sorry the more i think about how netflix wrote regis the more i get pissed off and its already been over three months now. but i think im going to be mad about it Forever. and the stupidest part is that i’m sure none of this was even intentional by the writers because they simply do not know what they’re doing. it’s like being mad at a dog for making a mess when it’s a dog. but actually. it’s being mad at a person for behaving like a dog because they’re a person and they should know better
anyways it was extremely annoying to me that netflix made it like regis Intentionally gets the company drunk and essentially drugs them to get them in a vulnerable state because thats literally predatory vampire behavior and something he wouldnt do. there is a whole symbolic throughline with hypnosis - drugs - alcohol as being in an altered state
in netflix geralt accuses regis of drugging them to get their secrets and regis is just like lol yeah i had to do that to protect myself bc idk who you are
when in the book he told them like this will probably fuck you up tbh and zoltan and dandelion were like fuck yeahhhgghhh and geralt was like Thank You I Needed This
edit: it also sucks because in the books, yes, he was indeed probably cautious of them still, but the fact that he did not resort to violating measures in order to assure his own security shows that he had developed past his previous selfishness from his previous life.
because regis could have intentionally drugged them. hell he could have exploded the cabin walter white style. he could have just hypnotized them all silly and put them to sleep and flew away in the middle of the night. but he didn’t. why?
because he was a person who cared about the personhood of his guests, he did not betray the guest-host relationship of xenia… because he’s a direct subversion of what it means to be a monster. he gave them shelter, drink, and food (well ok horseradish and a place to cook the horsemeat). you could also interpret it as giving them a gift of alcohol, since it was quite expensive alcohol. in exchange, he only asked them for explanation of their travels and news of the outside world. this is the correct behavior of a host. literally by the classic ancient standard.
by having regis violate their consent, trick them, giving them things only because he had other intentions, flipped him back to what his character was intending to subvert… the antagonistic force, the monster. fuck it just have him eat a person while youre at it. because symbolically its communicating the same thing.
The most annoying part about this situation specifically in the show is that there is absolutely no reason for him to do this, and they could’ve just left it as it was in the books, with him giving them the alcohol out of the goodness of his heart and generosity. There’s no reason for him to say that he intentionally drugged them to get information out of them. Why did they add this line? I don’t know. Because their world has to be dark and dim and grim with no one good ever? Because that’s what they think the Witcher is? But the whole point of Regis‘s character is that he is one of the good points and one of the good people (yes, people) who Geralt meets on his journey, in the midst of this darkness. in darkness, light. in silence, word.
of course, it’s not true that regis never acts selfishly in the novels, I think his selfishness comes out as lack of self-awareness, which he slowly develops more… but there is selfishness and then there is doing harm to others. And I don’t know why Netflix constantly has their heroes act harmful towards each other and pretend like what they’re doing is not harmful. It’s the same thing with geralt being a total jerk to jaskier and yennefer, and yennefer betraying ciri, these have moral implications to them
it’s not like Netflix did a good job with regis’s character otherwise, but the issues otherwise are mainly that they made him exceptionally boring and uninteresting, and took out his character relationships with geralt the rest of the company. it was a lack of anything. but this small moment was a direct antithesis of who regis is in the books, and yet it has no reason to exist in the netflix show, so i have no idea why it is there
if i can talk about the book character a little more
what’s really fascinating about Regis‘s character in the books is that he was an alcoholic and here he is… distilling. It’s the same thing, as him being a barber-surgeon, a role where one of his main jobs would be to bloodlet (or if they dont do that in this universe, because we dont know, their medicine is a little more developed than if this were a period piece) still working with blood. he is basically the “recovered alcoholic bartender”… (which is kind of a really unrealistic trope, but I think it is intended to play up how developed and cognizant he has become in his own self reflection).
I think this scene suffering in the Netflix show is actually a consequence of the broader issue of them, not understanding that Regis’s conflict with alcoholic and addiction was his core as a character. Because if you consider the fact that he distills, that he involves himself with both human alcohol and blood, it’s a very clear redemption for him and a complete 180 of who he used to be.
regis intentionally drugging the company is exactly the opposite of the behavior that he would perform in his redeemed state, but Netflix does barely understand that his redemption was from addiction. in their case, their regis’s redemption was only about violence against humanity, and the addiction was secondhand or a minor detail in the larger story. When in sapkowski’s version the entire thing is a direct and obvious metaphor for alcoholism.
but yeah, it was an extremely bad taste for them to do this, because having a recovered alcoholic who struggled with addiction so badly, and actually died from it, having that man drug strangers with alcohol is even a violent act bc he has experienced that violence firsthand. Ok ted talk done now
actually, no. There’s one more thing which I wanna complain about which is the set and prop design in this case. We all know that Netflix is designed sucks so badly for the Witcher but here it actually plays into this narrative even making it worse. Because why did Regis, who lives alone nearby a cemetery, and gets no visitors, have an entire shot glass set ready to go with a serving tray. It’s obviously stupid because in the book his summer abode was very humble. But it also plays into this narrative that he was just waiting predatorily for people to pass by him so he could drug them. What the fuck.
