The Witcher season 3: Cast, release, and plot details we already know

Two long years later The WitcherSeason 2 has finally arrived. This means that we are already in stage 2 of the Witcher Release Cycle. We eagerly await! The WitcherSeason 3.

[Ed. note: As you might’ve assumed for a discussion of what season 3 might offer, this post spoils the end of The Witcher season 2. Read on at your own risk.]

The new season ends on more than a few serious cliffhangers, with familial connections finally made between Geralt (Henry Cavill), Yen (Anya Charlota), and Ciri (Freya Allan), and the three of them working together to get Ciri’s powers under control. Given the number of people who seek to control or kill her — including, but not limited to, the elves, Nilfgaard’s White Flame, and the council of mages — season 3 leaves them with a lot of ground to cover, and certainly can’t get here fast enough.

Netflix is already approved. The Witcher for a third season (as well as a few spinoffs, including 2022’s Blood Origin of The Witcher, starring Michelle Yeoh). While there’s no release date for the show yet, the franchise so far has favored December releases, so we may only get it in December 2022. But showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich has said the writers’ room finished scripting the third season in December 2021, with no word yet on when principal photography would begin.

Schmidt Hissrich confirmed that a few elements will remain in season 3. Season 3 will be heavily based upon her favourite book, The Witcher Saga. Time of Contempt. Here’s everything else we know about what The Witcher Season 3 will feature:

Geralt and Yen will be … co-parenting?

Photo: Susie Allnut/Netflix

After kidnapping and returning Ciri, Yennefer does her best to aid the fight and redeem herself in Geralt’s eyes. Geralt doesn’t go as far as to forgive her for nearly killing herself to save Ciri from Voleth Meir, but he does acknowledge that Yen seems to be the only one who can help raise Ciri.

“It’s a fairly extreme set of circumstances to come back from,” Cavill told Netflix’s Geeked channel after the premiere, “it’s a tough one to forgive, it’s going to take some real work.” But it’s something the pair will certainly have to work on in season 3; as Geralt himself notes, Ciri might be the missing element from his and Yen’s relationship. “The true development of Geralt this season,” Cavill said, “is him being able to recognize that he can’t do this himself.”

Yen is likely to have many new lessons, as her life with Geralt and Ciri are far from her normal machinations. “It’s habitual, isn’t it: she’s cowled, and she’s lived the kind of life she’s lived with all the rules she lives by, and that’s Yen and she don’t trust nobody,” Chalotra told Netflix of her character’s next steps. “She might’ve learned to consider things more […] and it’s going to be really hard to just delve into a new way of being.”

No doubt everyone’s favorite bard Jaskier (Joey Batey) will be involved at some point, although we can’t say how exactly yet. But as Batey notes of his character, “I think we have to assume he’s going to be fairly constantly in trouble — no matter what, no matter who he’s hanging out with.

In both Blood Origin 3 and Blood Origin 3, elves are everywhere

Photo: Susie Allnut/Netflix

The second season is not based upon the original. Blood of Elves book from Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher books, showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich notes that the season’s concentration on elves was actually a departure from the template of the book.

“I know that in season 3 we’re introducing the Scoia’tael, the army of elves that’s fighting on behalf of Nilfgaard. And they don’t come off so great; it’s a pretty harsh, dark storyline,” Schmidt Hissrich told Polygon earlier this month. “So I want to make sure that we understood and humanized their part of the battle … even if they lose their way along the way.”

For the new Netflix spinoff, 2022, the elven plotting will also be key. Blood Origin: The Witcher. Schmidt Hissrich says Istredd was “really helpful to put a voice to the things we needed our audience to understand” in season 2, and that his and Geralt’s conversation about monoliths — and how there’s “more to the Conjunction of the Spheres” than we once thought — will “all be laid into Blood Origin.”

Wild Hunt is coming

Image courtesy of Netflix

The book series did not include this information, but it was included. Time of ContemptThe Wild Hunt begins to form in season 2. They ride towards Ciri, and claim she is theirs.

Schmidt Hissrich acknowledges they’ve been laying the groundwork for the Wraiths of Mörhogg to finally appear, building them from mere “ghosts in the sky” that only some believe in to spectral villains.

“When they [The Wild Hunt] tease that Ciri belongs to them, what we’re hopefully going to lead viewers to believe is there’s a lot more history of Ciri herself,” Schmidt Hissrich says. “Her lineage, her bloodline, things we know now that Calanthe has hid from her, perhaps some connections to Lara Dorren that we have teased this season as well. So all of that is going to come out in the wash next season.”

The big reveal about Nilfgaard’s White Flame

Image courtesy of Netflix

In the final moments of season 2 we see that Ehmyr, the White Flame of Nilfgaard, is better known to viewers as Duny, Ciri’s long-lost (and presumed dead) father. It’s a reveal that Schmidt Hissrich says the writers room was split on, but ultimately the decision to divulge his dual identities was “more logistical than anything else.”

“I don’t think [Nilfgaard thinks] of themselves as evil; they think they’re doing the Right thing,” Schmidt Hissrich told Netlfix Geeked. “We really wanted to start to understand the Nilfgaardian empire and there’s no way to understand it without digging into Ehmyr a little more.”

Plus, as Batey put it on Netflix’s Geeked channel: “That gets revealed in the books rightThe end. And there’s no way we could’ve kept that secret for longer than two seasons.”

Introducing the character’s full backstory now means important players get a chance to respond to it, unlike in the books. That may leave new narrative opportunities for Ehmyr’s motives, and revelations about what he’s been up to in between leaving Cintra and ruling Nilfgaard. “​​Pavetta died, Duny did not,” Schmidt Hissrich notes, “and Duny had to start to form a new plan, with a new partner.” More on that in season 3.