Witcher ending who is it

If you made it to the end of the first season — and if you haven't, note that this is full of spoilers — and feel a little lost, it's not your fault. The Continent is a weird place, and making sense of it all — especially if you've never read Andrzej Skaposki's books or played CD Projekt Red's Witcher video games — is no simple task.

The Witcher sets up many intriguing ideas for season two which, thankfully, is already a go , which should be much more streamlined, but you'll need to understand how season one ended to get the most out of it. Here's what you need to know. You probably picked up on this already, but The Witcher is spread across three separate timelines, and you need to know what happened when in order to understand the story.

The show starts dropping hints about its unconventional structure as early as the second episode, and makes the timeline split quite clear in episode four, but it's still not quite clear how much time is passing between episodes it doesn't help that nobody other than Ciri — not even the regular human characters — seem to age much. Yennefer's time at the magic academy in Aretuza and her year stint in the court of Aedirn happen before everything else.

When Queen Kalis and her baby die and Yennefer decides to go independent, Geralt catches up with her. By episode five, they're on the same timeline. Geralt's tale comes next and lasts for over a decade. Geralt is an experienced witcher by the time he rolls into Blaviken, and his next few adventures seem to take place a few months apart — his reputation grows fast, but not that fast.

Geralt first visits Cintra in episode four. When he returns in episode seven, 12 years have passed, meaning episodes five and six are likely years apart. Ciri's story only lasts for about a week, and begins 12 years after Geralt's first visit to Cintra. By episode seven, Geralt and Yennefer's stories are only about a week behind Ciri's.

By the finale, everything is happening at the same time. Even though "Much More," the final episode of The Witcher 's first season, is happening in one more-or-less united timeline, our characters don't cross paths until the very end.

Ciri spends the bulk of the episode with a kindly commoner who found the princess passed out in the field, and wants to adopt Ciri as her daughter. Meanwhile, Geralt begins the episode in the same refugee camp that Ciri visited in episode two, where a local merchant is clearing out dead bodies.

Geralt defends the merchant from some zombie-like monsters, but is wounded in the process. The merchant — who happens to be the commoner's husband — puts Geralt on his cart and starts towing him to safety while the Witcher succumbs to a flurry of visions.

Yennefer, whose adventure takes up most of the episode, makes a stand with 22 other mages at Sodden, where they fight to defend the north from the Nilfgaardian army. It's a brutal, bloody battle with many casualties on both sides. In the aftermath, Tissaia magically calls out for Yennefer.

Ciri hears her and heads to the woods, where she meets Geralt for the first time. She asks the witcher who Yennefer is, but before he can answer the credits roll. Why, exactly, did Nilfgaard invade the north, raze Cintra, and turn Sodden into a massacre?

It's after more than just Ciri. If you track Nilfgaard's history over The Witcher 's three timelines, you'll actually see the story of a humiliated nation that rises from the ashes in order to restore its lost glory, albeit in the most violent way possible.

Early on, before Yennefer's ascension, Nilfgaard is a joke. Its king, Fergus, wastes the kingdom's money on girls and other frivolous pursuits.

A few things of note happen in this battle, but some of the most important events involve the various magic users in the series. See, the forces united against Nilfgaard have quite a few sorcerers and sorceresses on their side, but Nilfgaard boasts that assistance of a woman named Fringilla.

As we saw in an earlier episode, Fringilla was sent to Nilfgaard after Yenneffer managed to seduce her way out of that particular assignment. We see quite a few sorcerers and sorceresses united against Nilfgaard either die or suffer serious injuries during the battle. In a moment of seeming desperation during the Battle of Sodden Hill, we see Yennefer seemingly lose control or gain control, depending on your perspective as she unleashes a rain of fire on the army of Nilfgaard and forces them to withdraw their attack.

It seems to be a relatively clean ending to what has been a devastating battle that Nilgaard was on the verge of winning. Throughout The Witcher , we are told that the use of magic in this world often comes at the cost of something else.

We even see a sorcerer during the battle basically deplete his chaos and lose his life during a fight because of it. The screen fades to black, leaving the White Wolf's fate ambiguous, though ultimately this doesn't stop players from continuing after beating The Witcher 3. There is one ending generally considered to be the more middling of the two good endings.

It is still much more positive than the bad ending, owing simply to the fact that Ciri survives, but remains a bittersweet way for the story to draw to a close. Ciri halts the White Frost and returns alive, but is still subject to her familial obligations, ascending to the Nilfgaardian throne.

Ciri survives the final battle because she received the proper support from Geralt, but cannot escape her obligation to Nilfgaard if Witcher 3 players made the choice to meet with the Emperor during the Blood on the Battlefield quest. The best ending to The Witcher 3 is accomplished by refusing to meet the Emperor, and instead going with Ciri to Bald Mountain in Velen. Geralt and Yennefer retire together: If Geralt avoids romancing Triss Merigold and instead attempts to woo Yennefer during the mission The Last Wish , the Witcher and the Sorceress will retire together - far from the noise and danger of politics and adventure.

If Geralt did nothing to aid the assassination of Radovid in the side quest A Deadly Plot , or sided with Sigismund Djikstra in the mission Reason of State , the Nilfgaardian empire will lose their war and be pushed back to the south. Seeing their emperor defeated and humiliated, the Nilfgaardians gain the strenght to overthrow their leader - gutting him in the process.

Should players complete the side quest Reasons of State and side with Vernon Roche, Emhyr var Emries will successfully conquer the North. Once his invasion is complete, he seeks out and eliminates anyone within his ranks who sought to do him traitorous harm. Anna his wife will be in severe shock, and Strengar vows to get her help from a medecin man in the far-off Blue Mountains. Despite lifting the hex, Anna is too weak to survive - bereft at her passing, the Baron hangs himself from the tree in Crow's Perch.

Based on choices Geralt makes throughout the game, the lands of Novigrad and Velen may end up with one of three rulers at the completion of the game. This ending occurs if Geralt does not assisnt in the assassination of the Redanian king in the side quests A Deadly Plot or Reason of State.

Despite being certifiably insane, Radovid proved himself a tactical mastermind time and time again. As such, he was able to defeat the Nilfgaardian invaders and push them back to the south.

After the war had finally ended, Radovid 's men continued their purge for "Moral Renewal. After the assassination of Radovid , Djikstra rose to power concealed in shadow - finally stepping out into the light once the war against the invaders had been won.

While his reign was prosperous, his focus on industrialization on consolidating power greatly resembled that of the Nilfgaardian invaders, to the dismay of many of his new subjects. With Radovid gone from power, his armies lost their best tactician. Without the strategic guidance of their king, the Redaian forces allowed Nilfgaard to overtake their lands.