Sirens Of The Deep Is The Witcher Distilled
A charming one-off story lets Geralt do what he does best.
The Witcher has always been a series that has worked hard to recapture the magic of the first season. Season 2 received lackluster reviews, and the hope of capturing lightning in a bottle again seemed all but hopeless when star Henry Cavill was replaced with Liam Hemsworth. But hope may have come in the strangest form: an animated spinoff movie that takes The Witcher back to its roots.
The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep, now streaming on Netflix, takes a short story from the Witcher books and adapts it into a luscious, standalone adventure that rewrites the ending of its source material — and a classic fairytale.
Geralt briefly picks up a bonus bard in Essi, aka Little Eye.
Unlike the previous Witcher spinoff movie Nightmare of the Wolf, Sirens of the Deep is actually an adaptation of a Witcher story, “A Little Sacrifice,” published in the short story collection Sword of Destiny. It follows Geralt (original video game voice actor Doug Cockle) and Jaskier (Joey Batey) as they travel to Bremervoord and encounter a race of merpeople and humans on the brink of battle. Geralt is hired to investigate the murders of pearl divers, but along the way he finds two star-crossed lovers: young royal Agloval (Camrus Johnson) and mermaid Sh'eenaz (Emily Carey.)
Geralt and Jaskier also happen upon Essi (Christina Wren), aka Little Eye, a local bard who enjoys a fling with Geralt, making him confront his own issues around relationships while shedding some light on Jaskier’s past.
Sirens of the Deep is set between Episodes 5 and 6 of Season 1 of The Witcher, which puts it in a difficult position: how do you make the story exciting without disturbing the outer canon? The answer is by exploring only the emotional stakes of its mainstay characters and letting the one-offs carry the weight. Little Eye’s story is completely wrapped up by the end of the movie, but through it we get a look at Geralt’s emotional core, and that’s more valuable than any lore drop.
The titular Sirens of the Deep are a race of merpeople with their own grudges against the humans.
“A Little Sacrifice” was clearly inspired at least in part by the story of The Little Mermaid — there’s a mermaid in love with a royal who transforms to have legs — so it doesn’t take much to draw a line between the two. But Sirens of the Deep isn’t satisfied with either the ending of the original story or the fairy tale. Love does mean sacrifice, yes, but it’s about mutual sacrifice.
When Sh'eenaz is offered a potion that will transform her into a human, it’s through song by the sea witch Melusina (Galavant’s Mallory Jansen). It’s the only musical number in the movie (if you don’t count the constant bard ballads), and it’s the most Little-Mermaid-esque the story gets. But unlike Ariel, Sh'eenaz has no desire to be part of that world. If she’s going to be happy with Agloval, it’s going to be underwater.
It’s the perfect sweet ending to a movie that ended up being way more about love than monsters (but rest assured there are a fair number of monsters) and shows what The Witcher is best at: being the point of view character for wild fantasy adventures.
