What Netflix’s The Witcher took from the video games

Netflix has a big hit in The Witcher, a fantasy show set on the mythical Continent, where sorceresses whisper in the ears of kings and witchers stalk the land looking for monsters to slay. Just be sure to toss them a coin for their trouble.

The show is based on The Witcher books by author Andrzej Sapkowski, which have been coming out since the ’90s, but the series didn’t catch on outside of Sapkowski’s native Poland until CD Projekt Red released The Witcher 3, an excellent video game that’s gone on to sell millions and millions of copies.

Without The Witcher 3, there’s a good chance the Netflix show might never have gotten made, whatever Sapkowski says about why the series blew up in the US. While showrunner Lauren Hissrich hasn’t played the games herself, she admitted on the Writer Experience podcast that she did take some inspiration from them all the same. “I took in the visuals of the world,” she said. “And what I will say is that, that’s probably the biggest thing I took from the game.”

"Oftentimes people think of fantasy as really dirty and gritty and horrible and everything’s dark. And the truth is, The Witcher actually has a lot of color, has a lot of life, has a lot of everything to it. Even in tragedy and real life, the sun still rises, and it sets and that can still be beautiful, even if there’s a war going on next door. So that’s something that we took.”"

Anyone who’s played The Witcher 3 doesn’t need to be told how beautiful a game it can be.

And that’s not the only thing Hissrich lifted; she also said “there’s a lot of little easter eggs” in the show put there specifically for fans of the games. For one thing, as lead character Geralt of Rivia, Henry Cavill is pretty much doing an impression of voice actor Doug Cockle from The Witcher 3:

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

So the shadow of the video games stretches over the show. And it looks like that’s not going to change in season 2, where it’s rumored that someone will face off with a memorable monster featured in the games:

As for when we’ll actually get to watch season 2, our best info has it coming out sometime in 2021.

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h/t GameRant