By It’s been two weeks now that The Witcher team has borrowed some of the locations in the Epping Forest to film Season 3 of the Henry Cavill, Anya Chalotra and Freya Allan series. The last number of days in the forest were at the Strawberry Hill Pond.
Upon seeing the set and knowing about the night shoots at the Strawberry Hill Pond we immediately assumed it could be Belleteyn and we were right! After making some inquiries, we can tell that this location is indeed for Belleteyn and the night shoots there are at full swing. Unfortunately, it’s at night and security is tight, so we haven’t been able to get any photos yet.
As we reported exactly a month ago, in one of the first episodes of The Witcher Season 3, Geralt, Ciri and Yennefer will attend the Belleteyn festival, which will result in some character bonding and development. Aside from the main three, Jeremy Crawford was spotted in London last week, so we can assume that Yarpen Zigrin will be there as well. It’s possible there are more characters at Belleteyn besides these four.
Photos of the Belleteyn set in The Witcher Season 3
Producer Steve Gaub also says hi from the location:
The Witcher Season 3 is expected to film until August/September 2022 with a release date possibly in Spring 2023. Meanwhile, The Witcher prequel Blood Origin is currently in reshoots and expected to release in the second half of 2022. Stay tuned to Redanian Intelligence and do pop into our Discord server to join in on The Witcher conversation.
I’m very happy that we see the Belleteyn festival in the series. And Yarpen Zigrin is also welcome to be there. I love Jeremy Crawford as Yarpen 😀
I love Yarpen, I think they did him dirty last season cutting some of his best scenes from boe. Maybe the group, after leaving Kaer Morhen, is traveling with Yarpen’s caravan and they make a stop to attend belleteyn. Let’s hope that we get some bonding time for the family and a lot of screen time for them alone to establish their relationships.
I could very well imagine that after Geralt, Ciri and Yennefer leave Kaer Morhen they travel with Yarpen Zigrin and his group and that’s where the story with Shaerrawedd from BoE happens as well, but in the series probably without a sick Triss. This would also be a good opportunity for character bonding. In the course of this journey they will then come to Belleteyn. LSH said they want to add BoE stuff to Season 3, maybe it’s really the Shaerrawedd story. This would also give the opportunity to show the great scenes with Yarpen.
I wouldn’t be so optimistic expecting Shaerrawedd visit and story. It’s too beautiful and a quiet moment for Lauren. But yes, if Yarpen is in the festival as well it makes sense they were traveling with him.
If Lauren took anything from the reactions to s2 is that her main protagonists need time together and quiet moments to built their relationships naturally and realistically. We sort of had that with Geralt and Ciri in s2 and that was the highlight of the season. But I’m scared that we’re gonna get excited and again she’ll find a way to screw this. Idk why she afraid to give the three protagonists their relationships from the books. Geralt and Ciri are father and daughter independently from destiny. Geralt and Yennefer are soul mates (no wish drama and all) but they need something more. Yennefer and Ciri are becoming mother and daughter. The three together heal their wounds and become a true family that would die for e/o and only for e/o. How can Lauren keep screwing the most important part of the books and instead giving importance to monoliths, elven pregnancy, voleth meir and I don’t know what other nonsense she did in s2?
Call me egotistical but I just want the family alone, no other characters to interfere with their bonding, at least at first until they built their relationships. I don’t mind Yarpen and and it would make sense being there but I don’t want the bard to be incerted in their every scene. His presence in the final episode last season doing nothing was bad enough.
🙌
Hopefully we’ll spend time with the main Witcher family. I don’t know if they can turn around what happened last year and fans have lost faith in the writers but if they want more seasons, s3 will be the testing point so they better do it right and give the fans what they’ve been waiting (and were cheated) for so long.
If Lauren screws the family time by incerting other characters into their dynamics she will be even more idiot than I thought. I don’t mean Yarpen, we were robbed from his book scenes last season and his presence on the festival will be most welcome. Maybe he can have those conversations with Ciri they cut from BoE and give the opportunity to Geralt and Yen to spend some time alone. But we don’t need every side character to attend Belleteyn.
I’m calling it now, she’ll ruin belleteyn by incerting unnecessary characters and drama instead of some quiet moments for the trio. Fire Lauren.
I’m afraid you are right. This woman can’t do anything right. She had the perfect material from the books for s2 and she writes about monoliths, elven pregnancy, voleth meir and Yennefer betraying the two people she would never. Who in their right mind turns Blood of Elves into that? I hope Henry’s more involved in the story this season – since he was so unhappy with the decisions made in s2 – and Lauren’s role is reduced or else s3 will be another disaster. I refuse to get my hopes up for now but I hope the belleteyn scene turns out nice and doesn’t involve unnecessary characters that would undermine the purpose of the scene. I’m sure the scene was a fans’ suggestion (maybe fans can map the seasons) or Henry proposed it.
I hope this works. The show needs to establish the true love and the family bond between Geralt, Yennefer and Ciri. For the rest of the story to work the audience must see these three bonding and believe that they would sacrifice everything for each other. That love is the driving force for everything that follows. For Yennefer to endure all this pain in the later novels, for Geralt to start a campaign to save Ciri and for Ciri to survive the horrors she’ll go through and don’t turn evil. Them are the story. The rest is the setting. That’s very important and what sets the Witcher apart from other fantasy series.
If this season isn’t 70% Geralt, Yennefer and Ciri and their relationships – making up for s2 – and 30% the coup, then Netflix can cancel it and Henry can quit. The show will be dead anyway.
If this season isn’t 70% Geralt, Yennefer and Ciri and their relationships – making up for s2 – and 30% the coup, then Netflix can cancel it and Henry can quit. The show will be dead anyway.
Presenting Belleteyn in S3 is very much out of temporal and story line order compared to the books. I wonder how that would fit into the show story at this point. But then, many things had to fit into the show script up until now, even quite a lot which is not in the books or outright against the book lore so that Belleteyn appearing at the wrong time is probably a very minor problem.