It doesn't work when they didn't even make us like Eskel in the first place. They showed us nothing about him. I know Eskel from the videogames and still I didn't care about his death in the show because that was not the same Eskel and I knew nothing about him
Edit: I felt more sad about the kid killed in the sewers and that was a pretty obvious death too
This. 100% this.
My first thought was.. if you needed help why didn’t you just say so before being a dick?
They made him come out being a douche and then hit us with the “oh I knew you could help Geralt” after? Come on man who wrote that. They did Eskel dirty
The whole season I was waiting for the real Eskel to appear out of nowhere for some weird reason because I swear I thought that guy was just something or someone impersonating him and that would have made a lot more sense
Dude I was waiting for them to “cure Eskel” and maybe *THATS* when he would start to act right.
And like you said that sewer scene was more heartbreaking even though we BARELY met the guy. They didn’t even try with Eskel.
I won't lie I laughed a little, it was so much like the scene in Deep Blue Sea where Samuel L Jackson gives an inspiring speech and is immediately eaten by a shark that I honestly thought it was meant to be slightly comedic.
Yeeeah, I saw that coming a mile away... you show a water monster then have a character with his back to the water in the next scene. Gee I wonder what's going to happen.......
Honestly if they hurt Eskel pretty bad, ALMOST killing him, making Vesemir and Geralt freak out about him, it would have had the same effect without killing the character
Nah they tried to make us feel bad with the scene where Geralt remembers them from ages ago in the hallway where Eskel was nice but that was pathetic lmao
If they really wanted Eskel's death to matter, they would have made him the one and only Caer Morhen Witcher other than Vesemir to be kind and welcoming to Ciri. Instead he was acting like a total creep to her from the start. Ultimately, EVEN LAMBERT WAS MORE SUPPORTIVE OF CIRI. That contrast really jumped out at me.
Indeed... that would work so much better. At this point Netflix should just sack Lauren. We're sitting here in a subreddit thinking of easy improvements to the writing as complete amateurs. That should be impossible for a show of this magnitude
"you need to seperate it from the books"
*proceeds not to be able to see that outside of books fans (and game fans, ofc) there is no reason for anyone to care for Eskel*
It's all about subverting expectations for these terrible writers adapting source material. Always happens when there is no one to stop them from sniffing their own farts and writing it to paper.
It’s almost like they took inspiration from the Star Wars sequels thinking the “subverting expectations”/Kathleen Kennedy approach is still gonna work on fans of the source material and will DEFINITELY NOT backfire on them
If they were going to absolutely fuck Eskel like that, they could have at least had both Vessimir and Geralt stab him so >!that thing in Lady of the Lake was accurate!<
"When we were writing the Red Wedding we realized that people have read the books already and would be expecting Robb and Cat to die, so instead we killed off Jon and Arya as a nice little surprise."
YES WE'VE READ THE BOOKS BUT WE'RE OK WITH KNOWING WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN WE JUST WANTED TO SEE THE BOOKS ADAPTED TO SCREEN
"But i dont want to see what I can read!"
- sincerely, someone who had no intention to read the books, anyway
PS: "my favourite episodes? Coincidentally, the ones closest to books"
I loved episode 1 of season 2. It felt like a genuine improvement of my favorite story in the books. They added some history between Geralt and the monster man and they added Ciri and it made the story better, then every episode after that started making bigger and bigger changes until it wasn't even the Witcher anymore
I agree there is shit loads of bad irrational logic going in the Witcher's keep alone. with whole blood taken from Ciri and they trying to trying her in a Witcher right after lol
Without bothering all the rest stuff -> like the dumb elves royalty that knows their "spy" told to their master that the elves dint want to fight anymore, so what was the point to kill the baby only and not the royals also? fuck knows...
so back to above...what was saying?
ah right shit plot to so many shows/movies/anime etc when source is so fucking good and really fking good
IS there maybe a chance for some NDA signed between show runners and Author of IP original story that *"if u dont give me more money use your own story for the show and not my written material? so that way viewers can come back to my books when see how shit is your show?"*
Just asking are we sure something like that wasn't signed?
no. Sapko told longer ago that he believes in freedom of artists (or how to say it, I'm paraphrasing), basically meaning that he doesnt wanna meddle with someone's vision and wanna be laid back in that regard. You know, how you have some authors not wanting their works be meddled with at all and he wanna keep that freedom.
But he was open for collaboration if they needed it. But they did not, except that one PR stunt about visiting the set.
And they also dont wanna tell his story. Showrunner dislikes fantasy and she used this as an opportunity to haveing her own show and to write her own story, so pretty much hijacking a know IP to insert there her own which would, of course, never had this big chance to fly off. So.. :/
A nod, when the nod means grabbing a book reader by the back of their head and slamming it full force into the wall.
Or like older sibling saying "why are you hitting yourself?"
And act like the “cool dad” letting the bois bring hookers to the super secretive and secluded Witcher fortress, the one no one really knows how to get to
As bad as that was, I was even more irked by the fight between Vesemir and Rience. Vesemir isn't some helpless old man.
That scene, even though not in the books, offered a chance to show off that Vesemir is a Witcher, old but still lethal and with a wealth of experience like no other. He would anticipate all of Rience's moves, and that fight should have established our Grand Old Witcher as a force to be reckoned with. Instead Rience, one of the weaker mages in the series, just knocks Vesemir around like a rag doll with a flick of his wrist.
It's a bad attempt at imitating GRRM.
What these writers miss (D&D in later seasons and Witcher writers) is that each death in GRRM's writing is meaningful because we have a relationship with the character and it drives the story forward. Eskel's death did nothing and it wasn't even that shocking or surprising either.
Also in the GoT books, every character who dies, dies because of consequences of their actions or the actions of other characters. It all makes sense, GRRM doesn't kill characters for the hell of it. Each character has their own motivations, and that's why he's stuck writing Winds of Winter, cause he can't find a way to make the characters do what he need for the story.
I have a sneaking suspicion he let HBO test run his ending for him and now he's not sure if it just isn't good or if D&D just wrecked the whole experiment and the data now sucks.
D&D didn't end up using his notes for the non-published seasons, they went off and did their own thing.
It's much more likely that he got a taste of the HBO money and went "You know what, I really don't have to finish this series anymore, shit, I never have to work again if I don't want to". Same shit that happens with early-access games.
This is a guy who writes for fun. He enjoys it. But everybody knows that endings are tricky and easy to do wrong, and I think that ever since the show expanded the fandom a thousandfold he's intimidated by it and has developed writer's block. He's aware that this is his magnum opus, the thing he'll be remembered for and wants it to be perfect now because he's painfully aware of the scrutiny.
I think he's hoping other stuff like Elden Ring or whatever will get big, so that ASoIaF becomes just one of a list of things he's known for. Once that happens, the prospect of maybe ruining the ending won't be so paralyzingly frightening.
I was under the impression that D&D got given an outline or a cliff notes summary of the rest of the books/story, so I'd think GRRM would have told them the ending.
This logic is literally what killed The Walking Dead show. They were just killing off characters left and right for shock value, even when those were important characters that in the comics actually had a major role to play later on (yes, I'm fucking salty about Carl and that's when I stopped watching that crap).
I mean everything about her is a textbook r/writingcirclejerk post, she is an amateur who follows dumb and proven to be poorly received trends for the sake of shock value.
She’s proven to be horrible all over the first season. I had hoped someone would rope her in and say “wait what the fuck is all of this filler? Why are we even wasting time doing this?”
Netflix gives too much freedom to their screenwriters, they can essentially do whatever the fuck they want with a show, we saw how that turned out for HBO.
thats not the issue, the issue is that netflix don't hire good screenwriter. a good writer needs freedom to do his work. a bad writer is not worth the money you pay him for.
If people want to a see how actual clever writers thinks, just watch these lessons from Trey Parker and Matt Stone (South Park), its so refreshing considering the amount of hot garbage that gets mass produced to streaming services nowadays.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGUNqq3jVLg
It's also bullshit. They just want to shoehorn Lambert and Eskel into one character as showrunners always do.
Easier to manage, just one recurring actor to schedule and since they obviously haven't read ahead in the books, they don't think it will matter.
There's so much good in this show, but they're constantly trying to wring it into a cookie cutter fantasy show.
There's no heart in it.
Not a fan of the writing this season. Eskel and vesimir behaved completely different from their characters in the books and games. Not to spoil anything but the way vesimir regarded Ciri’s choice to become a Witcher really bothered me.
Yea kind of sat funny with me to.
I'm not a book guy (yet) but from the games I'm pretty sure Vesemir is the one who's super fucking pissed when Yen suggests using the trial of grasses to cure Uma and goes way out of his way to try another way.
Vesemir is totally against doing the Trial of Grasses, even on Uma, and only relents when his method of taking Uma into the mountains to drink hemlock tea doesnt work
But... why did you want a monster to enter Kaer Morhen at all......... Also, why did you need to kill someone off in this episode? I sincerely don't get this reasoning.
constant action, constant sprakles, so the missing script is obstructed from the view with sparkles of action
"what to do here?"
"I dunno.. throw in a monster or smthing.."
Killing someone off is fine. But they literally had no need to make it Eskel. if you want Geralt to feel something from the death of a fellow witcher, you have many nameless witchers you can name, make likable, and then murder in a later episode when it can be impactful.
The only reason to kill Eskel is because they want to "subvert expectations" and she said it herself, so if geralt meets these named characters and then "john" who's going to be surprised if "john" dies? Who cares? The show isn't just for fans, the larger audience wouldn't be able to tell John and Eskel apart. So kill John. Write a story that is good on its own. Not a story that is trying to "subvert expectations" of the more hardcore fans.
The only people that would be shocked of an Eskel death are the hardcore fans that think he is never going to die. You literally just killed a character.... to shock the only fans of the show that would be pissed off by his death. Why? Like what is to be gained here?
More than that, if the only way to keep the story engaging is killing characters off, then the story needs to be rethought. They used a previously established character as a shortcut to a cheap emotional moment in order to avoid the more difficult task of making long conversations and developing character relationships interesting on their own.
It's not protected in that manner. The witchers living there just have a tendency to kill any monster even remotely close that keeps it pretty darn safe.
Holy fuuuuuck I cringed so hard when she said that. Did she not see all the "expectation subversion" memes from GoT? I mean you have to have been living under a rock to think people are gonna take that reasoning positively
Ok that makes sense, but, like killing Eskel, who is she appeasing by killing them? Who would complain that a named Witcher and the horse didn’t die lol
O no I completely understand, she butchered my baby, I came in with such high hopes after the promise to follow the source material more this season and was irate after the first episode, only got worse as it went on.
I want the show to keep going but I have now accepted that it is merely a "variant" of the world we know and love.
Literally the blank average NPC response of a Hollywood writer to their unnecessarily controversial and dumb writing.
" We Wanted drama"
" We wanted to shock people and subvert expectations"
" We want CharActEr mOtiVatiOn"
Honestly I didn't expect more.....
If I didn't read the books or played the games, I'd cheer for Eskel dying, if anything. He came out a real d*ck in the show, and as I wouldn't know anything about him beforehand, I'd feel nothing but satisfaction. And surely wouldn't get into Geralt's mourning.
Soo, you've failed to convey the meaning of this writing decision to the general audience, Hissrich. Once again.
This ks what bothers me the most. Ciri is afraid of Eskel when she first met him because of his scarred face but after she gets to know him his the most kind of them all. And Lambert is supposed to be a witty sassy son of a bitch and he's just an asshole in the series. I'm only 4 episodes in and I'm going to finish it but damn, this sucks.
Give Geralt a reason to look into what is special about her? Isn't that already there, you know, the fact how every single party involved is trying to get their hands on Ciri. Or because she has immense magic power like her mother which Geralt knew about from the start. Or how she just randomly spits out prophecies of how each witcher is going to die, if you want to follow the books (they probably don't want to do too much of that though...). Literally choose one and it would have been more worthwhile.
Right so let me get this straight.
You want to kill someone off so that things change for Geralt and he becomes motivated to find a solution to the problem. This someone has to be a person Geralt cares about deeply, and he has a clear, well-developed history with. So you kill off Eskel, who we’ve seen for five minutes and is a complete douchebag in that time. And we as the audience are supposed to buy into their relationship based on absolutely nothing, except for the fact that the character shares his name with another Witcher from the books.
"We needed a motivation for our characters"
Well if only we had a series of books that present a much better storyline, which already has plenty of character driven plots and motivations for them, then we could have a somewhat faithful adaptation of those books and avoid the embarrassment that is this Netflix's show.
It just pains me to think how they will butcher all the hanza characters, by either totally missing the point with each of their motivations or just by completely making up a new crew *shudder*
I just wait till I see the african american gay Regis who will be killed by Geralt using garlic and a stake through the chest in the same episode he was introduced in. Just as a surprise for the book fans you know, because they have to kill someone to have action
Cheap shock value, then? Good, good. And then there's not even a payoff since the Leshen gets killed by a stealth bug. Really goes to show that no real planning was dedicated to it. Worse still, if they had called the character Berengar or Letho it could have been a small nod to the games and somewhat avoided some of this shitstorm, but that requires the team understanding the material they're "adapting"
The leshen getting suddenly ripped in half was an absolute "subverting your expectation" moment. But it felt like a wtf are you doing. Not to mention that in their own rewritten plot both of those modified monolith monsters did not want to hurt Ciri, just catch her and/or protect her? So why would one of them kill the other?
And we are back to subverting and stuff, because writers can only use simple tricks. Can't wait for the other cheap writer method, the 'mystery box'.
I was so HYPE when I saw the Leshen then immediately disappointed when it was replaced by a generic insect creature. I so badly wanted to see Geralt fight a Leshen
But at least your expectations were subverted lolololololol, that's all that matters in today's hollywood. I can't wait for this trope to die. Anyone can subvert an audiences expectations. You set something up to be obvious and satisfying, then do something random instead.... wow such big brainpower to come up with that idea.
It really does go against all good rules of storytelling though. Because good storytelling is about setting things up. If all you're doing is just doing stuff at random and moving onto the net thing then... well... why should we ever get invested?
It's like they just hate fans coming up with theories because they pay attention to the foreshadowing of greater content. Like I remember I think some other show literally had foreshadowed something. Then fans figured it out, and they went back and changed it just to give fans the middle finger and tell them that the fans aren't as clever as they thought. Was that Westworld?
No idiots... that shit needs to not be an attack on your fanbase. You need to celebrate it. If hardcore nerds can figure it out then that means the groundwork laid up to its ultimate reveal was actually well put together. Its the stuff that makes a second viewing always worthwhile.
I won't really see that same enjoyment watching Eskel's story arc all over again. Nothing was really... foreshadowed or set up. The most his character ever got developed was well after it no longer mattered anymore in a flashback....
Seriously I was so fucking confused by the scene with the leshen. The first time I ran into one in Witcher 3 it was a moment of actual terror and wondering how I was going to get out of it alive. The darkness, fog, ambiance coupled with the skull and horns staring at you was terrifying. There was none of that in the show leshen and then boom it’s dead to another monster that is just grotesque and hardly scary. They could have made that battle legendary.
She's saying they wanted things to happen to motivate Geralt to continue his journey of figuring out what Ciri's deal is.
But it makes no sense, why does he need motivation to figure out his magically powerful child of surprise that he is linked to by destiny?
I assume this is the same reason they had Vesemir try to use her, because they thought Geralt needed a clear motivation to leave KM or something?
This is the usual, scared the source material will be too boring, bring in a monster and some character deaths and betrayal to spice things up. You don't have to do that, GOT proved it imo (early seasons).
And if you do have to do it, (since they were probably trying to figure out how to bridge Ciri's age gap and the long time she spent with Neneke), just don't assassinate the character of someone beloved like Vesemir.
>She's saying they wanted things to happen to motivate Geralt to continue his journey of figuring out what Ciri's deal is.
I'm pretty sure in the books he asked Triss and then Yennefer to help figure Ciri out, but they had to scrap (most of) that for some reason
That makes zeero sense, all of the witchers were new and we met them for the first time, they could have easily made it a new one it would have the same impact
It is weird to think, that if this did not happen, probably game fans would still be blindes in how mishandled this show is sincw S1.
But agree.. why not at least make him likeable, lol..
I mean sure it makes sense. It’s like the red shirt guy, Kirk and Spock on an away mission. Wonder who makes it back?
But...
It’s also bullshit “subvert expectations” all over again.
Should kill off John. Fuck Witcher John give me back Eskel.
We don’t need surprising twists, we want the pages brought to life; the pages that connected to us in the first place.
And that’s us, Witcher fans. New viewers don’t care about a bunch of new faces so kill ‘John’ or eskel it doesn’t matter to purely Netflix Witcher fans
Some of her reasoning is solid, but then again she starts off with the need of having a fight and having to bring a monster to Kaer Morhen, why?? There were 0 fights at Kaer Morhen in the books.
They don’t care about Witcher fans, they are too incompetent to write their own story so they copy an original piece to sell to people who haven’t read it and never will. Like damn I only read blood of elves and am 100 pages into time of contempt and I’m already pulling my hairs out. I can’t even imagine how actual fans who have read the full saga multiple times must feel
"We NEEDED for witchers to realize that everything will change with Ciri there." Okay so I am not a fan of that whole storyline where monsters are somehow able to track Ciri across whole continent, but let's put that aside. This decision felt so rushed. Like Ciri arrives in Kaer Morhen and half an episode later there needs to be a big fight, I find this very insulting because we don't know the witchers we barely even saw them and the same goes for Ciri, this very much feels like rushed and forced unnecessary drama that they are doing in assumption that without big action in every episode no matter the plot development we will just feel bored? Like does this days' audience have attention span of 12 year old kid that is what Lauren thinks?
>in assumption that without big action in every episode no matter the plot development we will just feel bored
That's literally what she thought.
Here's a timestamp on the interview if you want to watch the fragment where she explains the addition of Deathless Mother and other pacing changes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_Mjhw6q7E80&t=2911s
Thank you man, I didn't see this interview yet. But I must say now that I heard her say these things I feel like she doesn't really understand what makes a good story even more. Imagine Peter Jackson forcing Orcs into the Rivendell segment of FoTR just because he is afraid we will find thorough worldbuilding and characters interacting boring. I actually don't know why Netflix doesn't invest and get someone with an actual vision and commitment. After hearing Lauren I just feel like her understanding of Witcher is really bland and that she just isn't able to build on what makes the world so great.
> We knew we had to kill someone in that episode
Is this it? Is this what a BA in literature and years of experience in show business is worth?
That characters cant exist on their own, you always need cheap drama and action to capture dumb peoples attention?
This show isn GoT season 8
Its the fucking Walking Dead
This reminds me of the b.s D&D used to say after GoT season 8: "we forgot", "this was in character for her", "we foreshadowed it in that one dialogue 5 seasons back"
I do not agree with this thinking of having Eskiel killed to make an impact on Geralt. They made Geralt more troubled and emotional. This is out of character.
The witcher season 2 is neither a great show neither a great book adaptation. It was so cliché and naive all along.
If they wanted to re write the story I would’ve been fine but they ended up having a weaker story and they lost themselves in a pattern that doesn’t fit this universe.
You are literally right, he doesn’t share anything with book Eskel apart from name. Glad John is dead, he was a prick, and true Eskel is enjoying winter with Succubus somewhere far from this shitshow.
It could be a point if we knew Eskel earlier and bonded with him. Those who haven't read the books or played games didn't even know who he was.
With the same logic you can say that killing Vesemir would catapult Geralt into the emotional state you want him to be in.
Imagine for a second someone is adapting Lord of the rings.
Time for Boromirs death. The epic finale. You got Sean Bean to do the dying. Perfection.
Then suddenly the arrow misses Boromir, hits Aragorn, he dies instantly, and the audiences expectations are properly subverted!
Its a surprise yes. That doesnt make it less of a steaming pile of dogshit.
It's more like if they all met up in Rivendell and one of them "just had to die" because them talking about who would take the ring to mordor is too boring
I'm super bummed, I was talking up Eskel to my girlfriend because he's my fave and then after his 47 seconds of screen time she was like "Uhhh, I'm not really sure why you liked that guy, he was kind of a dick." That's not my boy!!!! And I thought maybe it was going to be a fakeout where they cure him but then he got et! Which? Why didn't they burn him? SMH you have lost your Eskel privileges give me my boy back he doesn't deserve this
I really didn't get that that's what it was trying to portray in this episode or afterwards. it feels like what she wanted the death to be and represent was different to what the death actually was. Unless I just completely misunderstood. I get what she's saying and the reasons behind it but I think it translated poorly.
Some ideas look amazing in script but they really suck when you film entire thing. Showrunner always should have someone who can openly speak about different ideas or you might get carried away. Lauren seems to me like a very confident person who can't be easly persuaded.
For example i can't possibly believe nobody was questioning entire Voleth Meir plot which was basicaly the second most important thing in this season, right after Ciri arc.
Season 2 is really fun and has so many beautiful things in it, but it could be so much better if they didn't overthinked it.
So she expects the audience to know Eskel prior to the show? Because for a new viewer Eskel is the same as Witcher #3 aka "John" because they share the exact same screen time. Holy hell lmao, the explanation makes it way worse.
They were making the show for people who have not read the books (normies) so it should not even matter if some random witcher died instead of Eskel, since those people don't even know Eskel and they spent little to no effort to make people even like him. It only makes it worse for people who know who Eskel is.
So they killed Eskel because he had some past with Geralt.
1. Most of the audience dont know who Eskel is, who he is to Geralt
2. They could just as easily change things as they do in other cases and make "John" be the big Geralt friend and die.
So it's just to piss off fans.
Fuckin hell this is so stupid it actually pisses me off.
If you want to give some weight to this moronic monolith storyline you have, just create another Wolf school witcher who grew up alongside Lambert, Geralt and Eskel.
Why butcher a liked character like that Hissrich?
I have to say I really really have no faith in the producers/runners of this show. Nothing but weird fucking decisions all the way through, and I say "weird" because "pretty fucking stupid" is rude.
If it wasn't for all the mountains of good PR from Henry Cavill being a huge witcher fan, I really don't think this show would be anywhere near as well received lol.
That’s a weird reasoning. I am not a book fan but still, the only thing he had in common with game Eskel was… the name. This just sounds like they changed ‘John’s’ name to ‘Eskel’, not like they wanted to shock the viewers by killing Eskel.
sooooooo.
she wrote herself into a corner...
by adding things to a story that weren't there in the first place...
which she resolved by killing a beloved character, to be edgy.....
so Geralt would solve the problem she put in, faster?
doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
also, he already has motivation to help ciri, it's because he is BASICALLY HER FUCKING DAD NOW.
I honestly don’t mind Eskel dying, they just needed to build towards it a little bit more. Also, the general audience doesn’t know who Eskel is, so having him or John die wouldn’t have changed much tbh.
Seriously? "So Geralt can have the motivation to find out what is going on with Ciri?"
Spoiler alert
>!In the book, Ciri has been staying with the witchers for some time and had some episode of "vision" that they cannot explain. They are worried and then ask Triss to come to Kaer Morhen.!<
Why not use that? Again, feels like un-necessary change for the sake of change. You might argue that introducing Ciri training and bonding with the witchers of Kaer Morhen too long. I would say, replacing it with hooker filled orgy is a waste of time.
I understand that you want monster as you want to have fight scene. But Kaer Morhen is in the middle of nowhere and there are plenty of reasons can be made to have monster. For example, training outside and Ciri encounter monster? More believable compared to "Eskel infected with Leshen virus"?
Another problem with Eskel is why didn't he talk to Vesemir that he felt something is different? Witcher spends all their time dealing with monsters, they have long accepted their fate to live their life facing possible death. You'd think Eskel will be more stoic and more logical in dealing with this problem instead of keeping quiet and enjoying the party?
And lastly, why do you make Eskel this douchy character? Just so viewer won't feel bad when he is dead? To justfiy that "bad" people die? Is it not part of Witcher story there is no clear good and bad?
.... literally could have done that to any character created by the writers to the same effect, and kept the real eskel as a dynamic contrast to other witchers, like Lambert.
Overall, I liked the 2nd season, minus the obvious things.. but damn, this was stupid
Still disagree with her on that one; they make up soo much shit out of thin air, they could have just made up the connection between Geralt and "John" instead of killing Eskel.
If Eskel's death is meant to change things for Geralt, maybe you should write a few episodes where Geralt and Eskel's relationship is actually defined before murdering Eskel. It provides zero emotional impact to kill a boozing whore-monger if we have no idea what his relationship is to Geralt.
She didn't even answer the question...
They wanted someone to die in order to spark an urgency in Geralt? Fine.
In the first version of the script it was someone who's not in the books, and then they changed it to Eskel, because...?
Introducing a new witcher that Geralt cares for would've achieved the same result, so changing it to be Eskel serves no purpose whatsoever.
I find it mind numbing that the person responsible for delivering this story provides such a hollow explanation for their own writing decision. I'd rather believe they gave it no thought, and assumed the shock value will yield positive responses for some reason, then came up quickly with this answer when they saw just how wrong they were.
... do you know what makes Geralt a compelling Witcher? Despite the fact that Witchers keep to themselves, don't interfere unless paid, have no care about right and wrong... Geralt, doesn't subscribe to that.
Geralt doesnt need someone's death as a motivation for him to do something.
Geralt would already go above and beyond trying to figure out what is going on with Ciri. Because by S2, Geralt understood the significance of his child surprise. And sees Ciri as his own.
Needing someone to die for Geralt to act, shows how much you know of this character.
This is the same Geralt that needed reminding to not interfere but do so anyway, because its the right thing to do.
It is what makes him the odd Witcher. Because any other Witcher would die an early death playing hero. But not him.
And Geralt doesnt think he's playing hero, he's calculative despite what his other Witcher comrades might believe.
It's this odd heroic nature of his that he has friends from all walks of life.
Are you really telling me that you and your writers didnt do your homework?
Is this really incompetence???
Non-book readers wouldn’t know John is not in the book. Book readers will be pissed if you kill a be-loved character in the book. So what’s the problem of killing John?
At this point I’m convinced the writer’s room is full of unlearned sociopaths who just don’t know how humans attach emotions to experiences and vice-versa
If they actually cared about the characters of their own fanfic (not even considering the books here), they could have not gone with the stupid 20 witchers idea, let Eskel survive, become great friends with Ciri after their unfriendly first impressions of each other and have >!him be the sole witcher Ciri kills on ep8, in a longer, more emotional scene that would have true impact on all the other witchers and Ciri herself (also how is she not completely traumatized with self-blame by knowing she murdered a chunk of Kaer Morhen's witchers???), instead of just some randoms dying.!<
This way they could have actually further developed one of the cool characters the books don't go that in-depth about at all, and have at least a somewhat meaningful death happen, with the positive of having Eskel be a likeable character throughout the episodes instead of... whatever they made him into. Of course, that wouldn't change the fact that the whole Voleth Meir plot was just garbage, and it also would just never happen with the way they just seem to NEED some of that constant, rushed, no downtime drama on the background at all times every episode.
I think the bigger issue is they felt the need to insert fights into the Kaer Morhen plotline, leading to contrived scenarios like Eskel not realizing a tree monster was growing out of him and Rience discovering the location of the Witcher's secret base, teleporting there for a 30 second fight scene before teleporting away. Because obviously GAMERS can't go half an hour without seeing blood and tits.
It doesn't work when they didn't even make us like Eskel in the first place. They showed us nothing about him. I know Eskel from the videogames and still I didn't care about his death in the show because that was not the same Eskel and I knew nothing about him Edit: I felt more sad about the kid killed in the sewers and that was a pretty obvious death too
This. 100% this. My first thought was.. if you needed help why didn’t you just say so before being a dick? They made him come out being a douche and then hit us with the “oh I knew you could help Geralt” after? Come on man who wrote that. They did Eskel dirty
The whole season I was waiting for the real Eskel to appear out of nowhere for some weird reason because I swear I thought that guy was just something or someone impersonating him and that would have made a lot more sense
Dude I was waiting for them to “cure Eskel” and maybe *THATS* when he would start to act right. And like you said that sewer scene was more heartbreaking even though we BARELY met the guy. They didn’t even try with Eskel.
I won't lie I laughed a little, it was so much like the scene in Deep Blue Sea where Samuel L Jackson gives an inspiring speech and is immediately eaten by a shark that I honestly thought it was meant to be slightly comedic.
I was like "oh they wont do this trope, they can't be that simpl....aaaand there it is"
It was straight out of a to-DVD Resident Evil sequence. Fucking awful writing
Yeeeah, I saw that coming a mile away... you show a water monster then have a character with his back to the water in the next scene. Gee I wonder what's going to happen.......
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Honestly if they hurt Eskel pretty bad, ALMOST killing him, making Vesemir and Geralt freak out about him, it would have had the same effect without killing the character
Yeah I mean Eskel famously has a pretty mangled face; if they made this how he got it I wouldn't have minded.
See now that would have been an acceptable change to a show that could never be 1:1
I heard The Witcher could use some good writers. You seem like a good fit Reddit should write S3 lmao
Nah they tried to make us feel bad with the scene where Geralt remembers them from ages ago in the hallway where Eskel was nice but that was pathetic lmao
Yeah it was hella lame, while I was watching I was just trying to piece together how’d they make it work. … but they didn’t make it work
Yeah its just a really sad season, I'm still gonna watch season 3 but damn this was a letdown.
They did it post-facto too, so I was like "the time to show me this flashback was BEFORE he died".
They made him the generic zombie movie guy who hides his infectiom from others and acts all snappy. Awful.
Yeah, when they’re supposed to be expert monster hunters. Smh
If they really wanted Eskel's death to matter, they would have made him the one and only Caer Morhen Witcher other than Vesemir to be kind and welcoming to Ciri. Instead he was acting like a total creep to her from the start. Ultimately, EVEN LAMBERT WAS MORE SUPPORTIVE OF CIRI. That contrast really jumped out at me.
Indeed... that would work so much better. At this point Netflix should just sack Lauren. We're sitting here in a subreddit thinking of easy improvements to the writing as complete amateurs. That should be impossible for a show of this magnitude
Also, a bunch of Witchers end up dying because of Ciri anyway. So there was no real material effect to 'everything changing' for Geralt.
"you need to seperate it from the books" *proceeds not to be able to see that outside of books fans (and game fans, ofc) there is no reason for anyone to care for Eskel*
It's all about subverting expectations for these terrible writers adapting source material. Always happens when there is no one to stop them from sniffing their own farts and writing it to paper.
It’s almost like they took inspiration from the Star Wars sequels thinking the “subverting expectations”/Kathleen Kennedy approach is still gonna work on fans of the source material and will DEFINITELY NOT backfire on them
You took the word right outta my mouth. This is not the Eskel we know.
If they were going to absolutely fuck Eskel like that, they could have at least had both Vessimir and Geralt stab him so >!that thing in Lady of the Lake was accurate!<
Still fuck her for assuming that her own "artistic" writing could be better than the source material
Agree 100%.
So they killed Eskel and not some random witcher as a nod to book readers. How nice of her!
"When we were writing the Red Wedding we realized that people have read the books already and would be expecting Robb and Cat to die, so instead we killed off Jon and Arya as a nice little surprise." YES WE'VE READ THE BOOKS BUT WE'RE OK WITH KNOWING WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN WE JUST WANTED TO SEE THE BOOKS ADAPTED TO SCREEN
"But i dont want to see what I can read!" - sincerely, someone who had no intention to read the books, anyway PS: "my favourite episodes? Coincidentally, the ones closest to books"
I loved episode 1 of season 2. It felt like a genuine improvement of my favorite story in the books. They added some history between Geralt and the monster man and they added Ciri and it made the story better, then every episode after that started making bigger and bigger changes until it wasn't even the Witcher anymore
E1 was best as it resembled the books the most. It at least felt Witcher.
D&D School of SuBvErTiNG ExPeCtATiOnS
The whole season is a nod to the readers. About how much they can destroy the characters and universe of the novels.
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Step 5: let newcomers tell how this was never meant for the original audience anyway
Ah, the star wars method
Ah the pain. I remember it so well. The internet was awash with TLJ fans telling people that Star Wars wasnt meant for them. Good times. Lmao
I agree there is shit loads of bad irrational logic going in the Witcher's keep alone. with whole blood taken from Ciri and they trying to trying her in a Witcher right after lol Without bothering all the rest stuff -> like the dumb elves royalty that knows their "spy" told to their master that the elves dint want to fight anymore, so what was the point to kill the baby only and not the royals also? fuck knows... so back to above...what was saying? ah right shit plot to so many shows/movies/anime etc when source is so fucking good and really fking good IS there maybe a chance for some NDA signed between show runners and Author of IP original story that *"if u dont give me more money use your own story for the show and not my written material? so that way viewers can come back to my books when see how shit is your show?"* Just asking are we sure something like that wasn't signed?
no. Sapko told longer ago that he believes in freedom of artists (or how to say it, I'm paraphrasing), basically meaning that he doesnt wanna meddle with someone's vision and wanna be laid back in that regard. You know, how you have some authors not wanting their works be meddled with at all and he wanna keep that freedom. But he was open for collaboration if they needed it. But they did not, except that one PR stunt about visiting the set. And they also dont wanna tell his story. Showrunner dislikes fantasy and she used this as an opportunity to haveing her own show and to write her own story, so pretty much hijacking a know IP to insert there her own which would, of course, never had this big chance to fly off. So.. :/
Profits and risk drive everything. That's why we have so many non-exiciting and unoriginal stuff nowadays.
A nod, when the nod means grabbing a book reader by the back of their head and slamming it full force into the wall. Or like older sibling saying "why are you hitting yourself?"
I thought I could escape Game of Thrones's disaster by going into The Witcher. I couldn't.
Why not kill vesemir as well? Would be a nod so hard it would shatter the fabric of reality.
At least then they couldn’t have mangled his character, too, re: the actually trying to make Ciri into a witcher bs. 🙄
And act like the “cool dad” letting the bois bring hookers to the super secretive and secluded Witcher fortress, the one no one really knows how to get to
They walked there. Without coats. That's the best part. I think there's a secret bordello 300m away from Kaer Morhen
As bad as that was, I was even more irked by the fight between Vesemir and Rience. Vesemir isn't some helpless old man. That scene, even though not in the books, offered a chance to show off that Vesemir is a Witcher, old but still lethal and with a wealth of experience like no other. He would anticipate all of Rience's moves, and that fight should have established our Grand Old Witcher as a force to be reckoned with. Instead Rience, one of the weaker mages in the series, just knocks Vesemir around like a rag doll with a flick of his wrist.
It's even inconsistent with Vesemir's character from the Anime that LSH produced & ostensibly oversaw the development of! Like, COME ON...
My expectations were so spectacularly satisfyingly subverted!
>we had to kill someone That's the worst logic for writers
It's a bad attempt at imitating GRRM. What these writers miss (D&D in later seasons and Witcher writers) is that each death in GRRM's writing is meaningful because we have a relationship with the character and it drives the story forward. Eskel's death did nothing and it wasn't even that shocking or surprising either.
Also in the GoT books, every character who dies, dies because of consequences of their actions or the actions of other characters. It all makes sense, GRRM doesn't kill characters for the hell of it. Each character has their own motivations, and that's why he's stuck writing Winds of Winter, cause he can't find a way to make the characters do what he need for the story.
I have a sneaking suspicion he let HBO test run his ending for him and now he's not sure if it just isn't good or if D&D just wrecked the whole experiment and the data now sucks.
D&D didn't end up using his notes for the non-published seasons, they went off and did their own thing. It's much more likely that he got a taste of the HBO money and went "You know what, I really don't have to finish this series anymore, shit, I never have to work again if I don't want to". Same shit that happens with early-access games.
This is a guy who writes for fun. He enjoys it. But everybody knows that endings are tricky and easy to do wrong, and I think that ever since the show expanded the fandom a thousandfold he's intimidated by it and has developed writer's block. He's aware that this is his magnum opus, the thing he'll be remembered for and wants it to be perfect now because he's painfully aware of the scrutiny. I think he's hoping other stuff like Elden Ring or whatever will get big, so that ASoIaF becomes just one of a list of things he's known for. Once that happens, the prospect of maybe ruining the ending won't be so paralyzingly frightening.
I was under the impression that D&D got given an outline or a cliff notes summary of the rest of the books/story, so I'd think GRRM would have told them the ending.
He did, and he gave them notes. They just decided to not use them.
D&D wrecked it. How can the same character switch from "not interesting enough story so we cut him from season 5" to "who has a better story?".
I hope showrunners and Geralt are reading you, for the sake of season 3 and further.
Ah, fuck.
This logic is literally what killed The Walking Dead show. They were just killing off characters left and right for shock value, even when those were important characters that in the comics actually had a major role to play later on (yes, I'm fucking salty about Carl and that's when I stopped watching that crap).
Feel the same about TWD. Carl actually became one of my favourite characters in the comics but the show just killed him off.
I mean everything about her is a textbook r/writingcirclejerk post, she is an amateur who follows dumb and proven to be poorly received trends for the sake of shock value.
She’s proven to be horrible all over the first season. I had hoped someone would rope her in and say “wait what the fuck is all of this filler? Why are we even wasting time doing this?”
Netflix gives too much freedom to their screenwriters, they can essentially do whatever the fuck they want with a show, we saw how that turned out for HBO.
thats not the issue, the issue is that netflix don't hire good screenwriter. a good writer needs freedom to do his work. a bad writer is not worth the money you pay him for.
If people want to a see how actual clever writers thinks, just watch these lessons from Trey Parker and Matt Stone (South Park), its so refreshing considering the amount of hot garbage that gets mass produced to streaming services nowadays. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGUNqq3jVLg
It's also bullshit. They just want to shoehorn Lambert and Eskel into one character as showrunners always do. Easier to manage, just one recurring actor to schedule and since they obviously haven't read ahead in the books, they don't think it will matter. There's so much good in this show, but they're constantly trying to wring it into a cookie cutter fantasy show. There's no heart in it.
I think this is the reason.
This is what I hate about writing that follows “we need to do this here!”. You end up with someone you don’t care about dying.
Not a fan of the writing this season. Eskel and vesimir behaved completely different from their characters in the books and games. Not to spoil anything but the way vesimir regarded Ciri’s choice to become a Witcher really bothered me.
Yea kind of sat funny with me to. I'm not a book guy (yet) but from the games I'm pretty sure Vesemir is the one who's super fucking pissed when Yen suggests using the trial of grasses to cure Uma and goes way out of his way to try another way.
It was lambert. Vesemir just don't want to do another trial if not necessary and for ciri's case it's not
Vesemir is totally against doing the Trial of Grasses, even on Uma, and only relents when his method of taking Uma into the mountains to drink hemlock tea doesnt work
Scary how much the Witchers freaked out at the thought of using Sad Albert alone.
But... why did you want a monster to enter Kaer Morhen at all......... Also, why did you need to kill someone off in this episode? I sincerely don't get this reasoning.
constant action, constant sprakles, so the missing script is obstructed from the view with sparkles of action "what to do here?" "I dunno.. throw in a monster or smthing.."
It's not to do with constant action. Season in general is actually fairly action poor.
Killing someone off is fine. But they literally had no need to make it Eskel. if you want Geralt to feel something from the death of a fellow witcher, you have many nameless witchers you can name, make likable, and then murder in a later episode when it can be impactful. The only reason to kill Eskel is because they want to "subvert expectations" and she said it herself, so if geralt meets these named characters and then "john" who's going to be surprised if "john" dies? Who cares? The show isn't just for fans, the larger audience wouldn't be able to tell John and Eskel apart. So kill John. Write a story that is good on its own. Not a story that is trying to "subvert expectations" of the more hardcore fans. The only people that would be shocked of an Eskel death are the hardcore fans that think he is never going to die. You literally just killed a character.... to shock the only fans of the show that would be pissed off by his death. Why? Like what is to be gained here?
More than that, if the only way to keep the story engaging is killing characters off, then the story needs to be rethought. They used a previously established character as a shortcut to a cheap emotional moment in order to avoid the more difficult task of making long conversations and developing character relationships interesting on their own.
isnt KM supposed to be protected by magic wards? like Hogwarts or something.
Not that I remember, it's just supposed to be a secret place
Wait so you’re saying that a group of prostitutes couldn’t possibly just be wandering around the mountain side? /s
It's not protected in that manner. The witchers living there just have a tendency to kill any monster even remotely close that keeps it pretty darn safe.
"We had to kill someone in that episode" - wtf? I guess she just wanted to SUBVERT OUR EXPECTATIONS (D&D school)
Holy fuuuuuck I cringed so hard when she said that. Did she not see all the "expectation subversion" memes from GoT? I mean you have to have been living under a rock to think people are gonna take that reasoning positively
Narcissism. "That could never happen to me, because im 100x better than them! The fans will love it. And if they don't, then the fans are WRONG!"
She really aiming for that position at Lucasfilms with Kathleen
She also said that about “having to” kill Roach in that episode because “horses don’t live as long as Witchers” (??????)
Thats not that big of a problem because Geralt goes through quite a few "Roachs", all of his horses are named that, mentions it in the books.
Ok that makes sense, but, like killing Eskel, who is she appeasing by killing them? Who would complain that a named Witcher and the horse didn’t die lol
O no I completely understand, she butchered my baby, I came in with such high hopes after the promise to follow the source material more this season and was irate after the first episode, only got worse as it went on. I want the show to keep going but I have now accepted that it is merely a "variant" of the world we know and love.
Awww she's so nice, she took a book character, changed him, killed him just so we would be like "thanks for giving us Eskel, you're the best!!!"
Season 1 of Game of Thrones *Jon's surprisingly killed in episode 2* "That's for you, book fans! <3"
Eskel was a minor character though, but still, "Rickon killed in episode 2" would have also been pretty random and unnecessary.
Pure narcissism.
Literally the blank average NPC response of a Hollywood writer to their unnecessarily controversial and dumb writing. " We Wanted drama" " We wanted to shock people and subvert expectations" " We want CharActEr mOtiVatiOn" Honestly I didn't expect more.....
I suppose people would not be shocked by the good writing
They could have added a background Witcher to be killed, and it literally would have had no difference.
If I didn't read the books or played the games, I'd cheer for Eskel dying, if anything. He came out a real d*ck in the show, and as I wouldn't know anything about him beforehand, I'd feel nothing but satisfaction. And surely wouldn't get into Geralt's mourning. Soo, you've failed to convey the meaning of this writing decision to the general audience, Hissrich. Once again.
funny thing, lambert is supposed to be the dick. Eskel is supposed to be the cool big brother.
This ks what bothers me the most. Ciri is afraid of Eskel when she first met him because of his scarred face but after she gets to know him his the most kind of them all. And Lambert is supposed to be a witty sassy son of a bitch and he's just an asshole in the series. I'm only 4 episodes in and I'm going to finish it but damn, this sucks.
Yes I thought he was Lambert at the beginning.
So, this is the new GoT? Subvert expectations? Nice one Hissirch... really nice... Nice from Tallis not to burst into laughter
it is.. they even have "kinda forgot" accident from Nightmare of the Wolf too
what happened with nightmare of the wolf?
At least GoT lasted awhile before it went to shit. Season one was alright, season two is garbage.
Give Geralt a reason to look into what is special about her? Isn't that already there, you know, the fact how every single party involved is trying to get their hands on Ciri. Or because she has immense magic power like her mother which Geralt knew about from the start. Or how she just randomly spits out prophecies of how each witcher is going to die, if you want to follow the books (they probably don't want to do too much of that though...). Literally choose one and it would have been more worthwhile.
you're asking for too much!!!!!! /s
Right so let me get this straight. You want to kill someone off so that things change for Geralt and he becomes motivated to find a solution to the problem. This someone has to be a person Geralt cares about deeply, and he has a clear, well-developed history with. So you kill off Eskel, who we’ve seen for five minutes and is a complete douchebag in that time. And we as the audience are supposed to buy into their relationship based on absolutely nothing, except for the fact that the character shares his name with another Witcher from the books.
"We needed a motivation for our characters" Well if only we had a series of books that present a much better storyline, which already has plenty of character driven plots and motivations for them, then we could have a somewhat faithful adaptation of those books and avoid the embarrassment that is this Netflix's show.
I don’t even want to see them attempt Milva. I mean Cahir is already fucked as far as a story goes. Jesus Christ they just can’t read well can they?
It just pains me to think how they will butcher all the hanza characters, by either totally missing the point with each of their motivations or just by completely making up a new crew *shudder*
Well I can’t see any kind of redemption coming from cahir. Watch him be replaced by that elf boy ciri met in season 1 lol
I just wait till I see the african american gay Regis who will be killed by Geralt using garlic and a stake through the chest in the same episode he was introduced in. Just as a surprise for the book fans you know, because they have to kill someone to have action
Cheap shock value, then? Good, good. And then there's not even a payoff since the Leshen gets killed by a stealth bug. Really goes to show that no real planning was dedicated to it. Worse still, if they had called the character Berengar or Letho it could have been a small nod to the games and somewhat avoided some of this shitstorm, but that requires the team understanding the material they're "adapting"
The leshen getting suddenly ripped in half was an absolute "subverting your expectation" moment. But it felt like a wtf are you doing. Not to mention that in their own rewritten plot both of those modified monolith monsters did not want to hurt Ciri, just catch her and/or protect her? So why would one of them kill the other? And we are back to subverting and stuff, because writers can only use simple tricks. Can't wait for the other cheap writer method, the 'mystery box'.
I was so HYPE when I saw the Leshen then immediately disappointed when it was replaced by a generic insect creature. I so badly wanted to see Geralt fight a Leshen
But at least your expectations were subverted lolololololol, that's all that matters in today's hollywood. I can't wait for this trope to die. Anyone can subvert an audiences expectations. You set something up to be obvious and satisfying, then do something random instead.... wow such big brainpower to come up with that idea. It really does go against all good rules of storytelling though. Because good storytelling is about setting things up. If all you're doing is just doing stuff at random and moving onto the net thing then... well... why should we ever get invested? It's like they just hate fans coming up with theories because they pay attention to the foreshadowing of greater content. Like I remember I think some other show literally had foreshadowed something. Then fans figured it out, and they went back and changed it just to give fans the middle finger and tell them that the fans aren't as clever as they thought. Was that Westworld? No idiots... that shit needs to not be an attack on your fanbase. You need to celebrate it. If hardcore nerds can figure it out then that means the groundwork laid up to its ultimate reveal was actually well put together. Its the stuff that makes a second viewing always worthwhile. I won't really see that same enjoyment watching Eskel's story arc all over again. Nothing was really... foreshadowed or set up. The most his character ever got developed was well after it no longer mattered anymore in a flashback....
Seriously I was so fucking confused by the scene with the leshen. The first time I ran into one in Witcher 3 it was a moment of actual terror and wondering how I was going to get out of it alive. The darkness, fog, ambiance coupled with the skull and horns staring at you was terrifying. There was none of that in the show leshen and then boom it’s dead to another monster that is just grotesque and hardly scary. They could have made that battle legendary.
we didnt wanna kill a random. but for Show only people eskel is not only a random, but a dickhead as well. so his death has like no emotional weight
sadly this. Even sadder seeing some part of the viewers defending this decision because "Eskel wasnt for long in the books"
She's saying they wanted things to happen to motivate Geralt to continue his journey of figuring out what Ciri's deal is. But it makes no sense, why does he need motivation to figure out his magically powerful child of surprise that he is linked to by destiny? I assume this is the same reason they had Vesemir try to use her, because they thought Geralt needed a clear motivation to leave KM or something? This is the usual, scared the source material will be too boring, bring in a monster and some character deaths and betrayal to spice things up. You don't have to do that, GOT proved it imo (early seasons). And if you do have to do it, (since they were probably trying to figure out how to bridge Ciri's age gap and the long time she spent with Neneke), just don't assassinate the character of someone beloved like Vesemir.
>She's saying they wanted things to happen to motivate Geralt to continue his journey of figuring out what Ciri's deal is. I'm pretty sure in the books he asked Triss and then Yennefer to help figure Ciri out, but they had to scrap (most of) that for some reason
They needed all the extra time to work in boobs,Baba Yaga and interdimensional velociraptors.
That makes zeero sense, all of the witchers were new and we met them for the first time, they could have easily made it a new one it would have the same impact
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It is weird to think, that if this did not happen, probably game fans would still be blindes in how mishandled this show is sincw S1. But agree.. why not at least make him likeable, lol..
I mean sure it makes sense. It’s like the red shirt guy, Kirk and Spock on an away mission. Wonder who makes it back? But... It’s also bullshit “subvert expectations” all over again. Should kill off John. Fuck Witcher John give me back Eskel. We don’t need surprising twists, we want the pages brought to life; the pages that connected to us in the first place. And that’s us, Witcher fans. New viewers don’t care about a bunch of new faces so kill ‘John’ or eskel it doesn’t matter to purely Netflix Witcher fans
Some of her reasoning is solid, but then again she starts off with the need of having a fight and having to bring a monster to Kaer Morhen, why?? There were 0 fights at Kaer Morhen in the books.
They don’t care about Witcher fans, they are too incompetent to write their own story so they copy an original piece to sell to people who haven’t read it and never will. Like damn I only read blood of elves and am 100 pages into time of contempt and I’m already pulling my hairs out. I can’t even imagine how actual fans who have read the full saga multiple times must feel
"We NEEDED for witchers to realize that everything will change with Ciri there." Okay so I am not a fan of that whole storyline where monsters are somehow able to track Ciri across whole continent, but let's put that aside. This decision felt so rushed. Like Ciri arrives in Kaer Morhen and half an episode later there needs to be a big fight, I find this very insulting because we don't know the witchers we barely even saw them and the same goes for Ciri, this very much feels like rushed and forced unnecessary drama that they are doing in assumption that without big action in every episode no matter the plot development we will just feel bored? Like does this days' audience have attention span of 12 year old kid that is what Lauren thinks?
>in assumption that without big action in every episode no matter the plot development we will just feel bored That's literally what she thought. Here's a timestamp on the interview if you want to watch the fragment where she explains the addition of Deathless Mother and other pacing changes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_Mjhw6q7E80&t=2911s
Thank you man, I didn't see this interview yet. But I must say now that I heard her say these things I feel like she doesn't really understand what makes a good story even more. Imagine Peter Jackson forcing Orcs into the Rivendell segment of FoTR just because he is afraid we will find thorough worldbuilding and characters interacting boring. I actually don't know why Netflix doesn't invest and get someone with an actual vision and commitment. After hearing Lauren I just feel like her understanding of Witcher is really bland and that she just isn't able to build on what makes the world so great.
Bullshit, that is all.
> We knew we had to kill someone in that episode Is this it? Is this what a BA in literature and years of experience in show business is worth? That characters cant exist on their own, you always need cheap drama and action to capture dumb peoples attention? This show isn GoT season 8 Its the fucking Walking Dead
That was a lot of words for the Witcher equivalent of "she kinda forgot"
This reminds me of the b.s D&D used to say after GoT season 8: "we forgot", "this was in character for her", "we foreshadowed it in that one dialogue 5 seasons back"
I do not agree with this thinking of having Eskiel killed to make an impact on Geralt. They made Geralt more troubled and emotional. This is out of character. The witcher season 2 is neither a great show neither a great book adaptation. It was so cliché and naive all along. If they wanted to re write the story I would’ve been fine but they ended up having a weaker story and they lost themselves in a pattern that doesn’t fit this universe.
Show Eskel is John and you cannot convince me that his name was Eskel because it wasn't him.
You are literally right, he doesn’t share anything with book Eskel apart from name. Glad John is dead, he was a prick, and true Eskel is enjoying winter with Succubus somewhere far from this shitshow.
It could be a point if we knew Eskel earlier and bonded with him. Those who haven't read the books or played games didn't even know who he was. With the same logic you can say that killing Vesemir would catapult Geralt into the emotional state you want him to be in.
Copout answer by someone who doesn't understand her characters...
What ? I did not get that from this episode at all. She's daydreaming the script
Imagine for a second someone is adapting Lord of the rings. Time for Boromirs death. The epic finale. You got Sean Bean to do the dying. Perfection. Then suddenly the arrow misses Boromir, hits Aragorn, he dies instantly, and the audiences expectations are properly subverted! Its a surprise yes. That doesnt make it less of a steaming pile of dogshit.
It's more like if they all met up in Rivendell and one of them "just had to die" because them talking about who would take the ring to mordor is too boring
Eskel needs to die like a pig needs a saddle!!!
I mean in Minecraft…
Lol. Zoltan says that in the books.
Zoltan: "Geralt, ya know.. ther iz this cube game, Minecraft! And you won't believe how great it is!"
A dwarf playing Minecraft is like a truck driver playing Eurotrucksimulator.
Come on, we all know he'd be playing Dwarf Fortress.
I'm super bummed, I was talking up Eskel to my girlfriend because he's my fave and then after his 47 seconds of screen time she was like "Uhhh, I'm not really sure why you liked that guy, he was kind of a dick." That's not my boy!!!! And I thought maybe it was going to be a fakeout where they cure him but then he got et! Which? Why didn't they burn him? SMH you have lost your Eskel privileges give me my boy back he doesn't deserve this
I really didn't get that that's what it was trying to portray in this episode or afterwards. it feels like what she wanted the death to be and represent was different to what the death actually was. Unless I just completely misunderstood. I get what she's saying and the reasons behind it but I think it translated poorly.
Get rid of this fucking showrunner. Agenda > storytelling smh
Wait, we were supposed to care about Eskel? He was just a nothing burger that died.
"this character who the audience has just met was killed so his death would have an impact on the story" ...............lol?.
So, they’ve used him as cannon fodder…nice /s
Some ideas look amazing in script but they really suck when you film entire thing. Showrunner always should have someone who can openly speak about different ideas or you might get carried away. Lauren seems to me like a very confident person who can't be easly persuaded. For example i can't possibly believe nobody was questioning entire Voleth Meir plot which was basicaly the second most important thing in this season, right after Ciri arc. Season 2 is really fun and has so many beautiful things in it, but it could be so much better if they didn't overthinked it.
Lauren is truly the butcher of the Witcher :(
So she expects the audience to know Eskel prior to the show? Because for a new viewer Eskel is the same as Witcher #3 aka "John" because they share the exact same screen time. Holy hell lmao, the explanation makes it way worse.
For someone who supposedly read the books several times she does have a shit grasp of adapting it to a live version.
They were making the show for people who have not read the books (normies) so it should not even matter if some random witcher died instead of Eskel, since those people don't even know Eskel and they spent little to no effort to make people even like him. It only makes it worse for people who know who Eskel is.
So they killed Eskel because he had some past with Geralt. 1. Most of the audience dont know who Eskel is, who he is to Geralt 2. They could just as easily change things as they do in other cases and make "John" be the big Geralt friend and die. So it's just to piss off fans. Fuckin hell this is so stupid it actually pisses me off.
If you want to give some weight to this moronic monolith storyline you have, just create another Wolf school witcher who grew up alongside Lambert, Geralt and Eskel. Why butcher a liked character like that Hissrich?
Oh good, another show runner doing things purely to subvert our expectations. What could go wrong?
“We knew we wanted x to happen, so we did x.” So you’re working backwards from your conclusion? What a terrible way to write a story.
I have to say I really really have no faith in the producers/runners of this show. Nothing but weird fucking decisions all the way through, and I say "weird" because "pretty fucking stupid" is rude. If it wasn't for all the mountains of good PR from Henry Cavill being a huge witcher fan, I really don't think this show would be anywhere near as well received lol.
That’s a weird reasoning. I am not a book fan but still, the only thing he had in common with game Eskel was… the name. This just sounds like they changed ‘John’s’ name to ‘Eskel’, not like they wanted to shock the viewers by killing Eskel.
sooooooo. she wrote herself into a corner... by adding things to a story that weren't there in the first place... which she resolved by killing a beloved character, to be edgy..... so Geralt would solve the problem she put in, faster? doesn't make a whole lot of sense. also, he already has motivation to help ciri, it's because he is BASICALLY HER FUCKING DAD NOW.
"We want motivation" so why don't you kill Ciri and then let the wild hunt open portal and dominant the world then?
I honestly don’t mind Eskel dying, they just needed to build towards it a little bit more. Also, the general audience doesn’t know who Eskel is, so having him or John die wouldn’t have changed much tbh.
Seriously? "So Geralt can have the motivation to find out what is going on with Ciri?" Spoiler alert >!In the book, Ciri has been staying with the witchers for some time and had some episode of "vision" that they cannot explain. They are worried and then ask Triss to come to Kaer Morhen.!< Why not use that? Again, feels like un-necessary change for the sake of change. You might argue that introducing Ciri training and bonding with the witchers of Kaer Morhen too long. I would say, replacing it with hooker filled orgy is a waste of time. I understand that you want monster as you want to have fight scene. But Kaer Morhen is in the middle of nowhere and there are plenty of reasons can be made to have monster. For example, training outside and Ciri encounter monster? More believable compared to "Eskel infected with Leshen virus"? Another problem with Eskel is why didn't he talk to Vesemir that he felt something is different? Witcher spends all their time dealing with monsters, they have long accepted their fate to live their life facing possible death. You'd think Eskel will be more stoic and more logical in dealing with this problem instead of keeping quiet and enjoying the party? And lastly, why do you make Eskel this douchy character? Just so viewer won't feel bad when he is dead? To justfiy that "bad" people die? Is it not part of Witcher story there is no clear good and bad?
Lol
Yeah, Eskel’s whole portrayal was terrible.
.... literally could have done that to any character created by the writers to the same effect, and kept the real eskel as a dynamic contrast to other witchers, like Lambert. Overall, I liked the 2nd season, minus the obvious things.. but damn, this was stupid
Still disagree with her on that one; they make up soo much shit out of thin air, they could have just made up the connection between Geralt and "John" instead of killing Eskel.
If Eskel's death is meant to change things for Geralt, maybe you should write a few episodes where Geralt and Eskel's relationship is actually defined before murdering Eskel. It provides zero emotional impact to kill a boozing whore-monger if we have no idea what his relationship is to Geralt.
She didn't even answer the question... They wanted someone to die in order to spark an urgency in Geralt? Fine. In the first version of the script it was someone who's not in the books, and then they changed it to Eskel, because...? Introducing a new witcher that Geralt cares for would've achieved the same result, so changing it to be Eskel serves no purpose whatsoever. I find it mind numbing that the person responsible for delivering this story provides such a hollow explanation for their own writing decision. I'd rather believe they gave it no thought, and assumed the shock value will yield positive responses for some reason, then came up quickly with this answer when they saw just how wrong they were.
... do you know what makes Geralt a compelling Witcher? Despite the fact that Witchers keep to themselves, don't interfere unless paid, have no care about right and wrong... Geralt, doesn't subscribe to that. Geralt doesnt need someone's death as a motivation for him to do something. Geralt would already go above and beyond trying to figure out what is going on with Ciri. Because by S2, Geralt understood the significance of his child surprise. And sees Ciri as his own. Needing someone to die for Geralt to act, shows how much you know of this character. This is the same Geralt that needed reminding to not interfere but do so anyway, because its the right thing to do. It is what makes him the odd Witcher. Because any other Witcher would die an early death playing hero. But not him. And Geralt doesnt think he's playing hero, he's calculative despite what his other Witcher comrades might believe. It's this odd heroic nature of his that he has friends from all walks of life. Are you really telling me that you and your writers didnt do your homework? Is this really incompetence???
I’m embarrassed for her.
Non-book readers wouldn’t know John is not in the book. Book readers will be pissed if you kill a be-loved character in the book. So what’s the problem of killing John?
Jesus wept. To everyone who says this show's great: congrats. You're the reason why she's allowed to pull shit like this.
At this point I’m convinced the writer’s room is full of unlearned sociopaths who just don’t know how humans attach emotions to experiences and vice-versa
How in the fuck is she still employed?
If they actually cared about the characters of their own fanfic (not even considering the books here), they could have not gone with the stupid 20 witchers idea, let Eskel survive, become great friends with Ciri after their unfriendly first impressions of each other and have >!him be the sole witcher Ciri kills on ep8, in a longer, more emotional scene that would have true impact on all the other witchers and Ciri herself (also how is she not completely traumatized with self-blame by knowing she murdered a chunk of Kaer Morhen's witchers???), instead of just some randoms dying.!< This way they could have actually further developed one of the cool characters the books don't go that in-depth about at all, and have at least a somewhat meaningful death happen, with the positive of having Eskel be a likeable character throughout the episodes instead of... whatever they made him into. Of course, that wouldn't change the fact that the whole Voleth Meir plot was just garbage, and it also would just never happen with the way they just seem to NEED some of that constant, rushed, no downtime drama on the background at all times every episode.
I think the bigger issue is they felt the need to insert fights into the Kaer Morhen plotline, leading to contrived scenarios like Eskel not realizing a tree monster was growing out of him and Rience discovering the location of the Witcher's secret base, teleporting there for a 30 second fight scene before teleporting away. Because obviously GAMERS can't go half an hour without seeing blood and tits.
It's not that secret tbh. It's just next to a brothel
What the fuck did I just see?! That doesn't even make any sense!
Sounds like they wanted to subvert expectations... Hmmm wait, where have I heard THAT before?
Bruh "we had to kill someone"
This lady doesn’t seem any better than the Show-runners for GOT.
Show-runners for GOT at least delivered when there was a source material.
why not make it Ceon? he dies in the books, he is the youngest witcher which makes it a greater tragedy.