The Witcher producers see “a lot more that we can do in this world”

The first season of The Witcher, Netflix’s adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski’s fantasy novels, premiered in December of 2019, and it was an instant hit. Audiences loved seeing Henry Cavill as monster hunter Geralt of Rivia, and Netflix quickly began laying the groundwork for an expansion.

Now, not even two years later, the universe has exploded. We already have an anime movie spinoff, Nightmare of the Wolf, with another on the way. There’s a live-action prequel called Blood Origin in development, plus an animated series aimed at younger audiences. That’s four spinoffs released or announced in the two years since the first season of the mother show began, and it doesn’t even have a second season out yet. “It’s full-on, in the best kind of way,” showrunner Lauren Hissrich told Entertainment Weekly.

How and why is Netflix expanding the franchise so quickly? They had an advantage in that The Witcher was already a known quantity before the show dropped, thanks to Sapkowski’s books and the popular video game series from CD Projekt Red. But this has still been a blowup of epic proportions. Netflix executive Kelly Luegenbiehl says it comes down to two things. “First, it really starts with the audience. Are they excited to dive deeper into this world and pull back those layers? The second part is, do we feel like there’s enough there to do that? It’s not just doing story to do story but that there’s really enough soul behind it. Sapkowski created this very rich world, but in some ways only hinted at the potential of it.”

Of course, there are more cynical calculations here too. Luegenbiehl championed The Witcher in part because of its “broad approach to fantasy” that could potentially bring in lots of different kinds of audiences, rather than appealing to just one niche. They planned a Witcher anime series in the hopes that there would be “some audience overlap” between The Witcher fandom and anime fandom. Meanwhile, Hissrich calls The Witcher “a family story” that also includes “monsters and magic and big epic battles.” She was also “pretty stunned” to see how many women watched the first season of the show; the series spotlights several female characters, although having a jacked up Henry Cavill around can’t hurt.

Again, the key word is “broad.” And when the appeal of the base series doesn’t seem broad enough, Netflix will widen it, as with the upcoming Witcher kids show. “If we do a kids and family show, is it going to be The Witcher at all?” Hissrich asks. “How do we do The Witcher without all of the gore, all of the violence?”

"The truth is though, those things to me are the bells and whistles of this world. If you peel away those layers, you come back to basic tales of morality. That’s what all of Sapkowski’s short stories are. They’re based actually on a bunch of folklore and mythology, the exact sort of tales that Grimms’ fairytales do, that frankly Disney movies do."

The Witcher prequel show is about what elven society was like “pre-colonization”

The live-action prequel series, The Witcher: Blood Origin, also got spun pretty much out of thin air, with showrunner Declan De Barra based it on a couple of lines from one of Sapkowski’s books. “We were trying to understand what the world was like for elves right before the Conjunction of the Spheres,” De Barra said, naming an important early event in the show’s mythology. “It’s very vague in the books as to what happened. I got out a whiteboard and sketched out this plan of what I thought: what elves wanted in this world and what the society was like pre-colonization. That kind of stuck.”

"This whole time in [Sapkowski’s] books, he reinterprets folktales and history. And when you look at our own history, societies that had been at their height, like the Roman Empire or the Mayan Empire, would be right before the fall and then we’re in dark ages again. That fascinated me to wonder what that [elven] world could have been and what society would have been like. That’s what we’re going to explore here."

At the moment, we don’t know if Blood Origin will last beyond its debut season; De Barra says it’s “up to the fans.” But given how hard Netflix is pushing The Witcher, I wouldn’t be surprised. “With shows of this size and scope and scale, you really do have to plan years and years in advance,” Luegenbiehl said. “So I think in best execution — and as long as people are still loving the stories — there’s a lot more that we can do in this world.”

Is The Witcher expanding too fast?

While Luegenbiehl and company sound like they’re coming from a place of enthusiasm for the source material, I can’t help but look at the explosion of The Witcher franchise and feel a bit more cynical about it. Until very recently, this kind of cinematic universe-building was very rare, and has become more popular after Marvel proved how lucrative it could be. I don’t think Netflix wanted a Witcher cinematic universe specifically so much as it wants a cinematic universe of any kind, and The Witcher got the nod.

And at least Marvel built up its universe slowly over the years; four Witcher spinoffs announced in two years feels excessive, like they’re trying to will a massive franchise into being rather than letting it find its own footing. You can hear it how Luegenbiehl talks about future season of the show, as if there are already lots out there and not just one: “In each subsequent season, we’re really able to pull back more layers of the onion and get to know this world and these characters at a deeper level,” she said.

I more or less enjoyed the first season of The Witcher and will probably check out the second when it arrives on Netflix on December 17, but I don’t forget that the series is part earnest fantasy story, part cog in Netflix’s marketing machine. We’ll see soon enough if the streamer can have it both ways.

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