The Witcher showrunner says the series won’t go past the books

The second season of The Witcher is out now on Netflix, and the consensus is…mixed. Which is pretty par for the course for this show, really. It seems for every thing The Witcher does right, it also somehow manages to inflame large portions of its fanbase with baffling choices.

But there’s no denying that The Witcher has become one of Netflix’s flagship series. The network has already greenlit a third season, produced the prequel anime film Nightmare of the Wolf, and has a prequel series coming next year called Blood Origin. There’s even a “family-friendly” Witcher show in the works.

Clearly, this is the cinematic universe that Netflix wants, and they’re going to pull out all the stops to make it happen, no matter how many Cowboy Bebops are slain along the way.

But what does all this mean for the mainline Witcher series? Is it possible that the show will go past The Witcher novels by Andrzej Sapkowski, maybe even pull in material from the wildly popular video games which take place afterwards?

According to showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, the answer to that last one is a solid no.

The Witcher will not go past the novels

Speaking to The Wrap, showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich shared a few interesting tidbits about the future of The Witcher. The largest is that the show will not pass the books, which is a question that many fans have been wondering about.

“I have always said that I want to end our stories at the same place that Andrzej Sapkowski ended his,” Hissrich said. “I just don’t feel the need for us to keep creating stories after his intentional end. The funny thing is, of course, since we have been working on the series, he’s actually released two new books. We’re trying to be a little flexible with it.”

That last bit is quite a catch. The original run of The Witcher novels ended in 1999 with The Lady of the Lake. But After the success of the video game franchise by CD Projekt Red, Sapkowski returned to the world of The Witcher to write a new standalone novel set during the early days of Geralt of Rivia’s witchering career, Season of Storms. That book was originally released back in 2013 in Poland, and was translated into English in 2018.

Since then, more of Sapkowski’s works have been translated into English — the current one is his historical fiction Hussite Trilogy, which began with The Tower of Fools. That series was originally published from 2002-2006 though…so I’m a little curious which novels Hissrich is referring to here. Are they brand new Witcher books we haven’t seen yet? Or is she simply referring to the translations?

Either way, the fact remains: The Witcher will not go past Andrezj Sapkowski’s novels. Unless he writes more, in which case all bets are off.

The Witcher will stay focused on the story ahead

Another interesting thing to come out of that interview were some of Hissrich’s thoughts on the coming seasons, and the overall energy she still feels for the series.

“I’ve always said that I will write the show as long as there is an interest in the show,” she said. “Right now, that interest seems to be great. But some of that also is through some of the additional universe that we’re expanding. So through the anime films, or through the spinoff that just finished production, those are ways for us to continue telling Sapkowski’s stories without taking the attention away from the main storytelling of the mothership.”

And thankfully, that mothership show is about to enter into one of the best sections of the series. Season 3 is set to adapt the novel The Time of Contempt, which is a lean, action-packed book that is really excellent. (It’s my personal favorite of the series.) According to Hissrich, this means that The Time of Contempt is going to be easier to adapt.

“You know, basically our seasons as a whole are really guided by the stories that we want to tell,” the showrunner said. “So structure is a great example. In Season 2, there wasn’t a reason to do non-linear storylines. So we took a very linear approach, which allowed us to play with some different aspects of visions or flashbacks, for instance, that we wouldn’t be able to do if we were doing timelines. Season 3, I think is really great. It’s based on the The Time of Contempt, and that actually to me is a very easily adaptable book. There’s tons of action, there’s tons of things that are just jaw dropping when you get to them. So we’re really letting that lead our storytelling. Season 3, for instance takes place on a very, very small timeline. Not a lot of time passes, because it doesn’t need to.”

It sounds like the vision for season 3 is pretty strong, so here’s hoping this one is a step up from the last two.

The first two seasons of The Witcher as well as the spin-off anime Nightmare of the Wolf are all currently available to stream on Netflix.

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