Summary
“Much More” delivers an explosive, action-packed finale, and finally let’s destiny have its way.
This recap of The Witcher Season 1, Episode 8, “Much More”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
In the aftermath of the sacking of Cinta, Geralt (Henry Cavill) encounters a man, Yurga, burying the dead. Geralt saves him from monsters that emerge from the graves and tells him to go home; as Geralt fights off more of their number, he gets bitten by one and collapses.
Meanwhile in “Much More”, The Witcher‘s first season finale, Ciri (Freya Allan) wakes up to the kindly woman whose horse she stole in the previous episode. All of her attackers are dead, and the woman says they deserved it for coming after her.
Much of The Witcher Episode 8 is devoted to the mages attempting to keep Nilfgaard out of the North by fortifying and defending the keep at Sodden. They have two days to hold out until reinforcements from Temeria and Kaedwyn arrive. Yen (Anya Chalotra) is with them. Several scenes show the residents all coming together to prepare for the upcoming battle, while we also get downtime between the various mages. Triss (Anna Shaffer) tells Yen of the striga at Temeria and mentions Geralt. Tissaia (MyAnna Buring) asks Yen if she’s ready to die, and she confirms she is. She has lived two or three lifetimes already and hasn’t been satisfied in any of them — she has no legacy to leave behind.
Fringilla (Mimi Ndiweni) tells Cahir (Eamon Farren) that the Brotherhood have fortified the keep, but since she believes that Ciri might have already crossed the Yaruga River, Cahir wants to continue his pursuit of her and test the Brotherhood’s defenses. To do that, Fringilla begins shelling them with magic meteorites, created from the lifeforce of human sacrifice mages and slung from a trebuchet. The Brotherhood survey the forest below as fog begins to envelop it.
Geralt spends almost the entirety of “Much More” laying in Yurga’s cart, where he slips in and out of consciousness, having visions of gold dragons and his childhood. At Sodden, the mages continue to defend against the Nilfgaardian onslaught. Triss summons literal magic mushrooms to slow their march. Sabrina (Therica Wilson-Read) fires arrows into vials of an explosive blue concoction, which are slung from the ramparts and detonate over the heads of the soldiers. Vilgefortz emerges from a portal to fight Cahir and his men, though he allows his emotions to get the better of him. Constantly replacing his sword with his magic, his reserves of chaos eventually deplete, and Cahir kicks him off a cliff, presumably to his death.
But the Nilfgaardians have tricks of their own. Fringilla opens a portal in the ground and the soldiers fire arrows into it; they emerge from another portal in the keep. Tissaia confronts Fringilla, but her former student is ready for it, hitting her in the face with Dimeritium.
Geralt is able to regain consciousness long enough to ask Yurga what’s happening. He tells him that Nilfgaard is attacking Sodden. Geralt uses a potion on his wound and tells the driver to take him to the Blue Mountains on the other side of Sodden, where apparently “he” will save him. Subsequent visions of Geralt’s abandonment by his mother Visenna reveal that he’s referring to Vesemir, his surrogate father and Witcher tutor.
The Brotherhood begins to lose the battle in The Witcher Episode 8. Triss erects a desperate barrier of vines, but their defenses are undermined even further when Sabrina and two young boys, possessed by the dark chest of magical worms that Fringilla snuck into the keep earlier, take the explosive vials and position themselves for a suicide mission Sabrina climbs the tower from which Yen has been conducting the battle and stabs her with an arrow; they both fall, but Yen is able to land safely while Sabrina smashes face-first into the ground. The kids, though, cause a giant, devastating explosion.
Yen is badly injured but won’t give up the fight. She reaches out telepathically to the mages, asking if anyone is still alive and can hear her, but Fringilla hijacks her communications and tries to sway her to the Nilfgaardian side. “Much More” reveals, though, that Vilgefortz has survived, and we see him kill one of his own dying men as he ignores Yen’s voice in his head. Tissaia, though, hears it clearly.
While Geralt is out of it, he sees visions of Renfri and Yennefer, and then Visenna again. He becomes much more lucid and interrogates her about why she left him with Vesemir. She doesn’t want to answer his questions since doing so would only hurt them both. She tells him it’s time to move on, to let go, to find “her”. She insists she is just a dream. When Geralt wakes up, he’s still with Yurga — no women are present. He wants to go to the battlefield at Sodden.
At Sodden, Yen finally finds Tissaia, who saved her once upon a time. The rectress says it’s her turn to save these people; to let her chaos explode. She recalls all the horrible things people have said to her, all the horrible ways in which they have treated her, all that she has lost, and she barbecues the entire battlefield with great torrents of fire.
In the charred aftermath, Ciri somehow hears Geralt shouting for Yen. She flees the house of the kindly woman, where she’s staying, just as Geralt arrives on Yurga’s cart. The final reveal of The Witcher Season 1, Episode 8 is that Yurga is married to the woman. Destiny has finally brought Geralt and Ciri together. He heads into the woods, where he sees her running towards him, both instinctively knowing who the other is. Her first words to Geralt: “Who is Yennefer?”
Who indeed.
