I've just finished the first season of the Witcher so I want to get my thoughts down. I knew of the Witcher and actually tried to play the first game and the third game a couple of times but I never got too deep into it. I actually didn't even get far enough to actually get the plot so the netflix series is my real entry into the witcher world.
First off I really disliked the disjointed timelines. Geralt, Yennefer and Ciri are all having their own stories but they are all displaced by many years. I figured it out by episode 2 but it is a bit of a pain. Not sure if there was a better way to introduce all the characters and their origins but this seems like a poor one.
The next thing is that I still don't get how or why Geralt is in love with Yennefer. I could tell they had a deep love for each other and it seems to be many years in the making but we get one bang scene with the djinn plot and next we get the dragon egg story. Which by the way felt like a straight up DnD campaign. I loved it.
It feels like there is a reason why Geralt loves Yennefer and why she loves him but they don't tell us. This might just be a function of the series and me only having watched the first season. I'll need to come back to this.
Yennefer's quest for child birth is a weird one. She started off as the little piglet girl who grew and became a powerful mage and now she advises kings. She then got disillusioned with it and wanted to become a mother. I take her words, her saying she wants to be someone important and that the world is shit and that she wants to be important to at least one person at face value. That would explain her quest and the fact that she can't get it is painful.
Ciri's plotline is probably the most boring, it's a straight run away and Ciri is kind of an asshole to Dara and people in general. I'm curious what she is and what she has to do with Destiny and what her power is. She seems to have summoned a monster at some point.
The While Flame that Frigilla and co are currently trying to find/awaken seems cool but not sure where it's going and I'm curious how much of it is covered in the games and which part of the books this is.
The law of surprise is a cool concept, loved it and I love how seriously Geralt takes it. He is a witcher and believes and is made of magic. I'm also super curious about his mother as in the last episode we meet Visenna and he seems to hate her. It also sounded like he came from a place outside the current sphere.
Finally, what is the Conjunction of Spheres. It sounds like many worlds all collided together to form the current world. Istredd is studying the stuff before conjunction and it seems the mages know what it was but the show hasn't told us yet.
Jaskier is a great character and it was sad to see him get yelled at by Geralt. I hope we run into him again.
The netflix series isn't the best, I can see why it didn't catch on the same Game of Thrones did but it is good and it is enjoyable. I can only wonder what it would have been with HBO doing the show. It also could be the source material isn't as rich as Game of Thrones though so this could be the best we can get.