The Witcher showrunner teases a “more focused” season 2, responds to critics

The Witcher is out, eight episodes of pure fantasy TV injected straight into your frontal cortex. So far, the show seems to be a hit with audiences, and Netflix is already going ahead with a second season.

If you watched the first season, you know that it tells stories taking place in three different timelines. One follows the monster hunter Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill), one the prideful sorceress Yennefer of Vengerberg (Anya Chalotra), and one the wayward princess Cirilla of Cintra (Freya Allan). Happily, by the end of the season, all the characters are at the same place in time, and hopefully things will be a little more coherent going forward.

That seems to be what showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich was thinking when she teased the second season to GamesRadar+. “What’s great about season two, I can tell you, is that, in what we’ve written, the story becomes much more focused,” she said. “There’s a stronger drive in the story, because all of the relationships that we’ve been setting up in season one, actually start to come into fruition in season two.”

"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."

The Witcher is based on a series of books by Andrzej Sapkowski, which are a bit odd so far as fantasy epics go. The first two books — The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny — are more like short story collections than novels. These are the two books that are more or less adapted in season 1. After that, the “Witcher saga” gets going with Blood of Elves, which reads far more like a traditional novel. Assuming that Hissrich is mostly done with the first two books, it makes sense that the narrative would tighten up.

And what happens after season 2? Hissrich has already said that she and her team could write “20 seasons” of this show, and while that’s obviously hyperbole, she’s clearly in it for the long haul. “There are definitely things that we know we want to do,” she said. “In our brains, as writers, we say, ‘Oh, that could happen at the end of season three’ or ‘That will happen in season seven.’ The truth is, we have a tonne of source material. We could write the show for a very, very long time.”

And that’s good!…mostly. While audiences have been enthusiastic about the show, critics have been more divided; The Witcher currently has a 58% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Most everyone, including me, has found things to like about the series, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near perfect.

Some critics, admittedly, have taken it too far. Over at Entertainment Weekly, a pair of critics gave the series an “F” rating after admitting they didn’t even watch all of the five episodes sent over by Netflix, to say nothing of the whole series. They don’t bother to look up a character’s name…it’s just not a good look. Seriously, I don’t know why critics ever do this. Why would you review something if you hadn’t seen it? It’s a recipe for backlash, as the 600+ comments on the article can attest.

What does Hissrich think of these criticisms? She took to Twitter to express her opinion, throwing some shade at the EW review in particular:

I dunno if I approve of anyone trying to identify who the “real” fans are, but sure.

Well, speaking as someone who did watch the whole thing, I enjoyed it…but I have a bunch of “buts.” The acting was very solid, but I thought the dialogue was often clunky, with too many modern colloquialisms breaking the immersion. It’s clear that the team was very passionate about making the show, but the split timeline stuff was needlessly complicated and I’m glad they’re doing away with it going forward.

Overall, I thought it was at least good enough to warrant a second season, although I wonder how long a show that expensive can keep getting made if it doesn’t have an enormous audience. Will it earn that audience over the holiday break? What do you all think?

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