By Volume 1 of The Witcher‘s third season ended on a cliffhanger. Just when the power couple of Geralt (Henry Cavill) and Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) discovered the true identity of the rogue mage who has been conspiring to capture Ciri, the machinations of Philippa (Cassie Claire) and Dijkstra (Graham McTavish) will unravel the Brotherhood of Mages at Aretuza.
We won’t have to wait long to see what happens next, but in the meantime, we’re here to deliver some interesting details about the final episodes of Season 3, which will release on July 27.
SPOILER ALERT! This report contains spoilers for Volume 2 of The Witcher Season 3.
Yennefer will lead an early iteration of the Lodge of Sorceresses
The Lodge of Sorceresses is a team of the Continent’s most powerful female mages. In the books, the Lodge is founded and led by the sorceress Philippa Eilhart, portrayed in the series by Cassie Claire. Philippa creates team of powerful, political, and intelligent sorceresses who would together shape the future of the Continent.
At least initially, the show is excluding Philippa Eilhart from these matters. Instead, by the end of the third season it will be Yennefer who gathers Thanedd survivors and says it is up to them now to take matters into their own hands.
This is the beginning of The Lodge of Sorceresses in the show. We actually saw a still from the first meeting of the “proto-Lodge” in a video posted by IGN a few weeks ago, with Yennefer clearly in the center.
Curiously, the founding members of the Lodge include Yennefer, Triss Merigold (Anna Shaffer), Sabrina Glevissig (Therica Wilson-Read), Keira Metz (Safiyya Ingar), and Margarita Laux-Antille (Rochelle Rose) but not Philippa Eilhart.
In the meantime, Philippa will be busy with some political machinations in Redania, and the role of gathering and leading the sorceresses of the Lodge is given to Yennefer, at least initially.
This isn’t to say that Philippa will not be a member of the Lodge or even its leader in Season 4 and beyond. She most likely will be, but this is how Season 3 ends for Yennefer.
It’s possible that in Season 4, after some political struggle, Yennefer may leave the Lodge or may be outvoted on some matter, leaving the leadership to Philippa, but it’s anyone’s guess what her arc will be moving forward.
This change makes the journeys of our main trio very similar as Geralt, Ciri and Yennefer will each be with their own “gang” in Season 4. Geralt will have his Hansa, Ciri will be with the Rats and Yennefer will be with the Lodge.
Why will this change occur?
The Witcher fandom loves Andrzej Sapkowski’s novels, but there is one detail that some consider a missed opportunity in Sapkowski’s saga. To put it simply, the novels don’t feature Yennefer a whole lot after the Thanedd Coup, which is the event set to occur in Episode 6 of Volume 2.
Yennefer’s arc in the novels after the coup amounts to being turned into a statue and held captive by elven sorceress Francesca for about half of the three remaining books, and she spends the rest of this book as an unwilling participant of the Lodge of Sorceresses.
Next, Yennefer has a few chapters on the run from the Lodge in Skellige, as she searches for clues to find the rogue mage Vilgefortz. But this doesn’t last long, as Yennefer is quickly captured by Vilgefortz, and she spends the rest of the saga as his prisoner until the final two chapters of the last book, Lady of the Lake.
In short: Yennefer is mostly a captive, on the run or a prisoner, rather than an active player in the story.
In the show, however, Yennefer has been a much larger and more important character from the very beginning. The choice to make her an equal lead to Geralt and Ciri, who lead the story in the novels, is one that most fans of The Witcher are happy about. And, indeed, it would not make sense for Yennefer to step back from the forefront after Season 3, especially when the role of Geralt is recast.
On top of that, The Witcher already had Yennefer as a prisoner to Francesca and on the run in Season 2, so doing that again would be a repetition.
So, it should not come as a surprise that Yennefer’s arc is diverging from the novels after Season 3. How that arc will more forward, we’ll have to wait and see in Season 4 and 5.
The Witcher Season 3 is available on Netflix with The Rats prequel in post-production and The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep anime by Studio Mir is far in production. Stay tuned to Redanian Intelligence and do pop into our Discord server to join in on The Witcher conversation.
