REVIEW: The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep
The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep is an animated movie released by Netflix on February 11th, 2025. It is a (very) loose adaptation of The Sword of Destiny short story, “A Little Sacrifice” by The Witcher author Andrzej Sapkowski. How loose? Well, “A Little Sacrifice” is inspired by The Little Mermaid fairy tale and the sacrifices we make for love. This movie is about the war between the humans of a coastal village and a bunch of mermen, while also setting up another romance for Geralt aside from his traditional one with Yennefer.
A loose adaptation doesn’t mean it’s bad, though. The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep is up there as one of Netflix’s better adaptations in The Witcher franchise. Whenever Netflix sticks to Sapkowski’s material, it’s pretty darn good like Season One of the live action show, and, to a lesser extent, Season Three are decent despite some inexplicable choices. It’s only when Netflix decides to “improve” Sapkowski’s work or generate original material that it becomes less enjoyable.
The premise for The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep is that Agloval and Sh’eenaz are a pair of star-crossed lovers. Agloval is a prince who is keeping Sh’eenaz, a merwoman, as his mistress while the two hope to make a more permanent bonding. This is difficult when their two races are at war over the oyster trade; one loves their pearls while the other needs them to survive. Geralt is in a funk after being dumped by Yennefer (again) and Jaskier wants to introduce him to other women. One of these other women is Essi Daven, a beautiful bard that is about 99% less annoying than Jaskier.
I’d say despite the “actionizing” of the short story (which had no action at all) The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep is faithful in spirit. The hour and a half movie understand that the core of both stories is that Agloval and Sh’eenaz’s love is healing but requires compromises. In the short story collection, it is clearly showing that Geralt and Yennifer’s unwillingness to do any sort of compromising is why they can’t stay together at this time in their lives. It also highlights that there’s a possibility for him and Essi to do the same, but it doesn’t work out.
Still, there are a lot of changes for The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep. They introduce an antagonistic Ursula figure named Melusina, who is the architect of all the things going wrong with the situation. We also get changes to Jaskier’s backstory and Essie’s, making them more directly tied to events. The merpeople are also portrayed as indigenous beings who are at one with nature while the humans fishermen are rapacious pearl-seekers who would throw out a thousand oysters even though the village is starving. Still, the story isn’t badly written, and I’d give it props in several places for being at competently done.
Animation-wise The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep should be praised. It is a very visually beautiful film and the designs for both humans as well as merfolk are well done. Geralt moves with far more fluid anime-like superhuman moves throughout the story compared to the live action depictions. The voice work is also excellent with Doug Cockle, who did voice work on The Witcher video games, making his return to the role of Geralt after the loss of Henry Cavill. I think the nostalgia factor of hearing him once more perform Geralt’s lines will smooth over a lot of the minor bumps of this movie with hardcore Witcher fans. Sort of like Kevin Conroy’s Batman, many mid-tier projects are elevated simply by his excellent voice acting.
Overall, how is The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep? It is…fine. I would say it is a solid B, B+ production that blows Blood Origins out of the water. If you have a picture in your mind about how a Romeo and Juliet-esque story about humans and merfolk would get resolved by Geralt then you probably know 90% of this movie already. The Essi Daven and Geralt bits are the remaining 10% and are done well. It is a competent and enjoyable animated action film and reminds me of plenty of well-done anime I’ve seen. I can think of much worse ways to spend an evening and it is only an hour and a half, so does not wear out its welcome.
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