(His dream would be “a slow suicide” for her, she protests.) It’s also the end of her relationship with Istredd, who makes a ridiculous proposal that she forgive his betrayal and travel around the continent with him instead of becoming a power player in a royal court. It’s exactly the ammunition Stregobar needs to block Yennefer from a high-ranking position as a sorceress in a kingdom with a particular distaste for elves. In a tale that pays off much faster than I might have expected, Yennefer learns that Istredd told Stregobar that she’s one-quarter elf. We got Yennefer’s origin story back in “Four Marks,” but with those building blocks laid down, “Betrayer Moon” is the episode where her story really comes alive. But we haven’t even gotten to the B plot in “Betrayer Moon,” which is totally different but similarly accomplished: The graduation and transformation of Yennefer.
If The Witcher can consistently pull off monster-of-the-week adventures with this much panache, I’d honestly be content with a version of the show that was nothing but episodes like this with no connective tissue but Geralt himself. And as usual, he doesn’t really get any credit for his heroism: King Foltest placates the angry miners by claiming Ostrit killed the creature and died a hero, and the miners resolve to erect a statue in his honor as Geralt quietly slinks away.
After using Ostrit as bait for the monster to disembowel, there’s a long, impressive battle that ends with Geralt on top, though he winds up in Triss Merigold’s infirmary for his trouble. With the mystery solved, Geralt is tasked with heading to an abandoned castle to disarm the striga without killing her unfortunately, the nature of the curse means he’ll need to fight her until the dawn breaks. And when the girl emerged as a striga, Foltest resolved to cure her and raise her as his heir to the throne. So Ostrit cursed Foltest - only for the curse to pass down to his unborn daughter with Adda, who had died pregnant with his child. This outraged Ostrit, one of Temeria’s higher-ranking knights, who had fallen in love with Adda. In brief: The unmarried King Foltest had an incestuous sexual relationship with his late sister, Adda. The ultimate solution turns out to be pretty knotty. And the revelation that the “creature” is actually just a cursed woman turns “Betrayer Moon” into the Witcher equivalent of a whodunit, as Geralt interrogates the various suspects who might have wanted to curse the girl in the first place. We’ve already seen Geralt’s prowess at fighting monsters, but this is the first time we’ve really seen him use his unique expertise as a witcher to figure out an approach.
Geralt examines the wounds on the witcher’s corpse and identifies the creature as a striga: A woman cursed to turn into an extremely powerful and violent creature during a full moon. Triss Merigold - a sorceress who works for King Foltest - reveals that the previous witcher was slaughtered by the creature and that his death was covered up to prevent the commoners from panicking and revolting. When Geralt shows up to investigate, the miners are skeptical another witcher has already come through, collected a bag of money, and left without even attempting to solve the problem.Īll that turns out to be a lie, of course. The miners suspect the creature is a vukodlak, which is basically a werewolf that gestates in the womb of a woman who dies when she’s pregnant. But as Geralt attempts to figure out what exactly has been killing the people of Temeria, the kingdom turns out to be a pretty intriguing place. There has been a lot of talk about different kingdoms and rulers, but it has felt more like background detail than anything we’re actually supposed to understand or care about. So far, The Witcher has mostly been content to tell extremely simple stories in an extremely complicated world. “Betrayer Moon” is a nutty, genre-bending blend of fantasy and mystery: Geralt of Rivia’s latest gig takes him to the icy kingdom of Temeria to hunt a monster that has been slaughtering the commoners, who have consequently planned a rebellion against their seemingly indifferent king. But if I’m really being honest, this is what I was hoping to see all along. The first two episodes of The Witcher had plenty of stuff I liked and plenty of stuff I didn’t.