Fact vs fiction: Aging in sci-fi and fantasy
By WiC Staff
Image: The Witcher/Netflix
Geralt and Yennefer — (The Witcher) — 103 and 71 respectively
Everyone is buzzing about The Witcher. In fact, in the last quarter of 2019, Netflix revealed to their shareholders that around 76 million people had streamed at least the first two minutes of the fantasy show. This marks the biggest viewership of any first series on the streaming platform.
The Witcher is a fantasy drama series based on books by Polish writer Andrezej Sapkowski. Set in a fictional world simply called the Continent, the program follows three characters who find their fates are closely tied together.
Two of those characters are Geralt (Henry Cavill), a monster hunter living a solitary life, and a sorceress named Yennefer. If you do the math, you would calculate that by the end of the first season, Geralt and Yennefer are around 103 and 71 years old respectively.
By our standards, reaching these ages is absolutely possible. But just how do these characters maintain such youthful appearances? Can this ever be comparable with our own world? We cannot escape growing old, physically and cognitively, despite however many anti-ageing products or cosmetic surgery options are available. But can the effects of aging ever be slowed down, or stopped altogether?
Genetics has an important role to play here. Chances are if your parents live full lives and maintained a ‘youthful’ appearance for a long time, you will too. Some studies point specifically to our mothers’ DNA.
Another important part of aging comes down to environmental factors, like growing up in a city or the countryside, for example.