By The Witcher Season 3, Volume 2 is set for release on July 27 and will conclude Henry Cavill’s Witcher journey, along with several other cast members. The three remaining episodes of the season will tackle some of the most exciting events in the novels, including the mage massacre of the Thanedd Coup and Ciri’s adventure in the desert.
With less than ten days left until we can see this explosive finale on the small screen, we will revisit the Volume 2 trailer and gather every frame of it with an educated guess based on all we know. Some additional frames were taken from the Volume 2 teaser, a clip released in a Netflix article, and another released by IGN.
This is a good opportunity to rewatch the trailer and teaser, linked below:
RELATED ARTICLE: Everything We Know About The Witcher’s Biggest Episode Ever
We will be breaking down this frame-by-frame analysis of the teasers and trailer into three parts. The first and longest article was released a few days ago, and it was focused on Episode 6 of Season 3. That episode will be the opening act of Volume 2 and perhaps the show’s most action-packed episode to date. In case you haven’t seen it, the article is linked above.
This article will cover the evens of Episode 7 of Season 3, the middle act of Volume 2. This episode will focus almost entirely on Princess Ciri, with star Freya Allan front and center, the show’s first big push as Ciri becomes the central character of the story. In this episode, Ciri will find herself lost in a desert, where she will undergo an intense and emotional journey which will include visions, a monster, a unicorn, and more. Because there is less footage of this episode, we will add some extra details from what we’ve learned during filming and what we’ve heard from our sources.
SPOILER WARNING! This will contain full spoilers for Volume 1 of Season 3 as well as some significant spoilers and hints for the plot of Volume 2.
Ciri lands in the Korath Desert
The last time we see Ciri in Episode 6, she’s running into a portal in Tor Lara, while Mahesh Jadu‘s rogue mage Vilgefortz is chasing after her. She manages to escape him by opening this portal, and this creates an explosion that destroys Tor Lara and leaves its mark on Vilgefortz’s face.
In the trailer, we can see Ciri exiting the portal in the middle of the rolling dunes of the Korath Desert, which will serve as the location for the rest of this Ciri-focused episode.
The Korath Desert, also called the Frying Pan, is an arid wasteland with no food or water, only rolling dunes of sand stretching to the horizon in every direction. Ciri is stranded there, all alone, after an exhausting escape from Thanedd. Now she must make use of every single lesson Geralt and Yennefer have taught her to survive, but even that may not suffice.
The blazing-hot sun will leave a dehydrated Ciri, wandering alone for days through this strange environment, in a rather delirious state. And this state will amplify Ciri’s visions, which have already been a recurring plot point in Volume 1 of Season 3.
In a series of visions, Ciri will reconnect with her ancestors
Ciri will have a character-building journey in the desert, in which she will reconnect with her past, and claim her future. She will be seeing visions, hearing voices, and even having full conversations with her ancestors, some of whom we’ve met before, others that we will meet for the first time.
All of these are magically induced hallucinations, perhaps empowered by Ciri’s mental state as well as her growing dehydration. Here’s a list of the people Ciri will meet in these visions.
Princess Pavetta of Cintra, Ciri’s Mother
Princess Pavetta (Gaia Mondadori) first appeared in the Season 1 episode “Of Banquets, Bastards, and Burials”, the fourth episode of the show. Here she was introduced during Geralt’s timeline, set some fourteen years before the Fall of Cintra in the show’s pilot episode. In this episode, Pavetta marries her lover Duny (Bart Edwards).
Pavetta and Duny live their lives peacefully in Cintra and give birth to their daughter, Ciri. But during a stormy voyage at sea, they both disappear and are assumed dead, making Ciri an orphan. We know that this isn’t the full truth, as Duny is later revealed to be the Nilfgaardian Emperor Emhyr and is very much alive, unlike Pavetta.
Ciri’s relationship with her mother has been explored briefly in the finale of Season 2, in which the demon Voleth Meir places Ciri in a dream world while possessing and controlling her body. Ciri has been shown to have a longing for her parents, and specifically her mother, and we will see more of that in Ciri’s visions in the desert.
Queen Calanthe of Cintra, Ciri’s Grandmother
Queen Calanthe (Jodhi May) is the legendary queen of Cintra, a lover, a fighter, and a racist. Calanthe has been portrayed with an entertaining and complex characterization, albeit quite different from the source material.
For Ciri, Calanthe is not only a grandmother but also, a close parental figure. Their relationship became especially close when Pavetta, Calanthe’s daughter and Ciri’s mother, died in a stormy voyage at sea. Ciri admires and loves her grandmother, wanting to be a great warrior and leader when her time comes to inherit the Cintran throne.
In the show’s first episode, the armies of Nilfgaard sack and destroy the city of Cintra, initiating a campaign to conquer the Northern Kingdoms and capture Ciri, who they believe is key to fulfilling a prophecy. Calanthe is wounded in battle, and prefers to kill herself than become a Nilfgaardian captive. This is an incredibly traumatic event for Ciri.
Following the Fall of Cintra, Ciri discovers some disturbing things about her grandmother. The elf Dara (Wilson Mbomio) revealed to Ciri that Calanthe was intent on purging the elves from her kingdom of Cintra. This news doesn’t quite sit well with Ciri, and she has a bone to pick with her grandmother about it. Perhaps this will be addressed during Ciri’s vision with Calanthe.
Bloody Falka, Legendary Witcher Figure
Last but not least, Falka (Hiftu Quasem). Falka has been teased and discussed in the show, and her impact on the history of the Continent is huge. She is the vicious leader of Falka’s Rebellion, a war which cost thousands their lives about 100 years before the show begins.
Falka is the daughter of King Vridank of Redania and his first wife, the half-elf Beatrix of Kovir. When King Vridank meets Cerro, he falls in love with her and casts away Beatrix and their daughter Falka. As she grows up, the young Falka develops a deep hatred for King Vridank and plots to overthrow him and become the queen of Redania, which she believes is her right as the firstborn legitimate heir to the throne.
Two dozen years later, Falka’s plan comes to fruition as she leads a bloody rebellion and successfully kills King Vridank, Queen Cerro, and her two half-brothers. Around the same time, Falka gave birth to a daughter, and she gave this daughter to Riannon, who herself gave birth to twins, a son and a daughter. These three babies are known as the Houtborg Triplets, and there is some mystery as to which of those two girls was Falka’s child and which was Riannon’s.
Eventually, Falka’s rebels are defeated, and Falka herself is burnt at the stake, but her legacy remains. One of the Houtborg Triplets, Fiona, is an ancestor to the Cintran line, meaning that there is a possible familial connection between Ciri and Falka.
While Ciri’s relation to Falka isn’t rock solid in the books, the show chose to be quite clear about it in Ciri’s entry on their official website: “[Ciri] is the key to the destruction of the old world and the birth of the new, the descendant of Lara Dorren and Falka: fierce, remarkable women who were swallowed up by the men afraid of their power. Women whom Ciri is destined to avenge.“
Ciri will meet Falka during her desert visions, where Falka will act as an agent of Chaos, pulling Ciri to “the dark side”. This serves as an important setup for Ciri’s arc in Season 4, where she will join the Rats.
Introducing Ihuarraquax, the Unicorn
Ciri’s desert journey will be one of lonely introspection, but she will not be alone the entire time. Eventually, she will come across a very good boy with a very complicated name, the unicorn Ihuarraquax.
Like in the books, Ciri will come across this unicorn in the desert, and they will travel together for a time.
In the books, Ciri and Ihuarraquax form a close friendship and actually depend on each other. Together, they are able to find food and water, a rare resource in the Korath Desert without which neither would survive.
Incoming unicron lore drop! In the books, unicorns are magical beings with powers similar to Ciri’s Elder Blood. These powers allow the unicorns to freely travel through space and time, including traveling between different Spheres (yes, this is The Witcher‘s version of the Multiverse).
In the books, the unicorns are the sworn enemies of the Aen Elle elves and their warriors, the Wild Hunt. That being said, in the show the Aen Elle don’t seem to exist, unless the prequel show Blood Origin will be retconned or backtracked in future seasons, and this means that the unicorns’ lore and relationship with the Wild Hunt could also be changed in the show.
The Sand Monster
Besides the scorching sun and the lack of food and water, there are other dangers lingering in the Korath Desert. We see one of these dangers in the trailer and teaser: the Sand Monster.
This monster catches Ciri off-guard, closing its toothy jaws around her, and Ciri barely manages to leap out of the way. A fight ensures in which a dehydrated, weakened Ciri must make use of her witcher and sorceress training.
If the show is to follow the books closely here, and we hear that it will, Ciri will kill the sand monster but not before the unicorn Ihuarraquax is wounded. Ciri will see that the sand monster poisoned the unicorn, and the unicorn is dying.
In a desperate attempt to save the unicorn, Ciri will do that which Yennefer has warned her not to do: use fire magic. With this magic, Ciri hopes to burn away the poison and heal the unicorn’s wound.
In this scene, Ciri will confront Falka, who will convince Ciri to use this powerful and dangerous Chaos magic. Ciri will feel the fire magic’s corruption, and in one powerful magical swing, Ciri will forfeit her magical abilities once and for all.
Trapped by the Trappers
In the books, the fire magic causes Ciri to lose consciousness. When she wakes up, the unicorn is gone, and Ciri sees a group of riders coming towards her. This is a group of mercenaries called The Trappers, and they are led by Skomlik (Nicholas Karimi).
The Trappers and Skomlik will appear in the show as well, and like in the books they will capture Ciri, realizing that they can deliver her to the Emperor Emhyr of Nilfgaard and claim a massive bounty.
And so, at the end of Episode 7, viewers will be led to believe that Ciri is on her way to meet the Emperor, who unbeknownst to her, is her father.
Season 3’s final episodes will drop on July 27. In the meantime, stay tuned for our third and final article analyzing the trailer and teaser footage. The next one will cover the season finale, which happens to be Henry Cavill’s final episode as Geralt of Rivia.
