The Witcher Season 3's Saddest, Most Unexpected Moment Deserves A Closer Look
This post contains spoilers for "The Witcher" season 3 part 2.
Of all the supporting characters who fill out the sprawling cast of "The Witcher," Tissaia de Vries (MyAnna Buring) might be the most underrated. Yennefer's mother figure also served as Aretuza's headmistress, a strong and sometimes exacting influence on generations of girls who grew up into powerful, world-changing women. That legacy wasn't enough to keep her going after she failed to save her students from the violent aftermath of a coup attempt or stop her lover Vilgefortz (Mahesh Jadu) from going after Ciri (Freya Allan). In the season 3 finale of Netflix's adaptation of "The Witcher" book series, Tissaia commits suicide, breaking the heart of her former students — especially Yen.
Tissaia's death comes just after Buring's most heart-wrenching performance to date, in which Yennefer finds her mentor obsessing over the movements of the opposing armies after accidentally instigating the attack that left some of her girls dead. Back in episode six, she let Phillippa (Cassie Clare) free, underestimating Vilgefortz's plan and inadvertently helping to facilitate a war between Nilfgaard and Redania. As we see in one of the season's most unnerving shots, in which the mages recover the bloody, battered bodies of the women they lost from the rubble of the toppled tower Tor Lara, the cost of her mistake is deadly.
Grief and regret drive Tissaia to the brink
To boil Tissaia's choice to take her own life down to just one motivating factor would be a disservice to the complexity of her character. In Andrzej Sapkowski's books, the character is a bit more strict and joyless, and it's easier to attribute her death to a simple sense of regret or purposelessness in conjunction with her role kick-starting a bloody conflict. "Look at that serious lady sitting there pulling faces and pedantically correcting everything in sight," one character tells another in "Time of Contempt," noting that she's the person who's taught dozens of women to find their power. It seems like a pretty good description of the book version of Tissaia, who is esteemed and strong but not known for being particularly warm, even to Yennefer.
But Buring brought additional depth to the character, as did "The Witcher" creator and showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich. Instead of feeling like a cut-and-dried example of a character being unable to live with the blood on her hands, "The Witcher" allows Tissaia an exit that also highlights just how deeply connected she is to Yennefer. When Yen finds Tissaia fretting over the maps, her hair having turned a shock of white after the battle, Tissaia explains why she never would've been able to hand over Ciri: "Your pain is my pain." She also recalls her early days in the Brotherhood of Sorcerers, when men kicked out pregnant women for their "divided loyalties." She doesn't say it, but it's clear that her loyalties at some point (perhaps too late) began to lie with Yen, who she calls daughter in her final goodbye.
A mother-daughter bond is severed
Still, Tissaia expresses regret about the way she approached the Brotherhood from a place of desperation back then, calling it "The first of many mistakes." She's morose, but resolutely so, and when Yennefer tries to snap her out of it, it doesn't work. Her former pupil gives her a poignant pep talk, saying, "You're the strongest force I've ever known. Remember your strength." Tissaia, though, seems to think her last act of strength should be to pay for the chaos she unleashed during the battle on Thanedd Island.
Tissaia explains herself in the letter she left for Yennefer. "One of the first things we learn about chaos is that it always has consequences. There is a cost to this magic, and eventually, we all must pay," she writes. On a literal level, Tissaia used her magic to take lives during the conflict at the tower, even outright exploding one enemy in order to save one of her girls. The cross-cutting of scenes between the funeral of those they lost and Tissaia's final moments indicates that more than Vilgefortz's betrayal, her use of violent magic, and the future bloodshed that might tie back to her decision, it was her inability to keep her girls save that weighed on her at the end. "Look around," she tells Yen. "It's all gone."
When Yennefer finds Tissaia, it's a heartbreaking moment, but it makes sense that it would be emotional; Yennefer's relationship to her own power, Aretuza, the sisterhood of mages, and her mother figure has long since been the source of some of the show's best material. For all the series' flaws, it does a great job making us feel Yen's pain here, even as she herself feels Tissaia's own pain in a literal way.
'Sometimes a flower is just a flower'
One particular line in Tissaia's letter is both enlightening and upsetting: "I would love to see you through the next leg of your journey. I know you will do great things, my daughter, but I'm afraid I cannot." The phrasing here is ambiguous. At first it sounds like Tissaia is saying she can't see Yen's life through, but the pauses in her speech also make another interpretation possible: "I know you will do great things ... but I'm afraid I cannot."
It's this possible message that softens the blow of Tissaia's death, as it feels like an intentional torch passing to her daughter figure. Though Yennefer can't recover what was lost on Thanedd Island — not just allies and friends, but also hope — she can use lessons learned from Tissaia to get Ciri back, and maybe even restore peace to the realms.
If "The Witcher" series continues to follow the books, there will also be another group that rises to take the place of the Brotherhood of Sorcerers. The Lodge of Sorceresses, an all-women organization that operates in secret, is poised to become the new magical supergroup in town. Tissaia may have accidentally helped foster a violent conflict, but during her lifetime, she also gave her students the skills and the courage to do what they know they must. As tragic and misguided as it is, her death will also surely galvanize the women who loved her. As she writes in her letter: "Sometimes a flower is just a flower, and the best thing it can do for us is die." Tissaia has never just been a flower, but by turning herself into a positive symbol for the sake of others, she performs one last act of magic by introducing a sliver of hope where there was none before.
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