Nightmare of the Wolf Review

CONTAINS SPOILERS

*Trigger Warning* MMIW, colonial trauma, extreme child abuse, murder of children, racism, white supremacy, anti-Indigeneity, anti-Black racism, Hinduphobia, homophobia, violence against women, misogyny, rape culture, domestic violence, violence, death

Screenshot Vesemir in his handsome younger years with short dark hair, a trimmed beard and moustache, wearing a majestic black cape with a brown fur collar, holding his sword up almost vertically but not quite. The sinister shapes of many “black” monsters with red eyes are contained within the blackness of his cape that sweeps out along the entire bottom of the picture, and a snowy mountainous forested background is behind him.

SPOILERS AHEAD

*

One of my friends read my review of Witcher Season 2 and mentioned that watching the animated prequel “The Nightmare of the Wolf” could give insight into Season 2. She said I should take a look if I had time, since the prequel was only about 1 hour long.

So I did. And I have lots to say about it.

Just to be clear, I’ve not read the books or played the games. My reviews are based entirely upon the Netflix adaptions of the storyline.

First of all, the animation of Nightmare of the Wolf was great. They kept The Witcher’s grim and dark aesthetic while making the action interesting to watch.

Now let’s talk about missing and murdered Indigenous women…

What I already knew was that the Elves were the Indigenous people of this world and that the humans, human mages, and Witchers were all colonizing settlers. We also know that Witchers existed because they were given their physical strength and speed through a transformation that involved using Elven blood. In other words, they were colonizing settlers on Elven land who had genocided Elves, and lived and profited literally from Elven blood injected into their veins. The Witchers were thus nothing and no one without the Elves. So when Elf man Filavandrel asked Vesemir for help in finding missing Elven girls and Vesemir flippantly refused because there was no profit in it for him, it reminded me of any white person in the US refusing to help Indigenous children, despite the fact that white people live on Indigenous land that the white people stole after genociding Indigenous children and profiting from Indigenous wealth. And it’s not only the white people’s “ancestors” who did this. THEY’RE STILL DOING IT RIGHT NOW.

Vesemir thus couldn’t have been a more despicable character to me right from the beginning and it was Vesemir who raised Geralt and who Geralt loved so much as his Daddy dearest in Season 2. Vesemir was looked up to by all the Witchers of Geralt’s generation in season 2 as a perfect example of Witcher manhood. What that means is that Vesemir was a perfect example of settler colonial toxic masculine supremacy.

Screenshot Vesemir romantically riding his magestic black horse over the hill while the Witcher children watch him, their heroic Witcher father.

Which brings me to my next point: Child abuse.

The way that Witchers recruited more people to become Witchers was by manipulating poor children like Vesemir or stealing them from indebted parents by using the “Law of Surprise”. They then raised them according to their idea of how to train warriors. That means they exploited poor desperate parents and poor defenseless children. It also means that Geralt knew exactly what he was doing when he asked for the Law of Surprise from Ciri’s father. If you don’t believe that then remember that Geralt was lying to Yennefer the whole time they were having sex about how he’d used magic to trick her into loving him. That means he intoxicated her with magic and the sex they had was actually rape. Such a man may well be capable of anything and using the Law of Surprise to gain children was a Witcher tradition, which Geralt’s rapist friend Nivellen even brought up in Season 2, when he asked Geralt if Ciri knew that Witchers recruited children using the Law of Surprise. That means that the Law of Surprise needed to be abolished long ago. Who thought up that nonsense anyway? It was legalized child slavery which the show romanticized as some kind of sweet parent-child relationship or romantic relationship in the case of Ciri’s parents. No wonder Ciri’s grandmother was prepared to do anything rather than give her granddaughter to a Witcher or her daughter to a stranger. But she wasn’t portrayed as being rational about an evil law, now, was she? She was shown to be stubborn, stupid, selfish, while Geralt was a hero just trying to save his “daughter” and Ciri’s dad was a hero just trying to save “the woman he loved”. But how do we know Ciri’s dad didn’t groom Ciri’s mother from a young age? How do we know he didn’t rape her? She was young and pregnant in that episode from Season 1 when she did the lion’s raw. That means she had sex with a man much older than her, possibly when she was underage. She was young and naive and he had age and the “Law of Surprise” with which to groom and sexually exploit her. Funny how it was Ciri’s grandmother, a woman, trying to resist the Law of Surprise and all the men were urging her to believe in it. Of course the men were trying to preserve that law. The Law of Surprise made it so much easier to traffic and manipulate and exploit children for the benefit of older men.

Screenshot Poor and desperate child Vesemir being manipulated and recruited by Witcher Deglan. Anyone can see that it’s totally not creepy for a large adult male to lean in so close to a child he doesn’t know and whisper/growl orders to him.

Ciri’s training in Season 2 was romanticized as white feminist “girl power” but in the prequel we saw the truth of how the Witcher children were actually trained, which was hinted at in Season 1. Strapped down and injected with poison, locked up to suffer the pain and sickness with no care or comfort from any adult caregiver, left defenseless in front of vicious monsters in the forest, made to sleep on hay with no blankets/adequate medicine/parental care. Essentially, their upbringing was portrayed as a kind of Spartan training where they were literally left to fend for themselves in the most brutal fashion. Those Witcher children who survived it were given a wolf’s head medallion as part of their induction into Witcher life. Because they were such fine wild beasts, obviously. (Wolf packs are actually nothing like this and wolf parents protect their pups with fierce love and care - they definitely don’t torture them or leave them defenseless to die.)

Screenshot The Witchers strapped children down to tables and injected then with drugs containing Elven blood to make them into Witchers. The scene is reminiscent of the comic book story of Captain America’s transformation into a super soldier, which you’ll remember was during WWII done by scientists who had escaped from Nazi Germany.

Let’s take a moment here to point out that the Ancient Greek empire, of which Sparta was a city state, was one of the most brutal and violent patriarchal colonizing empires to have ever existed. Their way of training children didn’t produce the finest “warriors”, as is often the mainstream romantic legend. Their way of training children produced horrific colonizing rapists. They were extreme misogynists. They enslaved others everywhere they went. They were also pedophiles and promoted a normalized pedophile culture. They were even worse than the Romans who learned everything they knew from the Greeks. So please stop with this romantic view of Spartan warriors. The reverberations of Greek child abuse is still felt in all corners of the world to this day because of the Roman Empire and subsequent Christian empire that the Roman Catholic Church spread to all corners of the Globe by forcing it on others.

Screenshot Child Geralt is presented with a blood soaked Wolf Witcher medallion, holding it front and center before his face so the blood soaked wolf head is shown in focus while his yellow eyes and his white skin are the most prominent features shown behind the medallion.

And how about the fact that leaving children defenseless in the forest, with no weapons or any idea of what enemy they might be facing, is the worst possible way to train a child? Of course so many children didn’t survive the “trials”. Because they weren’t “trials”. They were just murdering children by proxy. The Witchers were child murderers. No wonder Vesemir and Geralt and all their Witcher brotherhood were such awful people. They were abused into being awful people. They were trained to think only of personal profit and nothing of humanity and empathy. The popular idea in the world of The Witcher that Witchers don’t feel is actually true but not because they don’t feel anything. It’s because the patriarchy beat decent emotions out of them. After all, why would they bother to care about anyone when they themselves had suffered so much and no one ever helped them? The whole world could burn, as far as they were concerned, which explained Vesemir’s attitude toward the missing and murdered Indigenous girls perfectly. His entire upbringing was nothing but the patriarchy designed to ensure that he never cared about another person in the world but himself. The Witcher and the Spartans were not only wrong in how they trained their children, they were evil. Other peoples all other the world throughout history have trained their children to be fierce warriors and they didn’t do it this way. They did it by demonstrating how to fight and teaching their children their principles of what it means to be an honorable warrior who defends the weak. So it turns out that leaving your child defenseless against all the wild beasts of the forest is not a good idea, unless you want your child dead or turned into the most violent and brutal heartless patriarch.

Screenshot The monsters in the forest the Witchers fed their children to on purpose as a “trial”. They are “black”, and appear to be some kind of four legged animal with red eyes and interesting antennae that rise up from their heads oddly reminiscent of how a dogs ears would rise up from their heads but longer and very thin and curling back at the ends. My sense was that these monsters were a horror story version of a rottweiler or pitbull or some other breed of dog that is not considered “respectable”.

My guess is that they made this part of the story animated because if people had seen real live child abuse, with children being tortured, caged, killed, injected with poison, they would have really been appalled by the Witchers and then no one would sympathize with the terrible decisions Geralt made in Season 2. So they animated this backstory to say, look, we’re showing how the whole dynamic is much more complicated and aren’t we clever? Except that they’re deliberately obscuring the truth of how evil the main characters actually were by making this history into a cartoon fantasy… Which is exactly what many people say when a child speaks up about being abused, or a survivor speaks up later on in life, by the way. They say it’s all a child’s fantasy and none of it is real.

Screenshot Child Vesemir lying with his eye’s closed on a bed of hay while another child walks past him in front and another child sits on the left huddled up with his forehead resting on crossed forearms. The room is dark, with stone walls, wooden posts, no apparent windows, and looks very cold.

And speaking of patriarchy and Greeks, I explained in my review of Season 2 that women were often portrayed as villains in Greek storytelling going all the way back to Homer and the Odyssey. Greeks, in their cowardly anxiety over women gaining power, forced women into being meek “breeders” who never questioned a man’s authority over them. Any woman who stepped out of those parameters was a monster and portrayed as such in Ancient Greek stories to properly indoctrinate their daughters into their place. The Witcher carries on that tradition of storytelling in Season 2 and, surprise surprise, the villains of the prequel were also women. The poor besieged heroes of the prequel were, of course, men. Because that’s how it works in real life, right? Beastial and violent women invade the peaceful environment of male sanctuaries and cause senseless violence. Case in point: Indigenous woman Kitsu warned Vesemir to turn back and not invade her home. He ignored her demands, mocked her demands, and invaded her home anyway. Of course she and her basilisk fought back. Yes, she was experimenting on other Indigenous women because she had been experimented on and tortured and that was all she knew. That’s intergenerational trauma but it wasn’t presented that way. We could even reason that Kitsu was trying to create more powerful elves to fight back against the colonizers. That’s a logical argument considering how desperate the Elves’ situation was. And let’s remember that these Indigenous girls who were being experimented on were the same people Vesemir refused to help at the very beginning. When he found their dead bodies with Tetra, he wasn’t there to help them and he didn’t want to help them. He was there following orders from a colonizing government so that he could get out of jail and not be executed. There was nothing altruistic about his invading an Indigenous woman’s home alongside Tetra, another colonizing mage who was rabid about genociding Elves.

Kitsu was portrayed as a monster. Even when she spoke Elven it was shown as a kind of gibberish instead of a language because none of the “non monster” Elves spoke like that. If an audience can’t hear or understand a character’s words in a language that translates their humanity, then that character is not being shown as a person. Kitsu was also dark skinned and surprise surprise, she was naked. So she was objectified and villainized as an angry dark-skinned (possibly Black) Indigenous woman who in no way had any opportunity to show her humanity and find a sympathetic audience. This was an Elven woman who was abducted, imprisoned, tortured, and tested on by evil scientists, and yet somehow she was the monster. The audience gaze was like that of white anthropologists from the 1960s observing Indigenous tribes. The only time the audience was shown Kitsu’s feelings that weren’t angry was when she was mourning the basilisk, another “monster”.

Screenshot Dark skinned Indigenous woman Kitsu portrayed as a kind of angry animal after being experimented on just like the Witcher children.

Tetra was a villain who hated the Witchers for all the wrong reasons. She saw them as abominations due to their being injected with Elven blood and tortured as children, and because one of them killed her mother who was a witch. In other words, they weren’t bad people to her because they were literally bad people but because she was a racist colonizer and she wanted revenge. Meanwhile, she used Kitsu, the very Indigenous woman her own people were trying to kill, as a way to attack the Witchers. Hmmm, a colonizer using a token Indigenous person as their tool to continue committing violence and wage war. Never seen that before, amirite?

Screenshot Tetra, a colonizing genocidal supremacist who was out to destroy Elves and Witchers. She could do fire magic too. And look how white and pretty she is! Her cleavage is so perky and attractive and on display for no reason at all. Isn’t genocide beautiful?

The irony is that Tetra was actually right about one thing. The Witchers were abominations. Not because they had Elven blood injected into them or were tortured as children but because they were a totally unnecessary creation of genocidal mages who were trying to exterminate Elves. The Witchers were created to cover up the mistakes of those evil scientists who just ended up creating another mistake, the Witchers. And we’ve never seen scientists make disastrous experiments like this before, have we? Their clever technology that led us into climate change and mass extinction is also going to help us all get out of climate change by raping and pillaging countries all over the world for lithium and rare earth minerals. Environmental devastation be damned, the scientists know what they’re doing.

And, by the way, the only time the word “genocide” was used was to describe the killing of Witchers. Except that Witchers were not a race, or an ethnic group, or a religious group, or a political group. They had no identity that would make their destruction a genocide. The Witchers, in fact, were an unethical scientific experiment done without conscience on vulnerable children that was a business and they had no natural place in the eco-system at all. They were abominations who shouldn’t have existed. I’m not advocating for the killing of Witchers here. I’m saying that their business needed to be dismantled and all those children and traumatized adults given serious therapy and healthcare so that they could begin the long process of healing from their trauma. Meanwhile, everyone was so worried about Witchers being “genocided” but the Elves were literally being genocided right in front of us and not one character bothered to point out that fact using the word “genocide”. Words are powerful. Omitting such words when it is the truth or using such words in untruthful ways is a powerful propaganda tool. The dark skinned Elven woman Kitsu was shown as a monster who deserved to die while the male light skinned human Witchers were shown as victims who were being “genocided”. This weaponizes racial justice using the argument that Witchers were hated for their “tainted” Elven blood (that they actually stole and injected into themselves through an unethical scientific experiment), while actual Indigenous Elf woman Kitsu who had been captured and experimented on against her will was a “monster”. The Witcher series can’t be more racist and white supremacist and colonizing and patriarchal.

Screenshot The angry mob wanting to get rid of the Witchers. Netflix made it look like they were some kind of Charlottesville white supremacist rally. And yes, they were, colonizing settlers who had genocided Elves. But they weren’t wrong to want the Witchers gone when the Witchers were serial child abusers, misogynists, and evil scientists who were defrauding the public by creating vicious monsters for their own profit.

Screenshot The actual Charlottesville white supremacist mob, also known as Witchers in their Nazi stronghold Kaer Morhen. You might even say their stronghold was a “Wolf’s Lair”. Hitler’s actual “Wolf’s Lair” was in Poland too.

The genocide of the Elves was even referred to as a kind of passing quirk, as if it was funny, not a central injustice that should actually have been the main storyline. And how did the human mages get the Elven blood to make the potion that transformed boys into Witchers? Do you think the Elves simply handed over their blood? Obviously, the mages captured Elves, tortured Elves, stole Elf blood and body parts to use in their experiments. Hmmm…I wonder if it’s ever happened in our history where Indigenous and Black people were captured and imprisoned and experimented on for the profit of white colonizers. Hmmmmmmmm…

Screenshot Vesemir, a villain, presented as a hero, with handsome looks, charismatic presence, and an air of authority. He also protected the Witcher tradition of injecting children with drugs to make them into Nazi supersoldiers who were actually mercenaries for profit.

The speciesism in the Nightmare of the Wolf was incredible. There was one point where the mage scientist had a live animal pinned up on the wall, cut open, conscious, while he poked and prodded at the animal and talked about experimenting on the animal’s body in a casual way to child Vesemir. Do you see why they had to make this prequel animated? Because anyone with half a heart would have been traumatized to see an animal suffer in such a way. (An important sidenote: Most people don’t give a damn about the genocide of Indigenous peoples but they’ll be outraged if they see a dog kicked. It doesn’t mean that the dog isn’t important, it means that we need to see injustice in all forms, and the genocide of Indigenous peoples is a giant injustice.) Meanwhile, the mages were experimenting on animals, torturing them on screen, splicing their genetics together with other animals, all to create genetically engineered “monsters” that they could use to genocide the Indigenous Elves. And when those genetically engineered “monsters” broke free and went on the rampage, the mages created Witchers to kill those “monsters”, thus creating even more monsters in Witchers who were basically Nazi supersoldier mercenaries. It couldn’t get any more evil.

Screenshot Witcher human mage showing child Vesemir a live animal pinned on the wall with its body cut open and kept open to be experimented on. The mage is holding up a candle so that Vesemir can see the animals exposed internal organs. Vesemir has a bandage around his head and a bruised eye from surviving the “trial” in the forest.

Screenshot The animal who was being tortured for the mage experiments. It’s one of the “monsters” from the forest, reminiscent of a rottweiler. Its skin is nailed/pinned back to expose all of its organs, and its mouth is open, presumably in exhaustion or pain if not held open on purpose. In the show, the animal twitched while Vesemir and the mage spoke, showing that it was still alive. The Nightmare of the Wolf is a literal nightmare for animals.

So the colonizers wanted power and control over the land and they couldn’t have it without destroying the Indigenous Elves. They weaponized the Indigenous animals of the land against the Indigenous peoples to clear the land for their own occupation. Did you know that the white colonizers almost entirely wiped out the Indigenous buffalo from the North American continent because the buffalo were crucial to the Indigenous peoples of those territories? Then the white men brought over cows from other lands who they tortured and killed in a mass agricultural system to control the land and make profit and impose their culture and diet on the land. Many of the Indigenous peoples starved as a result while the eco-system and climate became totally destroyed. This is a true story, still happening now in real time. “Oh give me a home where the buffalo roams, where the deer and the antelope play…” Remember that song? It’s the dream of a white supremacist genocidal colonizer. And the buffalo weren’t the only animals devastated by colonizers. All over planet Earth, animal species have gone extinct because of the violence of colonizers who use them for profit and to destroy and control the Indigenous peoples of that land. It turns out that speciesism is linked to racism is linked to colonization is linked to patriarchy is linked to greed both in The Witcher and in real life.

So the Nightmare of the Wolf showed how speciesism was integral to the colonization of the land but they didn’t make any attempt to actually empathize with either the animals or the Indigenous peoples. It was all just casual backstory with zero compassion shown for any of the pain inflicted. Speciesism was a central thread at the core of the “hero” Geralt’s journey but it was not portrayed that way. The only person who showed any feeling or mourning for an animal was Kitsu mourning the basilisk. Kitsu was a “monster” mourning another “monster” but it’s pretty clear to me who were the real monsters in this show and it wasn’t the “monsters”. When Vesemir and Tetra found the Elf Filavandrel, he was tied up and hanging on the wall, exactly like that animal the Witcher mage was experimenting on. What does that tell you about what the writers of The Witcher think of both Indigenous peoples and animals?

Considering how misogynistic this series is, it’s no surprise that they flaunted violence against women at every turn. Vesemir held his sword to Tetra’s throat to protect the Elf girl the way Geralt held a throat to Yennefer’s throat to protect Ciri in Season 2. They must have thought they were so clever to show all this mirroring and how Geralt was just like Daddy dearest Vesemir. Except that the two situations weren’t the same at all. Tetra was a literal genocidal fascist trying to kill an Indigenous Elf girl, while Yennefer was someone Geralt had raped for years even as he told himself he was in love with her and Ciri was NOT an Elf girl. Yennefer was a quarter Elf, being the only actual Indigenous person (by blood but not by upbringing, culture, or values) in that scenario. So Geralt wasn’t a hero defending an Elf girl, he was a rapist holding a sword to the throat of an actual Elf girl who he raped. Vesemir also wasn’t a hero for defending one Elf girl found alive after he ignored any call to help the others. Both Vesemir and Geralt were despicable characters.

They also, in this prequel, showed men using words like “witch” and “bitch”, always in a derogatory way towards women. Being a “Witcher” was manly and cool but being a “witch” was the same as being a “bitch” and we all know that women aren’t human so it doesn’t matter how much violence towards them is exhibited through your words as well as physical actions.

And let’s not forget that they showed a woman being held down in bed because she was “possessed by a monster”. Because that’s always the answer for any mental health problems a woman has, right? That’s standard Christian patriarchal reasoning behind tying a woman to a bed and letting men molest her and traumatize her in the name of getting rid of the “demon”. Cos she’s possessed by the demon or she is a demon, clearly, and therefore, exorcism through sexual assault is the answer. And of course we had to see the woman’s breasts as part of this, obviously. You can’t get rid of demons without seeing a woman’s naked breasts. And did you notice that the demon took on the form of Vesemir’s love interest Illyana, and the Witcher killed the “monster” Illyana with a knife through the heart? “What clever foreshadowing,” the indoctrinated fans will gush. Except that what the show was really doing was programming their audience to enjoy the slaughter of women and domestic violence. This is yet another example of violence against women who also happen to be the love interests of the “heroes”, which means this is domestic violence programming. Any chapter of this misogynistic Witcher lore wouldn’t be complete without stabbing a woman through her naked body. They even had her crawl over the ceiling like Vereena, a woman vampire monster, in Episode 1 of Season 2. They probably thought they were being so clever by putting in these parallels. All they were doing were proving how much they hate women. It was no surprise at all to me when Vesemir ended up killing Illyana. Geralt will probably end up killing Yennefer in the same way, or at least try multiple times and all the indoctrinated fans will gush about how clever the foreshadowing was and how tragic their star crossed romance was. And Geralt will cry just like Daddy dearest Vesemir cried when he murdered Illyana, and we’ll all be very sad because Geralt was doomed to the lonely fate of his father Vesemir after murdering the woman he raped and manipulated for years. No one will call it domestic violence because the sight of men murdering their partners or threatening to murder their partners in The Witcher has been totally normalized from the very first episode of Season 1 all the way through Season 2 and all the way through the prequel Nightmare of the Wolf.

Did you notice that the only woman in the storyline who was respected by the Witchers was Illyana? It was nice to see a woman respected, and that fact that Vesemir loved her at 70 years of standard aging, smashing ageism and desirability politics, was charming. Except that the only reason why Illyana was portrayed as a “good” woman was because she was content with her lot in life as a downtrodden woman. She quietly went along with being a servant, with being trafficked, with being married to her master, with having his children, with taking on every responsibility her master dumped on her, with serving the king who allows children to be sold in his kingdom, with letting Vesemir do whatever he wanted without giving him a guilt trip. She even gave Vesemir permission to forget her so he could go around philandering with all his ill-gotten Witcher money. Through the whole story, she went along with whatever the men wanted, supporting them totally, but never argued for what any woman would want: Freedom. That’s why she was shown as a “good” woman worthy of a man’s respect. She was the patriarchy’s token who protected the patriarchy at every turn. She said that Witchers were being persecuted for being different instead of the reality of their evil deeds. She was the one who said that killing the Witchers was “genocide” while never saying a word about the suffering of the Elves. Illyana was a standard white woman, protecting the patriarchy in every way, and that’s why she was put on a pedestal by Vesemir. And yet Vesemir still ended up killing her (while blaming it on Tetra) because even women who go along with the patriarchy are destroyed by it. The truth is that if Vesemir and Illyana had ever lived together as adult partners, he would have been abusive, manipulative, physically violent, he would have cheated on her, and he would still have ended up killing her, no matter how much she pacified him and went along with whatever he wanted. So in that sense, Illyana was actually smart to break up with him when they were younger. She was smart to tell him to move on. She saw how toxic he was and she got away, while pretending the whole time that it was his idea, which is a standard tactic undertaken by women to survive in a man’s world. That’s exactly what she was: A standard white woman survivor who uplifted the patriarchy and was still killed by it in the end.

Screenshot Vesemir fantasized about a peaceful future with his love interest, Illyana, right before he killed her. In his fantasy, she is painting an idealized portrait of their family while sitting in a meadow, with blue skies above them with poufy white clouds. Vesemir is holding her hand while they both smile at each other.

Vesemir said that Tetra’s illusions while they were fighting each other were just “magic tricks” and implied strongly it was wrong of her to use such tactics that gave her an unfair advantage. Witchers injecting themselves with drugs to be stronger and faster than everyone else, however, was not at all an unfair advantage, particularly when fighting a woman who was smaller and physically weaker than him. Also, sneering at Tetra’s “magic tricks” and “illusions” were continuing a standard misogynistic trope that women are liars and manipulators. Meanwhile, the entire prequel was gaslighting us about what genocide looks like and what a “villain” actually is. Gaslighting is lies and illusions. A magic trick, if you will.

Screenshot Tetra with a fierce look on her face, wielding her bow and aiming her arrow almost but not quite at the audience, while behind Tetra to the right Kitsu’s naked dark skinned body is flung sideways with her legs spread wide showing just visible genitalia. Her arms are also flung outwards. Behind Kitsu, there is a large fire raging. Behind Tetra to the left are book shelves.

Did you spot the Hinduphobia? When Tetra opened the portal so Elf Kitsu could send the monsters to the Witcher lair, they straight up said “Aum” in the music. I’m not kidding. Because Hinduism and Indigenous Hindus are monsters who invade people’s homes and kill them, obviously. Meanwhile, it is actually Christianity that has invaded and terrorized the world with genocide, torture, rape, and serial pedophilia for at least 1600 years, while Hindus have been invaded and terrorized for centuries as part of that horrifying trauma.

Screenshot Colonizers Tetra and Vesemir fought Indigenous woman Kitsu together on the colonizer king’s orders even though they hated each other. But what was the purpose of Tetra’s cleavage hanging out as it was in this scene, a scene in the middle of a snowy ruin in winter? Vesemir didn’t seem to need to flash his pecs to do the job they were both ordered to do.

There was also obvious anti-Black racism. Other than the possibility of Kitsu being Black (which was unclear) the only affluent Black family with children in the entire series was slaughtered right at the very beginning of the prequel. Because we can’t have Black people thinking it’s natural for them to have financial security or domestic stability. And the Black boy was also shown urinating on an Elf statue too, as if it’s Black people who have colonized the planet and degraded Indigenous peoples of other lands. And let’s not forget that the vast majority of the “monsters” were always portrayed as “black”.

Screenshot The only little Black girls from the only Black family shown in the prequel. These girls were all slaughtered along with their father right at the beginning of the show.

The only openly gay character that we’ve seen so far in this series showed up in the prequel. Luka’s lines were mostly about objectifying other men as sex objects and complaining about not being paid enough as a Witcher with plenty of ego thrown in. This means that Luka was not exactly presented as a very sympathetic character. Then they beheaded him right on screen. Other Witchers were beheaded later on but you never saw the act, you only saw their heads on spikes for a split second. But Luka was beheaded right in front of the king in the royal court on screen. Some might say that’s the “kill your queers” trope. But, of course, he was beheaded because he was a Witcher, not because he was gay. It wasn’t homophobia, right, Netflix? It wasn’t prejudice in general against people who fall outside of the cis straight heteronormative binary, right? We’ve all seen how Netflix gives a damn about the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, particularly in 2021, right? It’s not like there’s been any controversy about it. That’s why we didn’t see a beheading happen to any other Witcher except Luka, the only openly gay character in the entire series so far.

Screenshot Vesemir, left, meeting The Witcher’s only openly gay character so far, Luka, while standing next to their horse in the courtyard of their Witcher stronghold and comparing bags of money. Luke, right, has red hair, a green headband, white complexion, and a kind of arrogant smirk on his face.

Screenshot An illustrated poster of Filavandrel holding a little blonde Elf girl surrouded by gnarly looking vines.

The only decent man portrayed in the entire prequel was Filavandrel, an Elf man who tried to defend his people from genocide. He was the one trying to find Elf girls when they went missing. He was the one who called out Vesemir for his callousness and his greed, while also calling out Tetra for her genocidal actions. He was one voice in a cacophony of colonizers. Filavandrel was the tragic hero of the prequel to me, not Vesemir. Unfortunately, they didn’t bother to say anything about where he went or what he did after rescuing the Elf girl. He was also, of course, white and the Elf girl he rescued was, of course, white.

Screenshot Indigenous man Filavandrel, the only decent male character in the entire show had every right to be angry at life but what he focused on was defending Indigenous girls. Here he sits in Vesemir’s hotel room in the dim red tinged lighting with a bowl of ripe fruit on the table in front of him.

The only genuine issue brought up by multiple characters all the way through the storyline is the greed of the Witchers. Poverty, classism, and violence for coin came up repeatedly. The problem was that none of the nuances or the larger issue of greed and colonization were tackled in any serious way. They said poverty was a problem. They didn’t say they needed to fix that problem. Vesemir grew up poor but how he did he fix that? By losing his humanity in becoming a Witcher. Illyana grew up poor and how did she fix that? She didn’t. She was forced to marry a nobleman and have his children and live as his wife regardless of her feelings. These were not solutions and they didn’t even talk about how these were not solutions. Illyana made her husband’s house into an orphanage after his death. But would those children she so kindly sheltered be sold to other bidders, the way she was once sold? Illyana in no way expressed any opposition to the class system and system of slavery that exploited her. Vesemir continued the torture of children by making them Witchers, so why wouldn’t she sell children for profit? She was “content” with her lot in life, after all. The only time she ever expressed any anger was when Tetra taunted her for her low station and for getting her position at court through her body (ie. having sex with a nobleman) instead of by blood or title. Notice that they only made this jab about Illyana through another woman, showing women not supporting each other when they were exploited, particularly when they were women with power. Isn’t white feminism a treat?

Screenshot The rivalry of Illyana and Tetra was a rivalry between two white feminists both upholding the patriarchy in their own ways but fighting for pieces of power in a man’s world. Illyana stands on her balcony holding her tea in a fancy tea cup and saucer and looking down at the courtyard below, while Tetra sits at the table behind her, with a stone pillar between them. Illyana has long grey hair, blue eyes, and is wearing dark red and maroon robes with a gold necklace that has a green gem pendant and a green jeweled belt. Tetra’s long hair is jet black, her cleavage exposed by her low cut dark red top that has a lighter red or mauve embroidered collar. She is also wearing a black choker necklace. In the background on the wall is a portrait of Illyana’s family with her nobleman husband and their three daughters as children.

And now we come to my final point, which is the revelation that the Witchers were knowingly purposefully creating new monsters to keep their lucrative jobs as specialized monster hunting Nazi mercenaries. This was an issue the show did bring up well. What the Witchers were doing was evil and it was nuanced in explaining the desperation of Witcher elder Deglan who made all the wrong decisions. His decision was a “logical” conclusion for a ruthless capitalist business struggling to keep itself afloat. The Witchers fought and killed for profit and they needed more monsters to kill to keep their profits up. Empires have done this throughout history, where they have invented enemies in order to create war to make profit to create more war. But they still justify themselves about how what they do is necessary because they have to “survive” while destroying everyone else. That means there’s no end to the monsters… And guess what? The Witcher still didn’t address their greed even as the prequel ended. The entire Witcher order should have been dismantled and everyone sent on their way because they clearly didn’t need to exist as Witchers. Yet Deglan told Vesemir to make the children into Witchers and he did. Enter pretty child Geralt who grows up to be pretty adult rapist and Witcher Geralt. Deglan told Vesemir to make the boys into Witchers because that was “something more” and they would be “better men”. How were woman hating, genocidal, rapist, greedy, callous Witchers “better men”? Because they could move faster? Because they were good with swords? And what about all the women hurt, all the Elves genocided, all the land and gold and power stolen? What about the children abused and dehumanized? Despite pointing out the Witchers’ greed, the prequel ended upholding this system of a patriarchal mercenary business that profited by exploiting children, taking advantage of defenseless people, and killing animals that didn’t deserve it.

Screenshot A close up of Vesemir’s face as he holds up a gold coin between his thumb and forefinger and his golden eyes focused on the coin. The coin is the brightest thing in the picture, emphasizing its goldness.

“There’ll always be another monster” they said. I agree. Those monsters are called Witchers. By the end of the prequel, I was rooting for the Witchers to be destroyed but I was, of course, disappointed. There is no justice in this world, not even in a cartoon.

Netflix is the real monster here. A boycott continues to be justified in every way.