Netflix releases official timeline for The Witcher

The Witcher is Netflix’s newest fantasy hit, an adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski’s long-running novel series about a professional monster hunter (Henry Cavill) who wanders the Continent plying his trade and dealing with people who are often more dangerous than the beasts he fights.

The show is a fun watch, but some fans (alright, me) were put off by the way it handles time. So basically, The Witcher has three main characters: Geralt of Rivia — he’s the monster hunter — Yennefer of Vengerberg — a powerful sorceress with a thirst for power — and Ciri, a princess fleeing the sack of her home city. The issue is that, for a good chunk of the first season, their stories aren’t playing out at the same time. We’ll follow Yennefer’s story in the distant past, cut to Geralt doing something several years later, and then to Ciri doing something later still. And the show doesn’t make it obvious what it’s doing in the early going; you have to figure it out, which is a fun challenge for some and an annoyance for others.

Whatever camp you’re in, you can probably use this timeline from Netflix, which lays out the events of the show in chronological order:

So the timeline of the show covers about 53 years, with the earlier thing we see being Yennefer getting shipped off to magic school (which happens in the second episode) all the way through the sack of Cintra, which we see in…the first episode…and also again in the seventh.

Let’s break it all down, just for clarity:

• In 1210, Tissaia de Vries buys Yennefer from her cruel father and takes her to Aretuza, where she is trained to become a wizard. Some time later, she completes her training and is sent out on assignment.
• After that, Geralt of Rivia becomes the Butcher of Blaviken, which we see in the first episode. Later, Geralt meets the bard Jaskier, and the two are captured by elves. We see that in Episode 2.
• We don’t know exactly how many years have passed, but the next thing to happen chronologically is that Yennefer defends her royal charge from an assassin, which we see in Episode 4. It looks like she’d been in that job for some time. Anyway, she fails, and decides the courtly life isn’t for her.
• Next, we get Geralt’s storyline from Episode 3, where he fights the striga.
• Finally, we get another year marker. In 1249, 39 years after Yennefer was taken to Aretuza, Geralt and Jaskier attend a fateful dinner in Cintra, where Geralt is bound by destiny to the as-yet-unborn Ciri. That all goes down in Episode 4.
• Over the next 14 years, Geralt and Yennefer meet, strike up a bond, hunt a dragon together, and part on bad terms.
• That brings us to 1963, the year Cintra falls. Although we see these events play out over the course of the season, chronologically, they’re pretty simple. Geralt comes to collect Ciri, Calanthe has him imprisoned, Calanthe loses a battle against Nilfgaard, Geralt escapes, Nilfgaard sacks Cintra, Ciri flees, Yennefer and the other mages stop Nilfgaard from advancing further at the Battle of Sodden, and Geralt and Ciri finally meet up at the end of the season finale.

Honestly, I’d have preferred the show just tell this story chronologically, but it’s good to at least have a guide.

Image: The Witcher/Netflix

Also, if you’re wondering, Geralt and Yennefer don’t seem to age over the course of these 53 years because they are both magical creatures. In the books and video games, they’re even older.

I don’t know how that explains Jaskier, though. He’s already a practicing bard when he meets Geralt, and it looks like at least a decade goes by before the last time we see him in “Rare Species.” But he looks exactly the same. Showrunner Lauren Hissrich admitted that they “dropped the ball” when it came to aging Jaskier. “It’s hard to show the passage of time when everyone looks the same, so we’ll be approaching that differently in .”

And when will season 2 be coming out? 2021 seems like a good bet, although you never know…

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