I had my reservations with season one, which was a loose adaptation of the book series by Andrzej Sapkowski.

Season one was all about the setup, introducing the audience to this fantasy world inspired by eastern European mythology and folklore. Its central characters and conflicts. They decided to Jump around the timeline of events and go back and forth between the characters to the point it felt like I was watching two different stories. My first experience of the Witcher series comes from the game Witcher : 3 and I knew I had to temper my expectations for a TV adaptation with a medium-tier budget for its first season.  Season one was good, but it left me wishing that the show was more like the video game series.

The show has toned down drastically the gratuitous scenes of sex and violence that made the game stand out from the competition. That being said, I would not say it is by any means family fare, and it retains the book’s dark fantasy elements and love of curse words, but it still feels tame by comparison to what CD project did with the same material.

Season Two seems like a course correction. The world and characters have had a visual makeover to make them resemble their game counterpart, and the story is more linear and less confusing than last season.

After the battle of Sodden Hill, Monster-hunter Geralt takes Cirilla as his ward and heads back to the Witcher stronghold of Kaer Morhen. There she meets other Witchers and begins her training under the watchful eye of Geralt and the sorceress Triss.

Meanwhile, Yennifer is captured by elves and gets involved in a complicated plot to form a political alliance between the elves and Nilfgardians.

Despite being more accessible than in the previous season, I still found the plot convoluted with too many characters and factions competing for power.

The show is at its best as a sword and sorcery show with horror elements. When Geralt goes to work and fights monsters, the show is fun and the parental bond between Geralt and the young princess anchors the show and allows the audience to become invested in the characters and story. The story jumps around between the main characters and sub-plots, which weighs the series down with too much exposition as the show runners lay the groundwork for future seasons.

Part of me thinks they should ditch all the political skulduggery and intrigue and just concentrate on the witchers, hunting monsters for coin.  Henry Cavill has grown into the role of Geralt. Anya Chalotra is super as Yennifer, but her story this season is less compelling than last season. Anna Shaffer gets more to do as Triss and i thought she had great chemistry with Henry Cavill. I wanted more scenes and songs with Joey Batey as Dandelion, and I thought Freya Allan looked different as Ciri this year compared to last season.

While I enjoyed this season and felt it improved on the first; I still found it missed some key things.  It still feels tame and convoluted in places. I want them to up the tension and horror elements in season three, take some risks and deliver some shocking twists and turns to keep us engaged. One of the strengths of the books and games was the short story format and side quests. The witcher began as a series of self-contained stories about the witcher Geralt. The best elements of the game were the fantastic side quests that told self-contained stories that were completely unrelated to the main plot, but explored the fantastic lore and mythology of the series. The best episodes of this show follow the same template, and it succeeds when it explores the dark fantasy and monster elements the series has been praised for across different mediums.