The Witcher Recap: Castle Freak

The Witcher Recap: Castle Freak,A reminder that ‘The Witcher’ can confidently shift back into ‘Hercules: The Legendary Journeys’–style storytelling whenever it likes. A recap of “Unbound,” episode two of season three of Netflix’s ‘The Witcher,’ starring Henry Cavill.

The Witcher Recap: Castle Freak

Season 3 Episode 2 Editor’s Rating4 stars ****

Photo: Susie Allnutt/Netflix/Susie Allnutt Even by the franchise’s own high standards, I’m not sure The Witcher has ever delivered a more unnerving monster than the one we meet in “Unbound.” As the witcher stalks the halls of an old Gothic castle, he encounters a shambling sack of limbs connected, somehow, to three heads growing out of tendrils on a nearby castle wall — each of which shrieks and pleads even as Geralt desperately slices away. It is absolutely disgusting and unforgettably weird, which is another way of saying it’s The Witcher at its best.

For the record, there’s an actual plot reason that Geralt shows up at this creepy castle — it’s a stop on the bread-crumb trail that he hopes will lead him to Rience, the fire mage trying to kidnap Ciri at the behest of a mysterious, even more powerful mage. But mostly, this castle detour feels like an excuse for The Witcher to engage in the kind of standalone monster-hunting that propelled much of its first (and strongest) season. Now that the show revolves around Ciri and the web of powers and prophecies surrounding her, we’re not likely to spend much time on Geralt and his standalone monster hunts. But I’ll always welcome a reminder that The Witcher can confidently shift back into Hercules: The Legendary Journeys–style storytelling whenever it likes.

Fortunately, the episode’s mythology-based storytelling is fairly strong. As Yennefer leads Ciri to Aretuza to continue her magic training, Ciri struggles to keep a low profile. (Maybe, as Yarpen suggested to Geralt in the last episode, she could at least dye her hair or something?) But Ciri’s powers, even just half-awakened, are already manifesting in unsettling ways. When she looks at a stranger, she sometimes gets a vision of their future. (It invariably includes a horrible, violent death, because that’s how life on the Continent tends to work.)

So Ciri has a choice to make: Does she passively accept a dark future she knows is coming, or does she attempt to change it? It will not surprise anyone who has been paying attention to these characters that Ciri — who in this episode lists her leadership strengths as her dagger, her reflexes, and her sense of justice — opts for the latter. We know for a fact that at least two people benefit from her intervention: a messenger named Aplegatt, who dodges the arrow that would have killed him, and someone chained and bound for a portal until Ciri intervenes and kills the captor instead.

As always, Ciri is acting with the noblest of intentions. As Geralt said in the last episode, he doesn’t doubt Ciri but does doubt the world. But there’s another hard lesson to be learned here, and Yennefer is uniquely equipped to teach it. Having impulsively saved Cahir from execution last season, Yennefer sparked a civil war among the mages and gave one of Nilfgaard’s top operatives a second chance. She may have saved one life, but countless others will end up on the chopping block as a result.

Ciri doesn’t take to this lesson easily, but she does soften when Yennefer takes the time to give her a glimpse of what any trusting parent should give a child: the truest version of herself. Taking Ciri to the field where her childhood home once stood, Yennefer allows Ciri to look into her own past as an abused, unloved, and physically deformed child. On the surface, that person is worlds away from the poised, powerful image Yennefer always projects, which is all that Ciri has known. But it’s a reminder for the audience that Yennefer’s glamour is, quite literally, another spell. Underneath the façade, as Ciri rightly notes, is the woman uncertain enough to write three drafts of a letter to Tissaia.

It would be nice if more characters in The Witcher showed that kind of depth, which is why it’s a promising sign that “Unbound” brings back a half-dozen familiar faces — mostly in interesting ways. Geralt and Jaskier have a memorably weird tête-à-tête with Codringher and Fenn, the eccentric fantasy detectives we last met in season two. Vilgefortz gives Tissaia a gift and vows to be nicer to Yennefer. Now demoted from the prestige sorcery and serving as a cupbearer for Emhyr var Emreis, Fringilla fakes her own death and escapes to parts unknown. And Cahir, her fellow disgraced Nilfgaardian, is picking up the pieces in his own way, trading notes with Gallatin on what the elves should do next.

Then there’s the episode’s bizarre cliffhanger, in which even a new face claims to be an old one. It’s obvious right away that the girl Geralt rescues from the castle is a dead ringer for Ciri — a temptation, perhaps, for Geralt to use her as a sacrificial lamb, as Codringher suggested, to ensure that the real Ciri will be safe for a little while longer. But as the episode ends, the girl says she knew Geralt would come for her. Because their destinies are tied together. Because she is Ciri. Geralt isn’t exactly prone to displays of emotion, but I know my jaw dropped a little.

Stray Arrows

• In Redania, Jaskier and Radovid seem to be tiptoeing toward an actual romance — with a particularly nice exchange in which Jaskier calls out Radovid for pretending to be drunk and Radovid praises the perceptiveness of his eye for people as they really are. I’m sure this growing bond won’t have any horrible unforeseen consequences.

• We don’t know a ton about Codringher and Fenn, but the concept of fantasy detectives is fun enough that I’m really hoping they somehow survived Rience’s firebombing late in the episode.

• In case you weren’t clear on Yennefer becoming a surrogate mother to Ciri, she actually uses the phrase, “I’m not angry. I’m just disappointed.”

• Sorceress Keira Metz will be familiar to anyone who played The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (and very familiar to anyone who selected the option to romance her).

• The drug-snorting creep in the marketplace is probably using fisstech, a methlike drug that pops up throughout The Witcher franchise.

• I’m not sure what to make of Philippa and Dijkstra’s Fifty Shades of Grey routine except to note that more than four years after Game of Thrones went off the air, sexposition is alive and well.

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