The main cast of timeline to unravel in The Witcher.
This chopped up timeline has covered a lot of the early character development for the main trio, including Yennefer's initiation as a sorceress and Ciri's tragic backstory and struggle to survive, and has introduced many side characters at various points in their own lives, meaning there's a lot of moving parts and faces to keep track of in an already very rich world of The Witcher. Starting from Yennefer and Ciri's childhoods, however, means there's a great deal of the show where they are nowhere near Geralt of Rivia, the eponymous Witcher.
Showrunner Lauren S. Hissrich spoke to The Witcher season 2, which was already confirmed by Netflix before season 1 was released. She says "What’s great about season 2, I can tell you, is that, in what we’ve written, the story becomes much more focused. There’s a stronger drive in the story, because all of the relationships that we’ve been setting up in season 1, actually start to come into fruition in season 2." This is good news for those who felt season 1 was a little scattered.
She continues, "Characters start meeting and interacting more. That goes well sometimes. It doesn’t go well sometimes. But it’s kind of like, all of those building blocks that we set up for the world, finally start to come together into something a little more concrete," and suggests that with the amount of source material they have to work from, the show could easily fill seven seasons, although no word on that from Netflix just yet.
The Witcher Netflix series is being adapted primarily from Sapkowski's novels, but as the bathtub scene indicates, some inspiration is also taken from the CD Projekt Red video games, which flesh out the already rich world quite a bit more, primarily on the edges and side stories, though the main plot is modified as well. Whether Hissrich and Netflix will continue to focus primarily on the novels is unknown, but even a show simply about Geralt wandering around doing his job and fighting supernatural monsters would be entertaining in its own right. Hopefully with the tighter focus, season 2 can feel a little less aimless without losing the wonderful side characters and creative monster fights.
The Witcher season 2 releases sometime in 2021 on Netflix.
Source: GamesRadar