CONTAINS SPOILERS

All the Trigger Warnings

Screenshot Geralt in The Witcher season 2 looking cocky.

SPOILERS AHEAD

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To be clear I have not read the books nor have I played the games. Therefore, my critique is purely regarding the series adaptation just released.

Also to be clear, for me, the descriptive word “trash” applied to any person or artistic work indicates a reaction of pain and betrayal. Therefore, I don’t use that word lightly. I tend to reserve it for leftists who pretend to care about dismantling the empire but are actually imperialist patriarchs. So the fact that I’m using the word “trash” with regards to a TV show indicates how genuinely disgusted I am with season 2 of The Witcher.

The reason why I feel so betrayed is because all the nuances and subtleties in storytelling that made season 1 interesting and watchable and full of potential were sorely lacking in season 2. Season 1 did have objectionable content, but it was no way near as offensive as season 2 was because it had nuances and subtleties that had the potential to become anti-patriarchy messages. All of that was utterly destroyed by season 2 and it seems clear to me now that they probably never had any intention of such revolutionary messaging despite teasing it and pretending.

Screenshot Geralt tried hard but ended up in a really bad show.

Why season 2 was so bad:

1. The writing was clumsy and illogical. All the character arcs from season 1 were almost entirely forgotten in season 2, leading to bizarre and incomprehensible storylines. It made the characters two dimensional, empty, with no genuine connection to each other despite the fact that they kept talking about having connections with each other.

2. The acting deteriorated as the season progressed - or maybe it wasn’t even good from the very beginning of the season. What I can say for sure is that after the first episode, they were pretty much just reading off a bad script but with little conviction, no passion, no intensity, or even just any emotion. I didn't believe any of their characters and not even Geralt with his pretty face could distract me from the fact that the acting was this bad. And I don’t think that’s a reflection on all of their acting talent. No one can act when there’s nothing to say that’s believable. The writing was so bad there was nothing the actors could do to make it work even though they tried hard.

Specifics:

3. Yennefer was an amazing character in season 1, so emotive and passionate that she just leapt off the screen right into your heart. So why did they have to take away Yennefer's magical power to "make her grow" as a character? As if women have no experience being powerless. And they're telling us that Yennefer - with her part Elven ancestry, illegitimacy, history of rejection from her mother's husband, her disability, being a slave for her own family, being sold by her mother’s husband to Tissaia for 4 marks, being suicidal, and being taunted and mocked and attacked everywhere she went for being ugly, for being disabled, for being Elven - they’re telling us that Yennefer didn't already know what it was like to be powerless? She had to be reduced to even more powerlessness? Her season 2 storyline was TRASH. Yennefer spent at least 20 minutes of one episode with her cleavage hanging out, for no seeming reason other than to symbolize that she was "stripped bare" of her power. Meanwhile, Geralt never took off his clothes even once in season 2.

Screenshot Yennefer’s dress is practically falling off her bosom for at least 20 minutes in one episode.

4. In episode 1 they showed a man, Nivellen, killing the woman he was in a relationship with and justifying it with nonsense that summed up as: "I know she was a crazy murderous bitch but I loved her even though she was violent and please kill me now that she's dead because I can't take the pain. And oh yeah, I’m a rapist and that’s why I’m lonely." The writers really did try to make his murder suicide domestic violence seem sympathetic to the audience. But rape, murder, and suicide isn’t romantic or sympathetic.

Screenshot Demon monster rapist Nivellen loved his demon woman so much he killed her. So romantic!

Screenshot Vereena, the demon vampire monster who loved Nivellen so much she let him kill her. Because that’s the ultimate sign of loving a man, don’t you see? You have to let him kill you. And yes, we really did see her upside down from the very first moment she appeared. That’s how that audience could know she was “wrong”.

5. I also noticed how easy it was for Geralt to hold a sword to Yennefer’s throat at the end of the season. This was the woman he was supposed to be desperately in love with. He had more difficulty fighting Renfry at the beginning of season 1 after knowing her a day, having sex with her once, and being told she was about to go on a violent rampage in a whole town of people. But Yennefer, the woman he’d loved for years, the woman he tricked into loving him, he could totally put his sword to her throat, no questions asked or regrets felt. And she let him and never even mentioned it afterwards except to tell him she was sorry. Because that’s how you prove you really love a man, right? You let him abuse you, and when he almost kills you, you say you’re sorry for being the problem. Season 2 is TRASH, I tell you.

Screenshot Geralt fighting Renfry in season 1, a woman he felt romantic feelings for and had sex with and killed the next day because he was afraid she’d slaughter a whole town even though she told him she was there to kill the mage who had her imprisoned, raped, tortured and almost murdered. But he didn’t believe her.

6. Multiple women throughout season 2 were murdered with a knife stabbed through their bodies. Any profiler could tell you that stabbing a woman might be symbolic of rape fantasy or related in some way to a sexual relationship and/or feelings of revenge. And you know that makers of this show are white women, right? That means that violence and sexual violence against women is being propagated by white women. It's yet another example of how ridiculous it is to expect anything to change just because women are in positions of power in the western entertainment industry which has always been a patriarchal white western supremacist rape culture empire.

7. European storytelling, going right back to Homer and the Odyssey, very often made women the villains and monsters. The reason for this was because Greek culture was deeply misogynistic and so afraid of women having any power that they used storytelling as a way to demonize powerful women and justify killing them. And by powerful women, I mean any woman. Just being a woman was a threat to the Greeks. To them, you were a manly man if you went around killing women. Now, it wasn't like this in all European Indigenous cultures, but it was certainly like that in Ancient Greece, which they then brought to Ancient Rome, and through the Roman empire, forced onto everyone in Europe who were colonized by the Romans. This only became worse 1000x when Christianity became the Roman state religion and Christian supremacy was forced onto all Europeans. Thus European Indigenous sacred goddesses and Divine Feminine folklore was culturally appropriated and turned into horror stories and ghost stories designed to terrify children and make them afraid of powerful women, all while looking to male authority figures as their saviors. It was propaganda designed to genocide the last Indigenous Europeans that existed. The Witcher continues this tradition of European colonizing storytelling which is in constant anxiety over women with power. This was something I certainly noticed in season 1 but because those stories were told with nuance and complexity I had hoped they were going to move through such interpretations with more developed resistance to misogyny as the storyline progressed. Alas, in season 2 they doubled down and showed their true face as agents of patriarchy.

8. We see evidence of this in how the so-called “villain” of season 2 is called the “Deathless Mother”. Because the eternal immortal Divine Feminine is a demon, you see? They even showed a deity of a goddess when the Deathless Mother showed up in the storyline, as a way to clue you in to who they were actually talking about. Everything begins to fall into place when you realize that the The Witcher is a deeply misogynistic story that’s all about protecting the patriarchal fanatic western monotheist religious empire.

9. That Goddess deity they showed was obviously a bastardized version of the Hindu Mother Durga in what was obviously a bastardized Hindu temple. There were no Indian or Hindu looking characters anywhere in said temple. There were white people, non-Indian Black people, with no type of Indian people anywhere in sight. I'm not kidding. So they stole my people’s Goddess, culturally appropriated her for their woman-hating storyline, and then didn’t even bother to show any representation of my people in her temple. Oh, and let’s not forget that Vesemir dared to culturally appropriate the word “mantra” in a conversation with Triss as if any of these ignorant white people had any clue what a mantra actually was. Stick to barstardizing your own lost Indigenous cultures, western supremacists.

10. Some of the most interesting character threads that were begun in season 1 were either ignored or ruined in season 2. In season 1, Vesemir was supposed to be a shadowy figure who tortured Geralt as an innocent child into becoming a Witcher. But in season 2, all of a sudden, Vesemir was a beloved father to Geralt, portrayed as 100% correct in torturing children to make more Witchers, including Geralt. Somehow Vesemir was portrayed as a hero, a loving father, with zero discussion on the ethical nuance or complexity or downright evil of his actions towards innocent children. If that’s true, then why was there all that talk in season 1 about how Geralt’s mother was evil to give him to Vesemir? Season 2’s storyline indicates that season 1’s storyline was just misogyny against Geralt’s mother, right? Because Vesemir was right but Geralt’s mother was wrong.

Screenshot Geralt loves his daddy Vesemir.

11. Another story thread from season 1 that they ruined was how Geralt was a lonely man wanting emotional connection but always being deprived of that connection. And yet, all of a sudden, in season 2 we found out that he actually had a big loving Witcher family where he belonged and who he could go home to every winter. So what was all that lone ranger nonsense for, traipsing around for years in season 1? Why all the grunting, and only talking to his horse Roach, and agonizing loneliness that could only be soothed by Yennefer, the woman he supposedly loved?

12. Yet another character thread lost forever: Yennefer’s genuine yearning to be a mother. The whole point of her wanting a child in season 1 was because her fertility was taken as payment for the magical transformation of her body. She paid it thinking that power and beauty (beauty being another kind of power) was more important than having children. But after being a court mage for decades, she realized that power meant nothing when she had nothing to show for her life - no legacy she could leave behind. That’s when she started yearning for a child. Almost her entire character arc in season 1 was about this and yet suddenly in season 2, she was right back to thirsting for the very power she found empty in season 1. And she was portrayed as so thirsty for power that she decided to harm Geralt’s child to get it. This was even though she knew very well that his child would be her child too if she went back to him. She even dreamed of having a daughter with Geralt in episode 1 of season 2 but then that whole thread was forgotten for the rest of the season. No wonder the acting was so bad, she must have been like: “WTF is going on with my character, this makes no sense.” Just to be clear, it did make sense that Yennefer would mourn the loss of her magic and power but not that she would ever consider harming Geralt’s child to get that power back. A much more believable storyline might have been that she only pretended to consider harming Ciri but actually was always intending to protect and teach her, while tricking the demon witch into revealing how to defeat her.

13. Yet another character thread totally ignored in season 2 was the fact that in season 1 Geralt tricked Yennefer into falling in love with him by using magic. He didn’t tell her what he’d done until years later when a dragon forced him to tell her the truth. He had sex with Yennefer, multiple times, over years, without telling her that he’d used magic to make her fall in love with him. Their very first time having sex was right after he used that magic. That is an ultimate form of manipulation, gaslighting, and abuse, also known as domestic violence. You would even call it rape, if you were really being honest. But no, you don’t want to go that far? Well, if Geralt had drugged Yennefer, we’d clearly understand it to be rape because an intoxicated person can’t consent. So how is using magic to sway her will any different? And it doesn’t make a difference if she was already attracted to him. Being attracted to someone doesn’t mean you consent to have sex with them in that moment. But if you’ve been intoxicated by magic and you don’t realize that’s why you’re having sex with someone because he didn’t tell you what he did…yeah, that’s rape. You can’t consent when you’re intoxicated. It’s a grievous violation. And somehow, in season 2, this part of their relationship was totally ignored. Instead, it was Yennefer who was portrayed as the untrustworthy one. Yennefer was the liar, the selfish manipulator out for herself, not Geralt. You couldn’t find a more woman-hating story than Witcher season 2.

14. What with all this domestic violence, it’s not a surprise that the romantic tension between Geralt and Yennefer that carried season 1 was almost non-existent for most of season 2. At this point, the magic of Gennefer (even if it did come about because of a magic trick he played on her) was the only thing that might have made season 2 still watchable but they didn't even have that working for them anymore because they killed it with patriarchy and misogyny.

15. Ciri was made less of an annoying bratty child by making her learn to fight - because that's the only way a woman can be interesting and not annoying in the world of white feminism, obviously. This is in contradiction of the themes of season 1 where there were plenty of women characters, both fighters and non-fighters, who were interesting and worth watching. Aaaaaand…Ciri wasn't a woman in season 2. She was a child. Everyone seemed to have forgotten that even though season 2 began just a day after season 1 when she was, like, 12. Treating a girl child as if she’s an adult woman…now we’re getting into pedophile culture.

16. And speaking of pedophile culture… Ciri was supposed to be still a child and yet adult male characters flirted with her, creeped on her, taunted her, and even physically loomed over her, getting way too close, and her father Geralt did nothing about it. He even left her alone with those men. If this was real life, she'd have been raped multiple times over and her "protective father" wouldn't have even noticed what his own brothers had done to his own daughter. The only time Geralt actually dealt with a male predator (who was his own Witcher brother) was when that predator was about to kill their dear old dad Vesemir. In other words, he only did something when a man was in danger, not when his daughter was in danger. There are plenty of fathers in the world just like Geralt.

17. Geralt went on and on about how he had to protect Ciri but he seemed to leave her in dangerous circumstances often, telling her she was safe when clearly, she was not safe. It’s almost like he wanted her assaulted and dead. But no, Geralt wouldn’t be that bad a father, right?

18. Geralt told Ciri that “fear is an illness” you can catch. No, it isn’t. Fear is a perfectly natural reaction to stimuli that threatens our survival in some way. It’s not an illness. It’s a part of life. It’s human. Everyone feels fear. Sometimes you should listen to your fear because it’s telling you how to survive dangerous situations, and sometimes you confront it, recognizing that it’s coming from trauma or that it’s hindering your ability to take necessary risks. Geralt didn’t tell Ciri any of that reality which means he gave her terrible advice. Considering how long he’d lived he should have known better but we’ve already established that Geralt was a terrible father which isn’t surprising considering the wonderful role model he had in Vesemir.

27. Can we please lose Jaskier already? He was vile in season 1 and didn't improve in season 2. He's never going to improve. Fans talk about him as the queer representation in the show but if that's the case then really he would be cis white gay man representation and what do we know as a worst case scenario about cis white gay men? They hate women. And that is exactly who and what Jaskier is. He's supposed to be the queer comic relief but misogyny doesn't make me laugh. Why can't we have queer characters who are not hateful towards women? And how about queer characters who are not white cis men? And did anyone else cringe at his super bad Prince impression with the purple coat and that hair? Prince was a misogynist violent predator, by the way.

Screenshot Jaskier doing the worst impression of Prince ever.

Screenshot Prince’s iconic look. (He was also an abuser and misogynist who groomed young teenage girls including his wife Mayte Garcia who he groomed from age 16, when he was about 32. He became her legal guardian 1 year later - that means he bought her from her parents - and supposedly had sex with her when she was 19 and he was 35.)

28. Speaking of queer energy, there was some lesbian tension between Fringilla and the Elf Queen for a split second in season 2. It lasted all of 2 minutes, never to be heard from again. It’s yet another instance of women’s complexities being dismissed and in particular, queer women being dismissed in favor of glorifying male feelings with never-ending songs of jealousy and bitterness and on and on.

Screenshot Fringilla and her “partner” for a split second, the pregnant Elf Queen Francesca.

19. Speaking of Fringilla, it was stunning to me to note that all the Black characters were either manipulated, captured, used, or killed, with no real power, even if in season 1 they did have power, including the powerful Black woman mage Fringilla.

22. They straight up showed a “Mammy” moment between Fringilla and the white Elf baby. I’m not kidding. For those who are too young to know, “Mammy” was a Black character in the Hollywood movie Gone with the Wind who was Scarlet O’Hara’s enslaved childhood nurse. She was devoted to the service of Scarlett who was a plantation owner’s daughter and selfish southern belle. “Mammy” is also a well known anti-Black racist trope that romanticizes the atrocity of slavery, particularly towards Black women. Fringilla was shown as a type of “Mammy” to the Elf Queen’s baby who was also a white baby. For realz.

23. In season 2, all the elves who had any power were white, even though there were elves who were both white and Black.

20. They had a mute and possibly deaf dark-skinned Black Elf character who existed for no other reason than to tick a diversity box on the production team’s list. This was clear because he was swiftly killed within 3 minutes on screen and never referenced again after that scene. Representation has to actually mean something and disabled characters need to be shown as people, not props to reach some diversity threshold. Especially when talking about Black and brown disabled people who are almost never represented in any way in the western entertainment industry.

21. On top of the mute/possibly deaf dark-skinned Black Elf character who was immediately killed within 3 mins, there was another disabled character who wasn't killed. And guess what? They were white and a librarian. Nothing like race and class to provide the needed protection for a disabled character, right? Meanwhile, the mute/possibly deaf Black Elf was a poor homeless refugee traveling through the sewers of a human city after a lifetime of survival as a homeless refugee (which means he was quite likely illiterate too even though he worked in a bank for Dwarves). His death was thus no loss to the world, obviously, while everyone needed the white librarian because she could translate stuff for the light-skinned light-eyed Black mage scholar character. Her type of disability wasn't a hindrance to her being an important character who was needed by able-bodied characters. Well, isn’t that great.

24. Apparently, the potion that made Witchers was partially composed of Elder blood, meaning Elven blood. Vesemir detected Elder blood when he saw a particular blue flower that only sprouted from Elven blood. And Ciri’s blood from her training injuries was spilling everywhere, sprouting blue flowers, and that’s how they knew she had Elven blood and the Witchers thus had an opportunity to make the potion to make more Witchers. This was a major plot point except for one thing…There were Elves everywhere. Working in banks. Hiding in forests. Refugees on boats. Yennefer was one quarter Elf. So why was Elder blood so hard to come by for the Witchers? I swear, the plot holes in the writing were so many and became sillier the further we got into season 2. There were plenty of plot holes in season 1 also, by the way, but the characters were interesting enough to laugh them off. The problem was that when the characters lost their interesting story arcs alongside the writing being clumsy and spiritless, nothing made any sense the further we went through season 2.

25. They portrayed the original Indigenous people in the world of the Witcher, Elves, as baby killers, which is exactly what every colonizer has said about every Indigenous people ever. Oh, they’re baby killers. Oh, they’re cannibals. According to the US Declaration of Independence, they’re “merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions”.

29. The only Indian looking actor in the entire show is Vilgefortz (Yennefer is also played by an Indian actor but I didn't even realize that in season 1 because she is half Indian and so white passing). He shouted at the white woman he supposedly loved and then emotionally manipulated her by saying she didn't love him as much as he loved her. He was one step away from stabbing her to death, a la Geralt, because he was so “loving” according to The Witcher romantic precedent. Isn't domestic violence wonderful? Isn't it wonderful when it's an Indian man doing it? Even the white men in this show who literally murdered their partners on screen were never shown to scream at their women, or if they did it’s shown as totally justified, and this is how we know that white men are chivalrous heroes while Indian men are violent towards women and to be avoided no matter how exotically good-looking they are. Meanwhile, those chivalrous white men literally murdered their partners by stabbing them. There was exactly 1 Indian looking man in an entire show that had multiple white male actors. Isn’t token representation a wonderful thing?

Screenshot Vilgefortz, the only Indian looking man in the show is abusive to his white woman partner.

30. The makers of the series presented torture as an acceptable way of extracting information out of an enemy. Because revenge is reasonable and torture is fine as long as it’s done by characters you like. And they got Vilgefortz, the only brown man in the show, to defend a white woman’s desire to torture a prisoner of war! Consider the timeframe this is happening. After 20 years of a fake US war on terror filled with scandals and war crimes including torture, drone killings, starving children, and faked chemical attacks, this US series has a storyline that glamorizes torture now that we have a Democrat for a president again, knowing that Democrat presidents always solidify and intensify the worst of Republican policies like, I don’t know, torturing prisoners of war. I predicted this, by the way. Witcher season 2 is TRASH.

Screenshot Torturing prisoners of war came so naturally to Tissaia but she was quick to jump to Yennefer’s defense when the same thing was done to her by another mage. So it’s right when you do it to others but not when it’s done to you.

31. Considering that these Witchers were supposed to be great protectors and fighters, they definitely didn't know how to set up a perimeter. I wouldn't want them for bodyguards, that's for sure. They couldn't even protect their own stronghold from not just one threat but multiple threats. The whole point of their back story was even that their stronghold had been attacked before so they had to keep it safe and secluded. You’d think after the first breach they’d figure out some defense, right? So what was the point in them existing when they were this bad at their own job? And why were they such epic failures at this one job?

32. The mages, for all their power and political machinations, also didn't know how to set up a perimeter and this was a critique I had about them from season 1. They didn't improve on this in season 2. They had zero understanding of how to plan a battle or execute one. Why can't any of these writers actually talk to someone who knows battle tactics and politics? For the love of logic, call me. I'll tell you some basic things that would have made so much more sense out of this story. The only thing that saved them in Season 1 was Yennefer's raw magic and that's not exactly something to be proud of, for a bunch of political schemers and royal advisors. How can you advise a king when you have no clue how to fight a war? These mages were useless.

33. If I have to watch one more mediocre man in power, I'll scream. Unfortunately in season 2, they not only had mediocre men in power, they had also mediocre women in power, or they took away the power of non-mediocre women, or they compounded the problem of disempowered interesting women with bad lines, terrible acting, and shoddy costume decisions.

26. Case in point: If you were in hiding because the Gestapo was after you, would you choose to wear a royal purple cloak so you could stand out everywhere you went? No? Then why was quarter Elf Yennefer, who was on the run from multiple cops and Gestapo, wearing a royal purple cloak like a clown?

Screenshot Yennefer in her super low key royal purple cloak that didn’t stick out at all in a marketplace.

34. If Ciri could open portals and monoliths and call monsters and send them home because of her Elven blood, then why couldn’t any other Elves do the same? Almost all the other Elves were presented as mundane and non-magical but Ciri was all magical because she had a drop of Elven in her from 300 years ago?? And we’re supposed to believe that she was the “warrior” the Elves built, with her grand total of 1 drop Elven blood. They’re basically saying: “Her great great great great great grandmother was a Cherokee princess and that’s why she deserves to rule this Indigenous land.” Meanwhile, all the real Elves suffer and die in a genocide that has stolen their land, their culture, their identity, their magic. And this is where we come to the real problem of The Witcher which was evident from the very beginning and is clearer now than ever:

35. The prophecy child is a white. blonde. pretty. able-bodied. princess. This is a critique I had in season 1 and nothing in season 2 improved on it. The diversity department at Netflix were probably thrilled that their hero was a girl and not another man cos #ImwithHER. Vilgefortz even says that Ciri has the potential to end all wars forever. That’s how blonde and pretty she is! She’s “End All War” blonde white girl magic. But guess what? The fallacy of white girl saviors is literally a death sentence for our planet. Perpetuating such a fantasy for white women and girls who already struggle so much with their self-absorbed capitalist colonizer desire to be "special" and "starseed" and "princess" and "girl boss" doesn't help us, it hurts us. I kept waiting for Ciri to show some nuance, to go deeper, to not be a bratty princess who was going to destroy everyone around her. And after two seasons I can tell you it's not going to happen because the makers of the show are white women writing out their white girl princess starseed fantasies. In other words, it's all downhill from here, and we're pretty far down this hill already.

The few things I liked, in the spirit of balance:

1. Every time Ciri asked Geralt how he knew a certain woman, the awkward look on his face made me smile.

2. The “Burn, Butcher, burn” song was quite funny. Hell hath no fury like Jaskier scorned, that’s for sure. And frankly, Geralt should burn.

3. Yennefer’s two lovers meeting and not knowing they were both Yennefer’s lovers was hilarious, especially when they finally realized and, cue rumbling thunder, one of them asked the other: “You know Yen?”

4. It was nice to see Fringilla looking so glamorous, since in season 1 her Nilfgaardian costume design was so boring.

5. It was funny to hear Jaskier and Yennefer saying “fuck” so much when it’s normally Geralt’s word. But Geralt didn’t have many chances to say his favorite word because he was a parent now and had to keep his language clean.

6. Geralt told Vesemir as if he was doing a great job parenting: “I told her to ________.” Vesemir replied with exasperation: “Kids never do what you tell them to.” Truth.

7. Geralt didn’t try to drown his sorrows in losing Yennefer by having sex with Triss. Well done, Geralt. This is a really low bar to be congratulating a man over, that he didn’t jump into the first bed offered when the love of his life died just 3 days ago.

8. The Gestapo “papers please” guard who angered Jaskier gave a pretty accurate critique of season 1 and Jaskier’s music. Someone had to say it, and it was funny that even a Nazi was able to point out all the issues. (You know what that means? It means that the writers are perfectly well aware of how shoddy their writing is and they still screwed up season 2.)

9. The “demon witch” imprisoned in the hut turned out to just want to go home, which I guessed halfway through the season and surmised as being the reason why any of the monsters fought or appeared angry. They all just wanted to go home and were drawn to Ciri because they knew she could help them. Turns out that no one is truly evil except colonizers, no matter what they look like or what species they are. Everyone just wants to go home and can get really upset and angry when they’re pulled from their home, thrust into someone else’s world, and forced to live by someone else’s culture and rules with no way out. As Geralt said in season 1: “When was the last time you felt happy when you were trapped?”

Screenshot The Deathless Mother just wanted to go home and not be imprisoned forever by the Witchers. Now why would eternal imprisonment bother her, I wonder?

10. Calanthe’s internalized oppression over having Elven blood went a long way towards understanding her violence towards Elves. The most violent colonizers are always those who are most colonized. My people call them “coconuts.” Brown on the outside, white on the inside. Deracinated is also a term that’s used. That’s why white people are so violent. Because they were colonized by the Romans 2,000 years ago, lost their Indigeneity, and they’ve never healed from it.

11. When Yennefer tried to claim Elf identity because she’s one quarter Elven blood through her father, the Elf queen said to her: “Do you sing our songs? Do you honor our elders? Have you ever shed a tear for anything Elven? You are no Elf.” That is as accurate and honest a description of Indigenous identity as can be said by anyone and it needed to be said. It doesn’t matter how much blood quantum you have. Just because you exploit through corrupted identity politics the racial identity your Indigenous ancestors gave you, that doesn’t make you Indigenous. If you have no respect for your ancestors, if you don’t follow their ways, if you don’t honor their memory, if you don’t continue their culture through your actions every day, you are not Indigenous. This was the most serious and honest point made in the entire season.

Conclusion

The things I liked in The Witcher season 2 did not make up for the things I didn’t like. Season 2 could have been great. There were elements of story that could have been developed, written well, and turned into a genuinely good show. But they failed from the beginning and with each new episode, it only became worse. And that was fated, unfortunately. With the clear white supremacist anti-Indigenous anti-Black anti-woman narrative, it was never going to be a great show unless you ignored all the rape culture and violence towards women and cheered on mediocre men and the women who put up with them.

I'm pretty sure The Witcher is going to turn into a Game of Thrones disappointment. It’s already lost lustre in season 2 while GOT took 5+ seasons to collapse into banality. In both scenarios it was the writing that failed the show. There was a hook at the end of Witcher season 2 which has now turned everything on its head but I don't think I can watch more women being murdered and demonized for no reason other than the white man’s rape culture and misogyny and empire.

Not even pretty pretty Henry Cavill could save this dumpster fire. Especially when his character raped his own partner, was violent towards women, was a bad father to his daughter, was hateful towards his own mother, and had little else to recommend him, including his prowess as a so-called protector.

The only reason why I went on Netflix was to watch Witcher season 2. Otherwise I've been boycotting Netflix for about 1 and a half years. I will continue to boycott Netflix for being anti-worker, transphobic, Hinduphobic, and on and on. And considering how bad The Witcher season 2 was, it looks like I’ll be continuing my Netflix boycott uninterrupted.

I'm going to have nightmares about this starseed face. I know it.