This animated film from Netflix was released in 2021 year and tied into the live action Witcher TV series that starred Henry Cavill. The voice cast list included Theo James, Graham McTavish, Mary McDonell, Tom Cantrell, Lara Pulver, Jennifer Hale and Kari Whalgreen.
Plot: One of the characters introduced in the second series of the Witcher was Geralt’s mentor Vesemir. This was the origin of Vesemir. from his early life as a servant alongside his friend Ilyana through his early, brutal training at the hands of Deglan to his career as a Witcher, battling monsters for coin.
As he goes through his life, the world’s view of witchers has soured, most seeing them as unpleasant necessities at best and unscrupulous snake oil salesmen at worst. A mage at a local court called Tetra is trying to convince everyone at court that witchers should be exterminated as they seem to be exasperating the problem as they need the monsters to exist to get coin. An older Lady of the court, who is there as a holdover from her late husband’s position tries to offer the opposing view as an increase in monster activity. Things come to a head, when knights of the local area pick a fight with Vesemir and Luka, one of his fellow witchers and one of the knights ends up dead.
To clear this, Vesemir goes with Tetra to find a local monster, to prove the witchers have a purpose. They find a monster and the bodies of several elves, finding one of them, Filavandrel, alive. Vesemir and Tetra destroy this monster’s den. Filavandrel confirms that the local monster was an elf woman, altered by Deglan to become a monster. Tetra leaves to alert the kingdom and Vesemir goes to confront Deglan. When Tetra encounters the monster, formally an elf named Kitsu, she convinces Kitsu it was the witchers who did all the damage and she should attack them. Now convinced of the witcher’s complicity she convinces the people of the kingdom to attack the witchers’ home of Kaer Morhen and the king to execute Luka.
Vesemir speaks to Deglan, who confirms that he is in fact creating monsters, to ensure there’s work for witchers to do, ensuring their way of life. The Lady who spoke up for the witchers (now revealed as Ilyana) arrives and warns the witchers that they are about to be under attack. As monsters, knights and villagers descend on Kaer Morhen, Vesemir tries to save the recruits and then get the other witchers there to defend their home from angry villagers, a vengeful mage and a monster. By the end, almost everyone is dead or dying. Tetra asks for Vesemir to train the recruits to be better men that the ones that came before. Vesemir takes a dying Ilyana to a nearby lake, a place she wanted to live when they were young and she dies in his arms.
With Kaer Morhen in flames and everyone in it dead, Vesemir and the recruits (including a young Geralt of Rivia) are the last of any witchers that can be. Vesemir finds the escaped recruits and despite never wanting to teach or mentor, takes these trainees to make sure their way of live carries on, just better than before.
Notes: Not familiar with the Witcher before the show, I had no dog in this fight when it came to spin-offs. However, I did enjoy the mini series Blood Origin and so felt that Nightmare of the Wolf was at least worth checking out.
I’m unconvinced it was. The characters were thin and somewhat stock. The story, whilst interesting in the examination of the economics of monster hunting as part of a gig economy, the story telegraphs it’s twists and it becomes kind of boring near the end. The fight sequences are flashy and all that, but honestly the live action stuff has a visceral impact that animation doesn’t really do. This film is aggressively mediocre, sort of a lesser film trying to add itself to a franchise full of better product. If you like animated films, it’s a competent one of them, but it doesn’t match up with the other Witcher shows and so, I do feel it’s only worthwhile for completists and when it comes to this, I’m not. 4/10