The Witcher Season 2 will feature a familiar monster from the game

11 comments

If you have played The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, you know that there is a particular type of monsters a lot of players (and most likely Henry Cavill too) felt really uneasy dealing with. We’re talking about the terrifying and powerful leshens (or leshys), of course. Andrzej Sapkowski’s books do mention leshys, but never show them in the story. That will change with Netflix’s The Witcher.

We’re hearing from our sources that a leshy will appear in an episode the new season and its encounter with one of the characters will have “serious consequences”. We can’t say who that character is, but the likeliest man to deal with monsters in this show is always Geralt.

That said, the new season will introduce several new witchers, so it’s also possible that one of them will be the one to fight the leshy.

What will the leshy look like in the show? It’s quite hard to predict, but given the overall show’s direction to stay away from the game design whenever possible, we can expect something different here as well. Still, leshys are ancient forest creatures, so one can’t stray too far from that concept.

In any case, it’s very exciting to hear about one of the most famous game monsters coming to life in Netflix’s The Witcher, regardless whether it was in the books or not. So let’s prepare our dimeritium bombs, the Igni and listen to the crows!


The Witcher Season 2 enters production this months and wraps in August for a 2021 release.

11 comments on “The Witcher Season 2 will feature a familiar monster from the game”

  1. Huh? The more I hear about season 2 the less likely it seems to be straightforward adaptation of Blood of Elves. They want short stories in second season, most likely Grain of Truth (probably modified to have Ciri in it, I would guess set before their arrival in Kaer Morhen I can see that working well and fixing mistake of first season of not giving Geralt and Ciri time together) which also contains a reference ambiguous one, but since the story’s essence is about a different monster altogether I can’t see that being connected.

    “‘The thing which killed them,’ continued Geralt, watching the forest’s edge, ‘was neither a werewolf nor a leshy. Neither would have left so much for the scavengers. If there were swamps here I’d say it was a kikimora or a vypper . . . but there aren’t any swamps here.'”

    “In the middle of the night he noticed the glow of a fire far away in the valley; he heard mad howling and singing and a sound which could only have been the screaming of a tortured woman. When dawn had barely broken he made his way there to find nothing but a trampled glade and charred bones in still-warm ashes. Something sitting in the crown of an enormous oak shrieked and hissed. It could have been a leshy, or an ordinary wildcat. The witcher didn’t stop to check.”

    (note: for some reason in some english translations instead of leshy someone put ‘harpy’ in it’s place, but in polish original it was leshy)

    In one section of the Voice of Reason Geralt talks about monsters he encountered:

    “‘I visited towns and fortresses. I looked for proclamations nailed to posts at the crossroads. I looked for the words “Witcher urgently needed”. And then there’d be a sacred site, a dungeon, necropolis or ruins, forest ravine or grotto hidden in the mountains, full of bones and stinking carcasses. Some creature which lived to kill, out of hunger, for pleasure, or invoked by some sick will. A manticore, wyvern, fogler, aeschna, ilyocoris, chimera, leshy, vampire, ghoul, graveir, were-wolf, giant scorpion, striga, black annis, kikimora, vypper … so many I’ve killed.”

    Blood of Elves has it’s own pacing and is structured and contained well, I hope that the additions whether it be more of Fringilla or Istredd, new original characters like this Violet or other things will not ruin the story as it should be from novels. We don’t need more plot tangling changes.

  2. lol, this is now just beyond ridiculous now. All their talks and emphasis on not being games and not adapting games and they do sh*t like this, haha. It would be best for everyone for them to acknowledge that they are not going by the books mainly.

    But this is the strangest thing ever. Their claims of not adapting games, but books and staying away from games, but then they go and wink at gamers here and there, make game Roach, give Geralt a look of game Geralt, but then suddenly they also go not with the books, but against the games. E.g. Nilffgardian armor. If you are adapting books, armor would and should look similar to the game armor. Characters, such as Triss is in game closer to books than the one in the show which claims to be from books. World, characters, themes, magic.. everything.

    It doesnt struck like adaptation of the books, but as going against the games at all cost, no matter what, even if that means going against the source material that they are “adapting”… just for then winking at gamers and going with some game stuff.

    I’m sorry, but what the heck is this? Either play it straight or keep consistent in the lies.

    but yeah, Lešij was mentioned in books, but IIRC it was just some mention, in the same way as cannibal baba yaga in a house on a crow’s leg (sorry, not sure what is the correct EN translation). But it was nothing that was put focus on. But, sure. It can be a part of flashhbacks of young Geralt or something, but do we need that, if we have barely any time for the book’s story?

    But maybe it’s for the best to deviate as much as possible, maybe it’ll end with people opening their eyes to this travesty.

    Although, yeah, this is gonna be some easy PR hype right there. Teaser, trailer, crows flying, Lešij and here we go. Hype train, best show evah!

    1. Well I’m already hyped just from your hype of the hype train 😀

      I believe there aren’t that many monster encounters in the Blood of Elves, so it makes sense to throw some in so as not to lose sight of what a “witcher” is. And regardless of what opinion people have of “fan service”, it is still a successful strategy to get an audience to relate to the new material, as long as its not over-bearing.

    2. In general Hissrich and her team seem bad at structuring the show, they put focus on things they shouldn’t, instead of fleshing out stuff that would be interesting for a visual adaptation, they completely erase it, world building references are changed left and right, characters are interpreted differently, even minor ones. How are they going to divide the content of the novels and still due to time constraints add their original stuff is anyone’s guess now. This doesn’t bode well, but we should have learned that after first season. But if she further screws things up this means she shouldn’t have been given the franchise in the first place.

  3. It seems that, after seeing all the reviews from the book fans, they continue to resort to the elements of the game, because the audience may care less about what happens on the show. As long as there are Geralt, Jaskier, monsters, hmm and fuck, they will be satisfied.

    It is already working, creating hype for this audience, and now we have people saying, “look at them adding game stuff to the program, haha proved you are wrong!” So this is great.

    I would lie if I didn’t say that I hope they ruin the CGI and it doesn’t look anything like Witcher 3 Leshens, because that will certainly irritate them. Please make it look like the Sylvan CGI from episode 2, I would love to see the chaos that would follow.

  4. Wow, surprising to see a lot of negativity about this really minor addition in the comments. It’s not like they’re turning the Leshy into a Regis-like character that follows the troupe around.
    The great thing about the show is being able to see physical representations of these cool monsters that we only get to see in off-hand mentions in the book.

    It’d be cool if the leshy was a flashback showing how Eskel got his horrible facial and head scars.

    1. Es wäre großartig, wenn diese Leute ihre Ankündigungen und Versprechen halten würden. Was erwarten Sie von solchen Erweiterungen, wenn sie nicht einmal die Vorlagen implementieren und nur Ausschuss produzieren können?

  5. The books get along almost without monsters. At least the novel series. Because Geralt is looking for Ciri, he is practically no longer a “Witcher”. This becomes clear when he seeks the help of the “Flamina” druid and meets the Elf Avallach. He is only hunting monsters during his stay in Touissant, where he rests because the passes are covered by snow. These people have no idea. They despise Netflix viewers. You deliver a pearl in a pile of droppings and the viewer is happy because he thinks he will get a treasure.

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