Netflix’s The Witcher TV Series Needs A Map Because I’m Lost

 

 

 

 

 

I’m about halfway through season 2 of The Witcher on Netflix, and for the most part I’m lovingly the. It feels much more Witchcraft than the first season did, and is moving at a refreshingly brisk pace. However, one thing that really annoys me is that the series seems to have wild overestimated how much we all know about the geography of the witcher universe.

I don’t remember it being such a big deal in the first series, but after a few episodes of this one the characters were real start moving. On foot, on horseback, in chariots, on ships, in portals, they whiz around the continent at high speed, one moment at the edge of the world Kaer Morhan, the next in Cintra, a city so far south the isn’t even on The Witcher 3s Map.

Where are these characters, where are they going and how far have they come? enormous consequences for the story being told. When Yennefer says she spent a month looking for answers, it helps to know where she’s been. If getting on a boat from Oxenfurt to Cintra is so dangerous, it helps to know what that journey actually looks like. And if Kaer Morhan was such a trek for Triss, it would be great to know how far she had to travel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But I have no idea! We are never shown a useful map, or even told where events are happening by some text on the screen, and it kills me. Even the fact that I played over 140 hours The Witcher 3 doesn’t really help. My poor wife, who has played neither… witcher play or read a witcher book, is just lost.

I’m not saying the show should bring animation Indiana Jones-style map every time someone goes somewhere, but an occasional refresh or update would be nice. Even a subtitle flashing over a cityscape would help tell/remember what this place being shown really is, because we can’t all expect to recognize generic fantasy castles from memory every damn time, especially when the lighting and time the day and angle of the shot keeps changing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

To be fair to the show’s creators, this is a frustratingly common misstep in fantasy and sci-fi TV shows, a problem that goes far beyond just The Witcher. Perhaps it is hoped/assumed that fans either already know a country’s geography, or are keen enough to look it up online, so that when characters start talking about places, viewers know enough to fill in the blanks. This would leave writers free to drop the occasional reference to something that’s “north” or “west” or “seaside” and think that’s enough to put an entire season’s action into context.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s not! I know I’m not the only one annoyed by this, as some titans of the field have gone out of their way to make sure they dodged the same trap. Peter Jackson put a card scene in two towers only to slow down the trilogy and show us exactly what had happened in the past six hours and what was being prepared for the next few hours. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was hugely important for a nine-hour trilogy. So important that it was something he added after the main movies ended (the finger belongs to Jackson, even if it’s supposed to be Faramir) when he realized how much it was needed.

And the iconic opening credits for Game of Thrones weren’t just there to show us some gears; as a map that was continually added and expanded over the course of the series, it was invaluable in putting the conquests and journeys of the show’s characters into context.

Even shows and movies that are set in our real world, the world we can more realistically expect to already know, use maps! Think how many World War II stories have been opened up with maps showing German progress, or adventure epics showing ships or caravans crawling along a dotted line on a painted map.

Maps are one of our most essential inventions because they anchor us, help us find our place in the world. They’re the best way to illustrate where we are, where we’ve been, and how far we can go, and then frame those moves in a way that we can relate.

Without them we are lost. And that goes for TV shows too.