Summary
The events of The Witcher Season 4 feel frustratingly siloed in Episode 3, which has some fun stuff but struggles to cohere.
In my review of The Witcher Season 4, I moaned about the whole thing feeling a little weirdly siloed and disconnected, its core storylines happening in parallel but with too little crossover. I think you can feel that mostly strongly here in Episode 3, “Trial By Ordeal”, which lacks some of the reassuringly fun action of the premiere and even the slightly subversive recruitment of Regis in the second episode. We’re firmly into side quest territory here, on all fronts.
Cleaved into three distinct strands, “Trial By Ordeal” at least benefits from the last-minute introduction of a fan-favorite villain from the books, which will hopefully lend a bit of peril to Ciri’s side of the narrative, which, surprisingly, is turning out to be the more engaging portion anyway. Geralt is still heading in the wrong direction and keeps stopping to get embroiled in local politics anyway, while Yen has the right idea but has created an isolated climate at Montecalvo that divorces the series’ mages — most of them, anyway — from the sneakier political arenas where they tend to function a bit better.
We might as well start with Yen, actually. Here she visits Francesca, who is… not coping well after her experiences in the previous season. She’s reluctant to get embroiled in Yen’s fight against Vilgefortz, or really in anything other than languishing in her grief and trying to pretend that reality doesn’t exist, but Yen has reached the point where she can’t be bothered negotiating and instead turns Francesca — the Queen of the Elves! — into a jade figurine and pops her in her breast pocket.
Back at Montecalvo, Francesca becomes one of several new arrivals, including a very traditional-looking witch named Assire — we’re talking pointy hats and broomsticks here — and a bearded dwarf lady named Ximer. But the mages are still pretty stuck, since Vilgefortz is hiding in his hidden fortress and is totally invulnerable to any of them. Except one. The most interesting development here in “Trial By Ordeal” is that Fringilla’s defection to Vilgefortz’s side turns out to have been a ruse. She’s really playing double agent, influencing the machinery he has designed to drain mages of their Chaos to control the portals.
Through her, Yen learns that Vilgefortz will need to be lured out to Montecalvo so the mages can jump him there. But nobody’s buying that this is really a revenge mission. It’s about Ciri, and everyone knows it, so Yen has to justify that, which is where Francesca comes in. In a nicely animated little aside, she gives the other mages — who you’d think would be aware of this story already? — a brief primer on the Conjunction of the Spheres and Lara Dorren, the key figure in Elven mythology, of whom Ciri is a direct descendant.
Elsewhere in The Witcher Season 4, Episode 3, Geralt still can’t keep his nose out of other people’s business. To be fair, he is trying to reunite the refugees traveling with Zoltan with their families, which is a noble enough goal, but it also kind of floats the idea that he’s going to spend all season doing side quests on the way to Nilfgaard, which is concerning since Ciri isn’t even there. On that note, Emhyr confronts Vilgefortz about the deception with Teryn that he discovered in the previous episode, but his spymaster, Skellen, nonetheless advises that he marry the imposter anyway as part of a shrewd political maneuver. Emhyr agrees, even though he’s worryingly keen to have a baby with his daughter.
Anyway, got a little sidetracked there. Geralt follows the girl, Beata, into a town with a mass grave outside, which is rarely ever a good sign. And it turns out that distasteful shenanigans are indeed afoot. Beata’s sister, Talver, is being burned at the stake for being a witch, which in this universe, like real life, is just a version of violent misogyny that it’s basically impossible to talk your way out of once you’re accused. Geralt challenges the priest to produce some evidence of the claim, it quickly becomes apparent there is none, and the priest doubles down on burning Talver and Beata anyway.
Geralt counters by offering the priest a trial by combat, but he counters with the titular Trial by Ordeal. If someone can pick up a nearby flaming horseshoe without any harm coming to them, a task that should be impossible, then Geralt and his friends will be allowed to go free. Regis rather inexplicably pulls this off, so the priest kicks off anyway. You just can’t win with these people.
It isn’t a mercy that Nilfgaardian soldiers arrive. They interrupt the fracas about the witches, but they do start murdering people indiscriminately, including, sadly, Beata. It’s a surprisingly brutal turn that the episode probably benefits from, and it distracts Geralt for long enough that the Nilfgaardians are able to knock him out. Ciri, asleep in bed with Mistle after a difficult day of stealing from the rich and trying to protect her real identity, senses this in a dream, as we’ve seen Geralt do when she has been in trouble this season.
And Ciri is in trouble, even if she doesn’t know it. The Witcher Season 4, Episode 3 ends with Stellan hiring a Witcher hunter by the name of Leo Bonhart, who wears a collection of Witcher medallions pilfered from his various victims, to kill Ciri and the Rats. Leo seems to like the idea.
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