LegendaryFang56 Review of Turn Your Back

The Witcher: Turn Your Back (2021) Season 2, Episode 5

By itself, this was one of the weaker episodes. Weakest, even.

[6/10 · 31 December 2021]

I don't know how to feel about this episode. It was still somewhat entertaining, at least, I guess. Hardly any of it felt interesting enough. The most important part was the dialogue about the Conjunction, the Spheres, and the monoliths. I'm sure a lot of people found that super interesting.

• The beginning left some question marks for me. How did that Lydia woman know about Cirilla, including a last-known location? I can understand Nilfgaard; particularly, The White Flame/Emhyr, knowing. If you know, you know. I'm not sure if the Nilfgaardians themselves know. Unless maybe Cahir. There's even a more specific reason why Emhyr would know about her.

• cont.) To clarify, I'm referring to Cirilla's mysterious powers, although the more specific reason has to be something nobody else knows. Everyone probably knows of her, specifically. She is the princess of a kingdom. A kingdom that recently got attacked and taken over.

• cont.) As far as her knowing a last-known location of Cirilla, I can buy that. With the extensiveness of this world and all the players, and 3D chess going on, it makes sense that probably everyone has spies everywhere. What I'm curious about is how she, or more like whoever she's working for, knows enough about Cirilla to where they'd be after her, too, wanting to get to her first.

• cont.) Maybe she's someone close to Emhyr, who considered her trustworthy enough to tell her about Cirilla's powers, only she's playing a double game. Or whoever she works for found out somehow. How? I don't know. As far as her character is concerned, she could be one of the significant female mage characters, or just female characters, that I casually read about a while back in The Witcher's wiki. Her name seems familiar.

• Another question mark was Rience going after Jaskier. I doubt Jaskier's songs are specific enough for Rience to know one of them could have mentioned Cirilla without mentioning her by name, let alone that by finding Geralt: he'll find Cirilla. But Rience seems to have had a history with Queen Calanthe, so maybe he met Geralt, too, and has a history with him as well. And that going after Geralt has nothing to do with going after Cirilla, as far as he knows.

• cont.) Also, how Yennefer rescued Jaskier was a bit ridiculous. So was how she burned Rience's face. It seems like the only reason it happened like that was so Yennefer could burn Rience's face, as I'm pretty sure that was a notable aspect of his appearance in the novels. But I'm sure how it happened in the latter wasn't as ridiculously done as it was in this episode.

• Geralt and Istredd taking down those two Nilfgaardian guards was also a bit ridiculous. Lightly hitting one across the head with something you're carrying and pushing the other off his horse with a weak magic blast is more than enough to knock out anyone: so it would seem.

• Well, Geralt knows Yennefer isn't dead. Thankfully. That's good. I'm relieved that he knows now, especially after the previous episode's writing with him and Triss, about to learn that Yennefer's alive, then screwing himself. It made sense that he'd not want to hear Yennefer's name because of the pain, but I feel like the writing of that was too convenient. The writers could've made that last longer, so I'm glad they didn't.

• Suddenly, the second episode has context. Yennefer's dream didn't make sense, but now, it's not as confusing. Cirilla is of Elder blood and is the seed that will burst into flame; in Yennefer's dream, her and Geralt's child burst into flame and had elven ears when the red-robed figure was holding it. But I don't think that Elder blood has to do with elves/Elven blood. Maybe those with Elder blood have always been elves. Either way, there's probably a correlation there. It's interesting.

• Is it just me, or does there seem to be more to that exchange between Fringilla and Francesca? Something romantic, I mean. I seem to remember from when I skimmed through The Witcher's wiki a while back that one of the significant female mage characters liked women.

• cont.) It may have been the one who was depicted blindfolded. Or was that Tissaia's depiction? It's hard to remember which one is which; when compared with their counterparts in the show. I can't seem to remember who that one is: maybe Philippa, who we've already been introduced to; if you know what I mean.

• cont.) Then again, I don't think any of the other significant female mage characters ever hooked up with her. I could be wrong about that. Still, either way, that doesn't mean Fringilla and Francesca won't have romantic aspects sprinkled among their encounters. But I'm probably overthinking it.

• Triss seemed a little hypocritical in this episode. She said that Cirilla gets to decide. Then, she freaks out when Cirilla makes a choice. One that she doesn't like. Granted, Triss was referring to using Cirilla to create Witcher mutagens, not Cirilla being the one on who it's used. But that, too, was still for Cirilla to decide: her choice to make, and Triss immediately goes into tantrum mode.

• cont.) And why was Cirilla's idea of needing a moment to prepare for getting injected with the Witcher mutagen, dabbing herself with a wet cloth? You'd think she'd want to do it right away, and the writers couldn't come up with a better excuse. It was only written like that so Triss would find out about it and then be with Cirilla in private. That was also to buy time for Geralt to arrive just in time to intervene when Triss's method still didn't make Cirilla decide against taking the mutagen.

• cont.) Of course, the result had to happen. From back when I casually read through some of The Witcher's wiki, I'm pretty sure I read that Cirilla never took the mutagen until the very end of the novels, or the end of the third game, something like that. Or that she never took it at all. Her powers and skills themselves were sufficient enough. I feel like if the writers didn't write Geralt to intervene, it would've been like killing Eskel, only a more significant change, one that would have probably pissed people off a lot more.

All-in-all, this episode seemed on the weaker side, but it was still entertaining, albeit confusing or written a little poorly. I was expecting the season to get more intricate starting with this episode after watching the previous episode, which I was somewhat correct about, I guess. But it wasn't to the extent or like I was expecting, so I feel like what I was expecting may happen in the following episodes, but probably not.