#The Other Witchers In The Witcher Are Very Bad At Witchering

“The Witcher” season 1 only featured one other witcher who wasn’t Geralt, and that witcher was already a corpse by the time we caught up to him — killed by a striga in the line of duty. In season 2, however, Geralt and Ciri travel to Kaer Morhen for the winter and spend time with the other remaining witchers, including Lambert, Eskel, Coen, and Vesemir.

The death of Eskel has already caused a stir among fans of the “Witcher” books and games, since he’s a fairly prominent character who is killed off in the same episode where he makes his debut. When we first meet Eskel, he’s returning home from an attempt to kill a leshen that ended with him only successfully removing one of its hands. Fair enough, we all have bad days. Eskel, who has supposedly had displays of emotion beaten and medicated out of him since childhood, visibly bristles and reacts confrontationally to the mere suggestion of disrespect from Ciri (she laughs along with a joke at his expense). He then gets drunk, parties with some local prostitutes, and dies because he failed to notice that he was turning into a tree.

But Eskel’s death is practically noble compared to the witchers who get taken out in the season 2 finale, “Family.” Three get stabbed to death in their sleep by a possessed Ciri, whose demonic guest somehow doesn’t set off their medallions (they’re supposed to vibrate in the presence of magical creatures and other forms of magic). Medallion or not, you would think that “not getting stabbed in your sleep” would be covered in Year One of witchering school. 

More witchers are brutally and very quickly killed by a pair of basilisks, which is arguably even more embarrassing than getting assassinated in bed, given that the whole purpose of witchers is to kill monsters. There’s a throwaway line noting that the basilisks are mutated and more powerful than the standard variety, but even so, you’d expect half a dozen full juiced-up witchers to be able to handle them with ease. When Geralt faces off against a third basilisk, the biggest of all, he defeats it in under a minute by blasting it in the face with igni and stabbing it through the skull.

Nothing we see in the other witchers’ fighting styles, except for the occasional throwing of witcher signs, matches what we’ve been told about witchers. We’re told that they’ve each had more than a lifetime of combat experience and weapons training, but for the most part we see them just kind of flapping their axes and swords at the basilisks ineffectually before getting their heads bitten off. We’re told that they’re supernaturally fast, strong, and durable, but there’s no evidence of this. We’re told that they’re lone, wandering mercenaries who rarely meet each other out in the real world, yet it doesn’t take very long at all for the witchers to resort to begging Vesemir for help. We’re told that they’ve purposefully suppressed emotions like fear, but when confronted with the basilisks they A) panic and B) ask their daddy to come and rescue them.