By Netflix’s newest fantasy series The Witcher, starring Henry Cavill, has quickly become one of the streaming giant’s most popular shows. As you probably know, the series is based on an existing and rather successful franchise. Though The Witcher is known for an acclaimed trilogy of video games, those games were actually based on a series of novels written by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. The series (spanning two short story collections, five novels and a prequel) have been written for decades and, unlike Game of Thrones, they have a natural conclusion.
In a new interview held by Steve Varley which is available on YouTube, The Witcher‘s showrunner Lauren S. Hissrich was asked about the show’s conclusion. In light of the negative response for the final season of Game of Thrones, do you ever worry about screwing up the show’s conclusion? Do you have a long game plan? This was her response.
“You know, of course [these thoughts] come to your head because we all constantly, as writers, you are [in your brain] so often anyway and you’re always thinking ‘Oh God, what if I mess something up’. The truth is, though, that our plan is pretty solid. Not that that means that we know everything that we’re going to do over the next two, or three, or seven, or twenty years.
“What I mean is that we have the books. I don’t feel the need to go beyond the existing books. They are great source material, Andrzej Sapkowski has written all of them, there is a natural ending to them and I feel like as long as we stick that landing, which is the ending of the books, then we’ll be good.”
Sapkowski’s saga concludes with the novel Lady of the Lake, and the ending is both spectacular, emotional, and ambiguous. Fans of the books should be relieved to hear that Hissrich and her team intend to do it justice.
If you’ve finished the show’s first season and don’t think you can wait for season two (which is slated to drop sometime in 2021), make sure to run to your nearest bookstore and grab The Last Wish (the series first novel). But make sure to do it quickly, as the books are selling out worldwide.
RELATED ARTICLE: RI interviews The Witcher’s Lauren Hissrich: ‘Ciri really takes center stage in Season 2’
Games are much more faithful to books than the show. The world is much more colorful, the characters look like the books. The witches
look hot as they should, Nilfgaard is not a religion fanatic, the developers just wanted to make a cool story set in a
world they loved and nothing more. They got it right.
The games essentially ruin the perfect ending of the novels. The Witcher 2 will always be my favorite experience ever playing a game, but tmi just consider them fan fiction.
The Witcher games invented new stories but remained true to the essence of the books. Netflix Series Catches Stories Directly
of the books and turns them into something fake.
The sad thing is that Sapkowski always mocked games as an inferior medium, although in spirit they were a thousand times more faithful to his
Books
I’m a fan of The Witcher because of the way Sapkowski wrote and because of the depth of the characters.
When I learned that the series was being adapted for television, I expected to see Sapkowski’s stories brought to life. What we got was a
product made by someone who wanted to create their own masterpiece and in the process lost everything that made the stories special.
Not only that, but Hissrich destroyed all the fundamental work being built for later events in the books. Yennefer, no
Vilgefortz is the hero of Sodden, which denies Vilgefortz’s influence on the Sisterhood. Tissaia is dead. Phillipa Eilhart does not exist,
so where does the sorceress sorority come from?
Cahir is a hopeless villain, so how does he join Hansa? Fringilla is here, which makes no sense, and apparently is the master of
puppets of the Nilfgaardian Empire.
Add to that the fing magic system: wizards apparently die after throwing a single fireball. Yennefer despises Aretuza,
so why would she take Ciri there? Add to that Triss, the brave hero of Sodden; why would she need the bow of redemption where
finally overcomes your fear and stands in Rivia, the highlight of your character’s development? Yennefer believes her attraction to
Geralt is due to desire – so he apparently forced it – and magic isn’t real according to her either. And how could Geralt have an affair?
with the woman directly responsible for the death of Ciri’s family (Fringilla)?
Often they don’t care, otherwise they wouldn’t have produced this one-dimensional show with all the flaws + much more. It is a pity,
They had the opportunity to create a work of art, as were books and games. But for that, you need a writer who really
understand the story and the importance of the characters. In the end, Netflix doesn’t care about anything but the money. They know Witcher has
huge fanbase and get their viewership numbers no matter what kind of mediocrity they produce.
It became clear to me shortly before the start of series production that this is a single self-realization. When I read that Henry Carvill had to explain the sorcerer world to the screenwriter, it was clear. And when I read their explanations about the Empire of Nilfgard . She has no idea about the world she is writing about. I feel sorry for the people who watch the series and then read the books. When reading the books, they always have the wrong pictures in their heads.
I know I am going to offend the book lovers out there, I feel as tho after only one season I have simply become too emotionally invested in this series. Having never played the games or the books, I dont really have any loyalty to any one of the other, however, I do know how the books end and I think it is simply soul crushing. I dont care per say if Garelt and Yen die, but Ciri just bouncing to a new dimension is just… I just feel like as Villentretenmerth said, I am going to save myself alot of pain later with a little pain now and just move on to a different show.