Showrunner talks sexuality in The Witcher, teases season 3

The second season of The Witcher has come and gone, and the response has been pretty positive. The show was easily Netflix’s most-watched series the week it was released, after all, so a third season is inevitable.

And what’s in store for that third season? It will be based on Andrzej Sapkowski’s book Time of Contempt, and showrunner Lauren Hissrich promises that some fan favorite characters will have big parts to play. “I do think it’s a season that starts to delve more into relations, and just sort of talking about how relationships can be different,” she told Digital Spy. “We have Phillipa, who’s best known… I would say she’s a queer icon for book readers. We delve into her character. It’s not something we shy away from.”

She’s talking about Phillipa Eilhart, a sorceress who makes a brief appearance in season 2 (in human form) played by Cassie Clare. She has a fair bit to do in the books and the video games by CD Projekt Red, so expect more of her in season 3.

Ciri will “embrace her femininity” in The Witcher season 3

So far as “relations” are concerned, Hissrich also talked about what’s ahead of Ciri (Freya Allan). “I also think with Ciri, that’s something that I would say is hinted at in the books, but you never really get into what is her sexuality, and we start to delve into that more as well. All of that is coming down the horizon, and it is fun. I’m glad that you brought it up, because one of the things that I think that we try very hard to do with The Witcher is show that fantasy is for everyone, and represents everyone.”

"I found, historically, that a lot of fantasy was written by men, for men. And so it was really interesting coming into this world as a woman, and saying, ‘OK, we have these amazing books that have these really strong female characters or queer characters.’ It’s like: how can we make sure that they’re showing up on screen, too, and more and more people can watch, and say, ‘Hey, this is for me as well’ in a world that has been, I think, historically kind of gatekept?’"

Allan also discussed what’s on the horizon for Ciri. “I won’t know until we get there how I’m going to navigate how Ciri is navigating her own sexuality,” she said. “You see glimpses of her trying to navigate that in the season, in terms of the fact she’s like almost becoming quite boy-like. And then I think she sort of then suddenly realizes, ‘Actually, I want to embrace my femininity, and I want to embrace being a woman’ – and not find herself trying to be a replica of her older brothers. So I think that’s what’s she’s navigating in this season.

"But I don’t think she’s really discovered yet about her sort of sexuality, necessarily, I think. It’s definitely something that she’s going to discover in potentially season three, potentially season four. We’ll see."

Netflix has a seven-year plan for The Witcher, so they’ll time to work everything out.

“Burn Butcher Burn” vs “Toss a Coin to your Witcher”

Meanwhile, actor Joey Batey (Jaskier) talked to TheWrap about the new song we heard in season 2: “Burn Butcher Burn,” a Taylor Swift-ian breakup song Jaskier wrote after feeling betrayed by Geralt of Rivia, also known as the Butcher of Blaviken. This was following up on the “Toss a Coni to your Witcher” song from the first season, which became a viral hit.

That said, Batey didn’t feel any pressure mounting his sophomore effort. “The one priority that Joe Trapanese and myself had, our composer on Season 2, was to distance ourselves from the poppier end of Jaskier’s discography and enjoy new musical styles and a genre shift perhaps, and to take his canon forward in an emotionally raw way, and a character-ful way,” he said. “I think we all set out to not do ‘Toss a Coin’ again. He might come back to that sort of song further down the line, but I think in order for this character to grow he needed to write what he wanted to write and I think that meant that I had so much more ownership over the song by the time we got to shoot it.”

At the end of the series Jaskier will probably have enough songs for a “Best Of” album.

You can watch the first two seasons of The Witcher on Netflix now.

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