‘The Witcher’ Recap: Campfire Stories

After four road trips in a row and many injuries, including a festering wound on Geralt's leg and Dandelion's bruised forehead, it was time for the Hansa to rest. Geralt is reluctant, of course, but when Milva warns him that the conditions of the river they need to cross are too dangerous, what choice do they have but to build a fire and swap stories for the night?

Consisting almost entirely of characters recounting important events from their pasts, this episode is an unusually crude way to convey backstory. But it is also part of a rich tradition dating back to Chaucer. Canterbury Talesand it gives The Witcher a chance to show more formal inventiveness than usual, presenting both an animated piece and a cheeky musical within the space of an hour-long episode.

While the pacing and breadth of the episode ensure it never gets boring, not all stories are equally gripping. Zoltan Chivay's flashbacks, which show him being wrongly and tragically framed as a traitor to the dwarves, unfold so quickly that it's more like reading a Wikipedia article about his biography. (It also doesn't make sense that he and Yarpen didn't settle the matter the moment they crossed paths.) Milva's story is just as tragic and just as fast-paced: after killing her cruel stepfather, she spent one night of passion with an elf while working as a coyote for the Scoia'tael, then returned to the group the next morning to find everyone dead.

But things really change when it's Jaskier's turn to share the story of his undying hatred for fellow bard Waldo Marx. “Will this all be in the song?” – asks Zoltan. “Yes, bitch,” he replies. The follow-up episode is something that has largely disappeared over the last couple of seasons. The Witcher: playfulness. In an elaborate musical number hosted by Jaskier (where Geralt occasionally pops in to grunt a word instead of sing), we learn how Jaskier took Waldo under his wing, only for the young bard to steal his songbook and make a fortune singing Jaskier's greatest hits.

Things get even more serious when it's Regis's turn. Finding himself in a camp full of allies wary of the 428-year-old vampire in their midst for the first time, Regis begins by dispelling the misconception that he can be scared off by garlic, then drops a line about Jaskier's blood smelling good. (“Let me rephrase: no infection,” he explains.)

It's solid vampire humor fit for Halloween, but things get even darker when Regis explains his own past. In the gory animated short, Regis describes himself as a young man, Lost Boysvampiric style – sucking the blood out of people and then having hedonistic sex and even more blood – until he met Bethane, a man who taught him to enjoy the more peaceful pleasures of cooking and herbs. He refused to drink blood forever, but when his former clan accused him of “playing with food” and kidnapping Bethane, he attacked. His lover died in shock and horror that Regis was capable of such violence, and the vampire hunter did the rest of the work, impaling, decapitating and burying him next to Bethane's corpse. “It takes more than that to properly kill a vampire,” he says dryly.

There is an implicit moral to Regis' story: Quote another Netflix seriesPeople Maybe change. Once he recovered and returned to the mortal world, he abandoned evil for good, a plot that the two remaining narrators can relate to.

The first is Cahir, who explains how he was captured by the Emir. As the unloved surviving son of a cruel father, he is approached by a wizard and offered gold to secretly feed a mysterious hedgehog-faced monster in a cave. (We know that this monster is “Duny”, Ciri's father, who broke the spell and was reborn as the future Nilfgaardian Emperor Emhyr var Emreis – but this is news to Geralt, who is only now realizing how complex the plot to control Ciri's life really is.) The Emir became Cahir's mentor and surrogate father, and eventually tasked him with finding Ciri. Only through difficult experience – both Yennefer and Ciri saved his life – did Cahir realize that all this time he had been manipulated by the wrong side.

This revelation – along with the realization that Cahir shares his prophetic dreams about Ciri – is enough to touch even Geralt's icy heart, which is important since witchers undergo a test specifically designed to suppress their emotions. But Geralt, like Regis, is living proof that the popular wisdom about his lineage may not actually be true: he first fell in love with Yennefer and then became Ciri's surrogate father. His own memories are simple and tender: a conversation with Ciri in Kaer Morhen in season two, when they barely knew each other, when Ciri encouraged him to spend more time following his heart.

Her advice clearly resonated with him: the next morning, Geralt warmly thanks and praises his allies – even Regis and Cairo – before inviting them to return to their journey. It will be easier than he expected: in parting, Milva admits that the river could have been crossed all the time, but she decided that everyone needed a rest. After the night of honesty he just had, even Geralt can't object. After all, what's the point of having friends if you don't trust them to know what's best for you?

• In the sting that washes away all the good feelings from the fire, we see Vilgefortz brutally torture Fringilla until she reveals the location of Yennefer and her small army. It looks like the big battle of the season will come sooner or later.

• This episode also features two more unexpected, very short and fun campfire flashbacks. One of them comes from Percival Schuttenbach, a dwarf in Zoltan Chivay's company, who quickly and incongruously recalls standing on a pile of skulls, cackling in the rain, and then shrugging his shoulders, saying that before joining the gang, he didn't do much. Another comes from a foul-mouthed parrot who screams “Nooooo!” when it will be purchased.

• Congratulations to Liam Hemsworth for passing the true test of any actor playing Geralt of Rivia: darkly muttering “damn” at the beginning of the episode.

• Jaskier ends his story by singing, “This is what I have to give / these words and stories, they will survive,” and reveals (with a little help from Regis) that he intends to publish a book called Half a century of poetry. Thanks to the forward framing device that opened the fourth season, we also know that it succeeds.

• “A baptism of fire, if you will allow the phrase,” Regis says. Will they just find a way to secure the title of every single witcher novel by Laurence Fishburne?

• It's very funny that Rience's derisive nickname “fire bastard” seems to have spread across the continent.

• Regis's full name is Emiel Regis Rogellec Terzieff-Goedefroy. Geralt's fictitious name, which he came up with before settling on Geralt of Rivia, is Sir Geralt Roger Eric du Haute-Bellegarde.

• If you're hungry, Geralt's fish soup recipe: water, tubers, pike, basil, pepper, bay leaf and sage.