Summary
“Unbound” lacks the action and focus of the premiere and feels like a bit of a step down, with its focus spread a little too thin.
This recap of The Witcher Season 3 Episode 2, “Unbound”, contains spoilers.
After spending the better part of two seasons keeping Geralt, Ciri, and Yennefer apart, The Witcher Season 3 Volume 1 allowed us one episode of them being together before splitting them up again.
In “Unbound”, Yen and Ciri are on their way to Aretuza, while Geralt attempts to track down Rience, all while various other subplots burble away in the background. As with previous seasons and spin-offs in this franchise, the split focus is where it begins to feel a little unwieldy.
The Witcher Season 3 Episode 2 Recap
Who are Codringher and Fenn?
For help, Geralt visits Codringher and Fenn, a law firm and detective agency that, like The Professor in Episode 1, feels like a nod for the benefit of franchise fans rather than a meaningful development in the actual plot of the season.
That having been said, they do at least point Geralt in the right direction — namely, to Vuilpanne, a castle where he might find answers about the extremely powerful sorcerer keeping Rience on a leash, to use the right magical parlance. They also let on that Istredd is poking around asking questions too, though we won’t actually see him for a while.
What does Geralt find in Vuilpanne?
Vuilpanne’s dungeons hold the next stage of the overarching mystery and some genuinely effective body horror. There, Geralt finds and frees a young woman encased in webbing, but her inane ranting about a man who “comes for us during the night” doesn’t bode well. Neither, I suppose, do the three heads extending from fleshy stalks on the wall, which it’s quickly revealed belong to a hideous monster comprised of arms and other haphazardly-conjoined body parts, which Geralt has to kill.
After killing the monster, Geralt takes the delirious young woman away.
Where does Yennefer take Ciri?
Meanwhile, Yennefer and Ciri make a stop-off on the way to Aretuza. With Ciri’s visions of the future worsening, and her impulses to intervene in destiny threatening to get them in more and more trouble, Yen decides to buy a portal straight to Aretuza from an old friend named Keira.
In the store, though, a rough-looking man is trying to send a captive dwarf away for nefarious purposes, and when Ciri senses his potential future, she frees the prisoner and implores him to run. Yen is forced to intervene and kill his captor, so the two of them have to flee instead.
Looks like they’re taking the long way to Aretuza.
This is obviously in service of character development. Yen and Ciri bicker, and in their disagreement, Yen takes Ciri to the patch of land where the house she grew up in once stood and allows her to see some of her past. Her own mistakes can be a cautionary tale. Ciri needs to understand what the consequences of meddling might be.
What’s going on elsewhere in “Unbound?”
I forgot to mention in the premiere episode that Philippa and Dijkstra are trying to manipulate Jaskier into delivering Ciri to them so they can use her as bargaining power to bolster Redania’s political standing.
Vizimir’s charming brother, Radovid, who shares some obvious sexual chemistry with Jaskier, is also involved in this subplot. In fact, it’s him Jaskier visits, advising him to bribe Codringher and Fenn for the information on Rience that they wouldn’t give in its entirety to Geralt. The theory is that if Redania can get rid of Rience, Geralt might trust them enough to hand Ciri over.
The Witcher Season 3 Episode 2 Ending Explained
Codringher and Fenn do not survive the episode. Rience, with his newly healed hands, teleports into their office and threatens their cat until they tell him everything they told Geralt. He burns their place to the ground with them inside it, though he does, thankfully, take the cat with him.
As things come to a close, Geralt tries to communicate with the young woman he freed from Vuilpanne. As it turns out, her looking a bit like Ciri isn’t a coincidence. She thinks she is Ciri.
You can stream The Witcher Season 3 Episode 2, “Unbound” exclusively on Netflix.
