By The second season of Netflix’s hit series The Witcher was released on December 17, but the work on Season 3 has been long underway and Redanian Intelligence doesn’t sleep and always looks into the future of Henry Cavill‘s a co.’s next adventures.
Thanks to the Season 2 press junkets, the cast and crew of The Witcher have teased a little bit about the next season. Here’s what they had to say:
As you, our readers already know, the scripts have been in development for months now and showrunner Lauren Hissrich gives an update on that in an interview with TechRadar: “This is our last week [December 3] in the writers’ room. We’re almost done with the scripting phase, and it’s amazing.”
She continues: “The creative process is now really just starting. We have the scripts, and now we’ll bring directors on, the actors back in, and really start delving in deeper and reflecting back and making sure that it’s the perfect season.”
As to what Season 3 will cover, Lauren did confirm the book which the next season will be based on: “I’m really thrilled with how the season is shaping up because it’s based on my favorite book in the saga, which is The Time of Contempt.”
Lauren continues: “I feel like seasons 1 and 2 have been laying the playing field for everything huge that’s about to happen.”
And the “huge that’s about to happen” is without a single doubt the Thanedd coup, arguably the most important and big event of the first half of the saga.
In the series, we can absolutely imagine a massive double-episode Season 3 finale that will be featuring the vast majority of the cast in the biggest, most intense , most complex and most expensive sequence that will be the culmination of the first three seasons of The Witcher.
Needless to say, we cannot wait to start digging into all the news and tidbits that we’ll be uncovering when production starts as well as before it starts.
During the press junkets, Lauren wasn’t the only one teasing Season 3, though. Joey Batey and Freya Allan also gave a few bits and pieces speaking to Radio Times:
Freya Allan told she already saw some scripts and believed filming wouldn’t be too long away: “I might have actually seen some scripts. Just putting it out there. I don’t know exactly [when it’ll be], but it will be not too long away. I think it’s going to be a great season.”
Batey, on the other hand, told he hasn’t seen any scripts and keeps his expectations regarding the schedule lower considering the world is still in the middle of a pandemic:
“I have not seen the scripts, and lord knows when we’re going to be filming. Because, as you can probably tell over the last couple of days alone, the world is changing pretty quickly. We’re hopefully shooting in the new year.”
Batey also praised showrunner Lauren Hissrich on her approach to including the cast into the conversations about where things go story-wise:
“She’s so open to collaboration that it means that we’re able to come with ideas and offerings, and that’s one of the most enjoyable parts of working with her. She is egoless, and is so able to go, ‘That’s a really good idea,’ or ‘That’s a terrible idea, Joey.’ And there aren’t any wrong answers.”
Season 3 of The Witcher starts production in the first half of 2022 with Blood Origin arriving to Netflix sometime in mid-2022. Follow Redanian Intelligence for more news!
Henry said today that he’s having three weeks off.
A Time of Contempt gives us so much meat, if you can’t make epic TV out of that, you might want to check your pulse.
We get:
– a suicide
– the loss of an eye
– nonconsensual shrinkage
– a truly savage beating
– a truly awful teleportation destination
– Keira Metz
– and so much more!
They are clearly aiming for a Red Wedding kind of shock. I just hope they won’t copy too much GoT in the future cause it’s clearly going in that direction.
On the other hand, I feel they are doing much character development to those characters that are participating in Thanned, which is great.
The fourth season would be about Cahir, Milva etc, sixth about Regis, seventh the grand finale. Seems reasonable.
How do you figure that Regis gets a season to himself? Fourth season will likely about the Cahir, Milva, Zoltan, Geraldt and Jaskier travelling together to find Ciri, whilst Ciri recovers from her wounds. Or at least, it would have been but after what they did with Cahir in Season 1, I’m no longer sure he’s going to swap sides. I guess we’ll have a clearer idea as to his character arc in a day or two.
Whoops. Include Regis in that adventuring band for season 4.
It makes sense for Regis to join later since he actually joins later, just like Angouleme. However, Netflix likes making changes, so we can’t really predict anything.
Fourth season will end with Geralt passed on to the Knights of Rivia.
Regis for season five.
I’d say the Thanedd coup will be in the first third to half of Season 3.
Season 2 ending, fairly obviously, with Ciri, Geraldt and Yennefer reuniting after fighting the Wild Hunt – since we know that that scene has been filmed on a beach and that Joey Batey said that the finale will be “epic”. There’s simply no scene grand enough in Blood of Elves to provide that, so it has to be the scene from early on in The Tower of the Swallow.
I’d say that Season 3 will end with the execution of the Rats and the apparent death of Ciri from a head wound.
Whoops. Time of Contempt, not Tower of the Swallow. 😉
I pictured they would be doing the Thanedd coup as the finale for season 3. There is so much epic stuff happening there and would make for a great cliff hanger with the tower collapsing. If they try to push way past that, I feel like that would be rushing and most likely skipping so many great story plots.
I think the problem with that is that there’s nothing else but the Thanedd banquet and coup to do in Season 3. That’s assuming that they end Season 2 with the Wild Hunt which appears in Time of Contempt after Ciri escapes from Gors Velen.
Would they really fill an entire season with intrigue at the banquet?
They must introduce all the kingdoms and, most importantly, correct the relationship between Ciri and Yennefer, it is job for four episodes at least.
After watching season 2, I take back all of my previous predictions. At this point, season 3 might as well include lizard aliens from outer space and a rap concert. HBO Game of Thrones last season has been toppled as the biggest pile of bastardized horse shit that has ever been made out of great original material. Seriously, Netflix and Lauren Hirsch watched that shit and said, here hold my beer.
I watched Season 1 completely unaware of this franchise. It was hard to get into it but towards the end I enjoyed it and then started reading the books. I liked the fact that the show wasn’t a complete copy of the material. I’m still reading through the books (1 more to go) and I am REALLY REALLY enjoying them. I was so looking forward to this season. I was looking forward to seeing some one else’s vision of the story portrayed on my TV. I was looking forward to some deviation to make things more interesting because knowing everything that is coming would be a bit boring. But as of right now, I have absolutely zero interest in anything else Netflix does with the franchise. That was a complete bottom of the barrel mockery of so much that is so good about the story, the characters, and how it all works together. This season wasn’t just a disappointment, it was a slap in the face with a shit covered glove.
Can just Share your opinion. I‘m totally disappointed. So much shit, total different story, just the Names are from the book. I hope they cancel the Series. It‘s really a nightmare.
Just the Nivellen Story ist ok.
Cannot find other words at the Moment…
Time of contempt is one of the best books so they better do it justice and leave the original stories out from this one, it has enough material as it is. The highlights of s2 for me were Geralt and Ciri as father and daughter and Yen in the end when the three are almost a family. When you stick to the spirit of the original books you have great things. I liked the concept of deathless mother but it went to far (and it was explained very well), I couldn’t care about cahir and his escape (couldn’t he be given to Nilfgaard as a peace treaty? what was the whole point of his escape arc?), also the elves could be used better, the mages are idiots as always (with few exceptions of course), I didn’t understand what Tissaia was doing in the end. Was she playing the monarchs for info or she was betraying Ciri. That’s not Tissaia. Maybe i need a re-watch at some point soon. I also like jaskier, although I prefer his part from the books (but that can still happen in s3 with the conversation between Dijkstra and Philippa), (also his ex, countess de stael wasnt supposed to be in it?). Last but not least I hated vesemir’s plan, thank God he didn’t go through with it.
Gravemaster, Thank you for the great information. I really love this article. Would you please give write this types of article for us(witcher fans)?
The storyline deformations of season 2 are outright offensive towards fans of the books and games. The only perspective for a reasonable implementation of season 3 is to exchange the complete writing team. The second best option is to scrap the show completely and restart it some years later with a team that really has intentions to adapt the book material and not write their own stories which have nothing in common with the books.
Season 2 is a wolf’s nightmare. It is terrible. Production quality and some glimpses of fair acting aside, nothing is really good. Story is messed up, even scenes from the books that are well written and almost effortlessly translate into the movie form have been changed beyond recognition. The only reasonably good scene after episode 2 was the dream in which Triss joins Ciri and they encounter the dying Lara Dorren. But this has also been messed up because the background of Triss’ being the “14th of the Hill” had been changed at the beginning of the season. In the books, that reference in the dream is what frightens Triss so much. Makes you wonder, once again, if the writers have actually read the books. The pacing is never right. The scene changes are too rapid, no longer or deeper dialogue is carried through. Geralt’s fight against the Michelet brothers is completely pointless since said brothers haven’t been built up as veritable foes. So the fight begins and immediately is over. Well, it doesn’t matter, in the books the fight takes place under completely different circumstances with a completely different outcome that has consequences for later developments of the plot in the books. But just to say, even if one is ignorant about the books, there are some basic patterns how to built up drama and suspense in a movie. Even that is out of the window. And good dialogue is generally not considered to be actors perpetually exclaiming 4-letter words.
The more interviews I see the more scared I am. How anyone thought that Yen’s storyline is OK? The heartbreaking thing is that even with the Voleth Meir story added they could do Yen right with so many ways but they chose the most cliche, Hollywood bs. And why not give us screen time with the family? Idk, I believe Lauren and Co are really incompetent. They read the books and they are OK the books have this beautiful mother daughter relationship so let’s go with a betrayal, some unlikely alliances for fun and a monster mess fight. Yay! Smh. I hope someone capable takes over soon.
The most perplexing thing I have seen recently is that there are online commentators framing others who complain about the massive deviations from the books as trolls, and as people who are creating a toxic atmosphere. That is concerning. I mean, certainly books readers take a different approach towards the TV series than people who don’t know the books, and have certain expectations about the way the story is presented and how the protagonists behave and all that. If these expectations are ignored or even turned into the opposite, I would find it most natural that people complain. I do, for my part.
We know already that announcements by LSH that her production will be “based on” or “true to” the books are worth as much as a Bruxa’s promise that she will protect any warm-blooded human. Books readers and a significant part of players of TW3 game are, to the most part, based in Europe. But as far as I can tell, LSH is mostly eyeing commercial success and recognition in the US. There she is on save ground with deviations from the source material since most of the professional critics in the US don’t know the books or the computer games. It seems that the most central points for critics in the US at the present time are: Ample representation of PoC in the cast, wokeness and gender issues, relation of the narrative to present day political themes in the US, an easily understandable storyline, action, pacing and production quality. Dialogue seems already to be of secondary importance for critical assessment in the US (very few critics have raised the issue that the dialogue is very week in S2, possibly the weakest among similar shows presently on the market). In other words, the fact that the Witcher source material has been created and became popular in Europe and reflects several historical and folklore themes from this part of the world – there aren’t too many counterparts to the European medieval epoch – is of no importance to LSH since she is serving an audience (commercial as well as critical) that doesn’t regard that as important. (With GoT this was slightly different since the main producers were knowledgeable about medieval Europe.) There is, basically, a cultural clash in the reception of the series dividing the (mainly European) bookreaders and gameplayers from the (apparently, mostly US American) “fresh” audience. The former do certainly not appreciate how the series gets practically re-invented for the reception in the US at the cost of ignoring large parts of the book material, while the latter may even like the changes because they have been made with that part of the audience in mind. One may remember that LSH has repeatedly mentioned that the way she adapts the source material is meant to better serve the global market. In fact, that was how she had argued that some particular casting choices make perfect sense. Yet it may seem to some that her “global” means global except for viewership outside of the US: