Netflix’s The Witcher has proven to be a massive hit with all corners of the fandom.
Readers of Andrzej Sapkowski’s original books and lovers of CD Projekt RED’s video game series unanimously agree that stars Henry Cavill, Anya Chalotra and Freya Allan have perfectly brought the characters of Geralt, Yennefer and Ciri to life on the small screen. Even critic reactions to Lauren Hissrich’s adaptation, initially middling, have ultimately been elevated to an overall positive rating on aggregate sites such as Rotten Tomatoes, making it one of Netflix’s most successful originals to date.
All well-deserved praise, then, but the streaming service’s newest hot property is far from perfect. One major criticism of the show’s first season is the use of multiple timelines to tell each of the three main character’s origin stories. These narrative threads ultimately converge in the eighth and final episode, of course, though even with Ciri finally reunited with her ward in the finale’s closing moments, fans have struggled to precisely map out when and where some events take place.
Fortunately, one superfan has now put together an in-depth deconstructed timeline that makes digesting key events much easier. Check it out below:
Considering the timeline’s complexity, Hissrich deserves a ton of credit for managing to adequately tell three very time-distinct tales alongside each other. Despite both Yennefer and Ciri’s importance to Geralt’s overarching story, neither character is introduced in Sapkowski’s source material until much later, making such a feat all the more impressive.
With that said, Hissrich has already confirmed that, for season 2 at least, the three orphans will be spending considerably more time together on-screen, and with the early events now accounted for, the hope is that fractured storytelling as seen in its predecessor will no longer be necessary.
The Witcher‘s eight-episode first run is available now.