Get ready for The Witcher season 2 with The A.V. Club’s character guide

Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill) is both The Witcher and a witcher, i.e., a professional monster hunter rendered sterile and extremely good at fighting by rituals performed on him when he was a child. A wanderer and loner by trade and inclination, Geralt nevertheless spends the show’s first season forging a number of important connections with others, most notably to the sorceress Yennefer of Vengerberg, who Geralt unwittingly binds to himself through a desperate encounter with a djinn, and Princess Ciri of Cintra, who he (also not intentionally) claims as a sort of destined ward after saving her father’s life from both a curse and potentially murderous in-laws. For most of the season, Geralt is fairly secondary to the rising war with hostile country Nilfgaard that features strongly in Ciri and Yennefer’s narratives. He spends most of his time doing what witchers do best, i.e., enduring bigotry and monster attacks in exchange for coin. But the season’s final episodes see Geralt finally give in to his destiny, first by attempting, unsuccessfully, to save Ciri from the sack of Cintra, and then by encountering her at long last in the care of a merchant he coincidentally aided. [William Hughes]

Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon (Freya Allen) is the rightful heir to the throne of Cintra (or was until the kingdom was conquered by the armies of Nilfgaard) and has been bound to the witcher Geralt (Henry Cavill) since before her birth. In lieu of payment for saving the life of her father, Geralt invoked a custom called the Law Of Surprise that granted him something from Ciri’s parents that they didn’t know they had—like, say, an unborn daughter. Geralt stayed out of Ciri’s life, though, which forced her to fend for herself when Nilfgaardian soldiers (including the knight Cahir) arrived in Cintra to capture her. Ciri escaped, thanks to some previously unknown magical abilities, and then went on the run. She later found refuge among the elves of Brokilon Forest, but after having a vision and learning that staying in the forest would mean rejecting her destiny, Ciri left to find Geralt. She eventually did, after blacking out during another unexpected display of magic power, with a merchant’s wife finding her and taking her home … just as her husband arrived with none other than Geralt himself. [Sam Barsanti]

Every story that features a brooding leading man of little words needs a loquacious comedic-relief sidekick—and that’s the job of Jaskier (Joey Batey). After noticing Geralt sitting off in a corner, an intrigued Jaskier asks to join the witcher in his quest to track down a demon. Jaskier, a bard, hopes the new adventure will inspire him enough to compose a new song. But he’s a bit of a magnet for trouble—Geralt ends up saving him from elves and a scornful husband at the Cintra royal ball, before taking him to be healed by Yennefer after a murderous djinn almost succeeds in strangling him to death.After their encounter with the djinn, though, our time with the joke-cracking bard is cut short. In episode six, Geralt, still smarting from the loss of Yennefer, pushes Jaskier away, too. “Why is it whenever I find myself in a pile of shit these days, it’s you, shoveling it? The Child Surprise, the djinn, all of it. If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands,” Geralt, clearly projecting, spits out at him. Jaskier is absent from the last two episodes of the first season. [Shanicka Anderson]

Though Cahir (Eamon Farren) seemed like little more than a high-level soldier in the Nilfgaardian army tasked with killing the Cintran royal family, his real goal was to capture Princess Cirilla, a.k.a. Ciri. It’s unclear why she’s so important to Nilfgaard, but Cahir—thanks to some goading from the sorceress Fringilla Vigo (Mimi Ndiweni)—is certainly under the impression that both he and Ciri are destined for Important Things. In his desperation to capture Ciri, Cahir hired a shape-shifting creature called a doppler to imitate Mousesack, an advisor to Ciri’s grandmother. The doppler succeeded but turned on Cahir after realizing who Ciri was, leading to a fight that gave Ciri a chance to escape. Cahir later led the Nilfgaardian forces against the Brotherhood Of Sorcerers in the Battle Of Sodden Hill (an important step in the empire’s attempt to conquer the whole Continent). Though he killed the powerful mage Vilgefortz, the majority of his forces were obliterated by Yennefer of Vengerberg. [Sam Barsanti]