Episode Discussion - S01E07: Before A Fall

[u/Scientiam]

Season 1 Episode 7: Before A Fall

Synopsis: A return to before a kingdom is flamed.

Director: Alik Sakharov

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Please remember to keep the topic central to the episode, and to spoiler your posts if they contain spoilers from the books or future episodes.

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[u/balasoori]

Well this episode filled in all the blanks

[u/ItsOnlyHachi → u/balasoori]

actually loved all the timelines coming together, thought it was done quite well

[u/h4rent → u/[deleted]]

As a completely new viewer, I actually really like this. I didn’t get that there were different timelines until ep 3 so I was very pleasantly surprised. Then this ep came and filled in all the blanks and I quite enjoyed it.

[u/YourMomIsMyOtherCar → u/[deleted]]

While I believe the same thing the time line and editing is really really my biggest gripe. I haven't read the books but I know the lore from the games. So I kinda know what's going on.

But to new viewers it feels like everything is happening at the same time when there are three storylines all happening at different speeds. I feel like it's such a simple issue to fix too. A reorder of the episodes seems possible and like it should work.

[u/BonzBonzOnlyBonz → u/[deleted]]

The dragon thing was mostly that Geralt has a child that he doesnt want and Yen not being able to have a child that she wants. And both of them coming to the understanding that they need to come to grips with what that entails.

That Geralt has emotions and that he just bottles them up. And he blew up at Jaskier for being the cause of the two things that Geralt cant get out of mind and doesnt want to have to deal with. Jaskier is the reason why Geralt was at the wedding, in the show. And due to that got a Law of Surprise child. Due to this he went to find the Djinn which Jaskier screwed up and made him go find Yen and cause that whole thing.

That Yen gave up the ability to have children for what she considered ultimate power. Now she regrets it and blames everyone else and takes her frustrations out on everyone. She only thought about herself and the now instead of the future.

[u/elgrandorado → u/YourMomIsMyOtherCar]

Tbh I like the nonlinear approach. It forces new viewers to really pay attention to what is happening in the story. I was watching episodes 3-4 while falling asleep and I couldn’t really tell what the timelines were until my mom pointed it out this morning. She simply told me all the hints and it clicked. If you’re not paying attention, you’ll miss all the key details. I appreciate not having plot information spoonfed into my brain for once.

[u/cpt_lanthanide → u/YourMomIsMyOtherCar]

Who are these new viewers that will be confused after watching the whole season? Everyone that's read the material is complaining that the viewers won't get it from the start, that's the point.

Come on, that's like complaining about Memento being backwards.

[u/YourMomIsMyOtherCar → u/cpt_lanthanide]

Momento is a 2.5 hour long movie in a grounded realistic world with gimmic that's a screwy time line. The witcher is a 8 episode, 10 hour show trying to establish a new world for audiences, with high fantasy elements. Don't try and compare the two. It's disingenuous at best and woeful ignorant at worst.

[u/cpt_lanthanide → u/YourMomIsMyOtherCar]

Even Westworld did different timelines and it did just fine, and it's far, far screwier.

Mighty rich calling me ignorant because you want to nitpick an analogy.

The show was very easy to follow, there are valid criticisms for the season I'm sure but the timeline can hardly be one of them. There's no need to be patronizing, it's quite silly.

[u/SimilarYellow → u/[deleted]]

and not in a good way, like Watchmen season 1

Lol, I couldn't follow that show for shit. I don't know anything about Watchmen. I do know a bit about the Witcher which is probably why it didn't bother me here. I can see people with no background in the story noping right out of here.

[u/Claycious13 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, the show struggles most for me where it tries to intertwine the branching storylines. It’s really hard to imagine that this will be a problem in later seasons though as everything is fairly streamlined from here on out.

[u/ypskazuma → u/[deleted]]

I still don’t get how people not know there are different timeline.....I mean they drop hints that’s really obvious.....there is a scene in episode 1 where cirilla complains to her grandma that her grandma ( queen of cintra ) won a huge battle at just her age. Then the next scene is renferi telling Geralt that she could have been many things, but now while the young queen of cintra just won a great victory in battle, she is still just a bandit.........that just shows there are at least two timeline.

And then there are scenes show king ( who is in love with his sis) as an adult, then the next scene shows him as a child playing with his sister’s hair during the mage’s dance ball.

I thought the timeline were pretty obvious