The 'Witcher' Season 2 Will See Geralt Learn To Forgive His Past Through Fatherhood - In The Middle Of A War
The Witcher season 1 was very focused on the concept of power: What it is, how you acquire it, and how you weild it - and about how the way you choose to weild it can make you a hero as easily as it can make you a monster.
Now, in season 2, Geralt (Henry Cavill) has finally been united with Ciri (Freya Allan), who - despite how he may protest to those who say it outright - is now more or less his daughter. And having a child makes one thing very clear: When it comes to the difference between being good and being a monster, there is a lot more gray area than it seems.
The very first episode introduces the question that will no doubt haunt Geralt - and Cirilla, and Yennifer (Camila Cabello) - throughout season two of The Witcher: If a monster is someone who uses their power to destroy, and a hero is someone who uses it to help, what is someone who does neither? What about someone using their power to harm, but to protect themselves? To survive? To protect others?
Without giving too much away, in the episode, (which has intense Beauty and The Beast vibes,) Geralt brings Ciri to stay with an old friend of his, a wizard he grew up with - who has since been put under a terrible curse. Among other things, he can never die, and he has formed a relationship with a single creature - and the relationship is twisted, but their love is real, and she is kind to Ciri.
However, the creature is a monster, and Geralt must choose between his duty to slay her and his friend's desperate pleas for him to leave them be.
The second episode follows similar themes, this time presenting Geralt with the same problem but even more directly, placing his friend and the monster in the same person.
Until this point, Geralt has been able to avoid actually having to look for the answer to this question - as to what exactly qualifies someone as a monster - but being father to Ciri will force him to, because she herself has a power that she does not understand and can barely control. It's only a matter of time before she either begins to push back against Geralt's rhetoric - as we see a glimpse of in the first episode - or takes on his views and begins to see herself as a monster.
Either way, it will eventually come to a head, and Geralt will have to answer for himself, once and for all - does causing substantial harm automatically make you a monster? Is he a monster?
It will be very interesting to see the philosophy of this question play itself out as the series continues, and to see how fathering Ciri begins to soften up the Wolf's old stone heart. He had better not get too soft, though, because if what's going on with Yennifer is any indication, there's a war brewing on the horizon, and she might not have the power to help this time.
The Witcher season 2 is available on Netflix today.
