As someone who hasn't read the books to know what the original story was -- the Brodilon storyline was straight up boring.
The Brokilon story was the one part where it felt to me they kind of weren’t completely sure on how they wanted to tell the story and what purpose it was serving.
In the end the entire thing was just emphasizing that Ciri was important. Which we already knew. The actual Brokilon stuff gave us nothing new other than the introduce to Dryads. But what’s the purpose of that, really, in this context.
In the books, one of the entire short stories takes place in Brokilon. Its where Geralt and Ciri first meet. Geralt happens into the woods while Ciri has been taken by the Dryads when she ran away from home. I like the book Dryads because they’re pretty scary and unforgiving. and its a whole ordeal for Geralt to get them out of the mess because the Dryads want to take Ciri into their society. which would erase who Ciri is (Drinking the water). Its also where Geralt really has to start confronting his connection with Ciri.
I get why they took Geralt out of the Brokilon story with the timelines they were using. But keeping it in without really using it to do much with Ciri’s character seemed weak. It was used in order to keep Ciri on the screen but other than that... Even the Dryads were not as cool as I had hoped they would be. In the book it was a very scary idea that Ciri would drink the water and lose her identity. They kind of just gloss over it all... use it as “maybe this is the better choice” in the show.
And as people have pointed out, since Geralt and Ciri hadn’t met in Brokilon forest in the show, the final scene of them finding each other again lacks a little bit of impact it had since they knew each other before. Its still good, imo. but i agree as well.
Changing Brokilon Forest definitely alters things a bit. I think they could have sat down and come up with something more engaging even after taking Geralt out of that storyline. But it feels like they really didn’t know what to do there. But they WANTED to have the Dryads, is all I get from it.
