‘The Witcher’ Season 1’s best character is Anya Chalotra’s Yennefer of Vengerberg, a broken mage before magic gives her confidence
Spoilers ahead for 'The Witcher' Season 1
The first season of 'The Witcher' consisting of eight episodes dropped on Netflix on December 20 and it featured actor Anya Chalotra as a mage called Yennefer of Vengerberg. She is initially broken, but gains confidence with time and magic plays a huge part in it.
She is initially a disfigured young girl, who is cursed because of the elfish blood in her and she faces the worst kind of discrimination by her own family. She has no friends and when she does try to talk to people, they either bully her or let her know in no sweet terms that she is not welcome.
It is when she is being bullied that Yennefer closes her eyes and hopes to disappear, instead, she opens a portal that takes her to a crypt in Artuza. Yennefer meets a mage Istredd (Royce Pierreson) who gives her an idea about how she is not just a young girl.
The way Istredd treats her with care, the first time that they met and the many times after that, Yennefer feels that she is special to him and even comes to care for him. However, things change when Yennefer realizes that Istredd revealed her deepest darkest secret to his Rector, Stregobor.
Her elf blood is used against her, and despite being one of the most promising mages in Artuza, despite being a powerful conduit of magic, she is not given the opportunity to become the mage of a powerful court such as Ardirn. Instead, she is assigned to one of the constituencies in the South called Nilfgaard.
This country is not considered a great place for an ambitious mage. It is this ambition that pushed Yennefer to do something that she comes to regret from the bottom of her heart.
In return for the beauty that would help her gain power, Yennefer gives up her ability to procreate. She is informed about this before she goes through with the spell, after having served multiple corrupt courts led by men who have not much to give Yennefer.
That is when she begins a journey to find a possible way to repair herself. In the process, Yennefer meets Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill), the witcher and we see a side of Yennefer that we hadn't seen.
All this while, Yennefer was dead set on her path and she rebelled against the very system that enabled her to become a mage in the first place. With Geralt, however, Yennefer let her guard down.
We see just a moment of it, but it is definitely one that serves as a primer to the relationship between Yennefer and Geralt. While this doesn't necessarily last, it is still a moment that proves what drives Yennefer. It is not power, or beauty but the need to be wanted by someone.
It will be interesting to see how Yennefer will continue. She is by the end of the season left all alone after an attack by the Nilfgarrd army and Fringilla Vigo, a former fellow mage who has now moved sides.
She has no allies as Tissaia de Vries (MyAnna Buring), her Vectoress is at the death bed, and so are the other mages who wanted to stop Nilfgard from wreaking havoc in the rest of the continent as they did in Cintra.