Like Dom Toretto with a sword, The Witcher cast teases that season 3 is all about how family is good
As Henry Cavill's run on The Witcher approaches its end, the show is leaning in to the importance of sticking together
Aux News The Witcher
The future of Netflix’s The Witcher might be a little weird, what with series star Henry Cavill quitting the show (ostensibly so he could free up his schedule to make another Superman movie, even though we now know he won’t be playing Superman in James Gunn’s new DC universe and it’s a poorly kept secret that he had some creative issues with The Witcher). However, the people making the series—including Cavill, who will still be around for another season or so—are making it clear that they’re all continuing on with the story they’ve wanted to tell from the beginning, implying (without necessarily saying it outright) that we shouldn’t expect this big casting shakeup to reflect some kind of general behind-the-scenes turmoil.
What Witcher fans should expect, according to some new statements from the cast and showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissirch, is that the story in season three will be all about this newfound family—Cavill’s Geralt, Freya Allan’s Ciri, and Anya Chalotra’s Yennefer—realizing just how important they all are to each other. Specifically, the “theme” for season three (or at least “volume one” of season three, since Netflix’s gotta Netflix) will be “family is worth fighting for,” and while that seems like it should be obvious to most people, those three characters mentioned above haven’t historically been big on families.
Hissrich said that this season is “the culmination of what we’ve been building toward all along,” with Geralt, Ciri, and Yennefer choosing to be together rather than simply surrendering to destiny, with Geralt and Yen specifically evolving beyond just having some sort of vaguely defined relationship into becoming proper “soulmates” with an “inescapable” connection. Cavill adds that, with full-scale war finally arriving, it’s harder for his Geralt to keep putting on the too-cool-for-school attitude he always plays up, especially since everyone on every side of the war wants Ciri for one reason or another (the end of season two dropped a big reveal about this that the books dragged out for much, much longer) and it’s up to him to protect her.
Speaking of the books, the show has always kind of danced around the original Andrzej Sapkowski saga, only dipping into the literal text when it serves the stories it wants to tell (which is a shame, because a lot of stuff in the books is incredible!), but—at the risk of spoiling the show—the time that Geralt, Ciri, and Yennefer have together is… limited in the books, to the point where the driving force behind the plot is often Geralt’s basic need to get back together with Ciri and Yennefer.
If the show is hanging so much of season three on the idea that these three people want to be together and stay together, then they’re setting up fans for some tragic twists in the future or Netflix’s The Witcher will have to make some huge changes to what happens in the original books (which is saying something, because it has already made a lot of changes from the books). There’s also the matter of whether or not they’ll come up with a plot justification for why Geralt transforms from Henry Cavill to Liam Hemsworth, but that problem is still a ways off.
[Only read this if you’ve read the books: What happens to Ciri is obviously very grim and sad, but Geralt only assembles his fellowship after they’re separated, so we need that to happen. We’re going to be furious if we never get to see Geralt’s hilariously goofy D&D party fucking shit up onscreen! That’s what’s worth fighting for, Netflix! Forget “family.”]
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So it sounds like they are mainly doing The Time of Contempt this season.
The source material subverts predestination tropes — child of prophesy, chosen one, etc.. — so that’s not entirely surprising. Yennefer and Geralt are linked by fate to Ciri, and must decide what to do with Ciri, as she’s clearly a walking atomic bomb.Geralt and Yennefer decide Ceri isn’t intrinsically evil, and raise her to be prepared to make her own choices.That’s where I remember the last season ending.
Except that’s not really at all how the last season ended. Geralt never expressed any fear of Ciri being evil and at not point was it shown that he was considering ending her in anyway. Quite the opposite as the whole season was his arc to accept that he considered her a daughter.And the less said about the absolute trainwreck that was Yen’s storyline, the better, but even there I don’t think that’s a fitting description of her consideration. She just changed her mind midway through about sacrificing an innocent girl to get her own powers back.
I really hope they don’t go in the direction of the books, which get sad and frustrating as just increasingly awful shit happens to Ciri.
Whenever I’m reminded the third season of the Witcher is coming up soon, I keep having this same internal debate that if I am going to watch it or not. The reason for this is that when the second season ended, I was intrigued enough to looking forward to the third season, but as time progressed, the second season stood out more and more in my head due to all the really bad stuff in it.Reading this makes me even more hesitant as while the Geralt/Ciri stuff in the second season was stellar for me and I really want to see that story continue, knowing that now Yen is around ruining even their storylines within the show is a huge negative, for me again. Hell, at least in the game, using that as the comparison here, she somewhat interesting in how horrible she was, but in the show she’s just really boring and nothing that happens with her really matters in any kind of character sense.
By the way, for all the talk here about how the third season is about the great love story of Geralt and Yen, it’s really weird how bad the show has been with that aspect. Like I get that a large part of it is that they were a toxic relationship in the books, and they sure as hell continue to be that in the show, but we are never really given any other reason to root for their relationship except people on the show essentially shouting to the audience how epic their love is and how it is destined.Which makes it an even more bizarre a fit on a show where the central story with Ciri is how destiny shouldn’t bind us and how you can choose your own path.
That’s been my experience with the talk around their love in WIII:“Jesus. Yen is fucked in the head.”“BUT THEY HAVE TO BE TOGETHER! IT’S FATE!”“It’s bullshit.”“BUT IT’S EPIC ROMANCE.”“It’s abuse.” “THEY’RE BOUND TOGETHER.”“By magical bullshit. Anyway, even though she’s a ranga and has a Seppo accent, I’m sticking with Triss.”
Oh, Triss is such superior an option in Witcher 3 that is borderline hilarious.Although it was also funny as when I was playing the game, I kept thinking that Yen is horrible and the relationship was toxic, but maybe it was a situation where it worked if you had read the books. Then a bunch of people who had read the books assured me that Yen is horrible there as well and the relationship just as toxic.
It was kinda disturbing, because I realised that, holy shit, there were guys who thought Yen and Geralt was a healthy, and aspirational, relationship. The amount of Yen-stanning is worrying. (I haven’t read the books, either, BTW.)
Most of her interactions with Geralt are her just irritating him to see if she can get away with it, because it reassure her of the power she has over him. Sadly, the game doesn’t really give you many opportunities to disobey her.
Half her fuckery has nothing to do with their relationship, either, in WIII. That bit where she desecrates the Skelligers’ sacred oak with necromancy was all her, and nothing to do Geralt, save for the fact they she seemed more intent on it once she saw how much Geralt hated the idea. That was just Yen wanting to swing her clit around and bully people she considered inferior. It’s argued that she was simply willing to do anything to find Ciri, but it really just comes across as her using Ciri as an excuse to go Agent Orange on their sacred grove because she hates the idea of crude Skelliger women having their own magic. Yen is pretty terrible, even by sorceress standards.Meanwhile, Triss is running a full underground railroad, risking her life saving people from an honest-to-Jesus pogrom/inquisition that was torturing and killing people like her, and genuinely seems in love with Geralt.Hell, even Keira fucks him over, but at least does it out of desperation and understandable (albeit vain) reasons, and she can at least be talked down from it (or not, and have her deal with the consequences). You can sympathise with her. Anyway, you’re damn right I screenshotted one of the most satisfying bits in the game: