shark-like teeth (I kept imagining Tim the Enchanter yelling his immortal line about “nasty, big, pointy teeth” throughout the fight). When Geralt mercilessly decapitates her as Nivellan screams in pain, it’s easy to wonder whether Ciri knows exactly what she’s getting into.

The Witcher’s first season drew criticism for pacing and production value that were both uneven, its obvious ambition leading to an interesting if disjointed installment of television. In its second season, The Witcher is more straightforward and calculated in its approach, but also more self-assured. It has plenty of ground to cover as it gets its major players in place, but the structure is tighter, the setting feels better realized, and yes, the first episode has a bath scene. All in all, a promising start to the new season.