Just the other day, news broke that filming on season 3 of Netflix’s monster-hunting fantasy show The Witcher had concluded. Season 2 ended with a few big cliffhangers, such as the introduction of the ominous Wild Hunt and the revelation that Emhyr var Emreis, the emperor of Nilfgaard, is Ciri’s long-lost father. Needless to say, the anticipation for season 3 is high.
And now, another big announcement has come along and smacked us right in the witcher senses: according to reliable Witcher news site Redanian Intelligence, Netflix may have already quietly greenlit the show for seasons 4 and 5.
The Witcher seasons 4 and 5 may be produced together
According to RI’s sources, the production team behind The Witcher is currently laying out plans to produce seasons 4 and 5 back to back. Director Steven Surjik confirmed that the writers and producers had already “mapped out” season 4 of The Witcher back in May of this year.
With the streamer’s reputation for canceling shows willy-nilly, it speaks volumes of its confidence in The Witcher that these kinds of plans are even being contemplated. We have to take things with the necessary grain of salt since no official announcement has yet been made, but given RI’s track record for these kinds of scoops, there’s a very good chance this is true.
If it is, the team behind The Witcher would have a pretty large task ahead of them. Filming on season 3 began in early April and has taken nearly six months to complete. Combining production on two seasons — and two that would likely be even bigger and more spectacular than usual — could take up to a year of filming, though this could be broken up into chunks to avoid burning out the cast and crew. While it would be a big task, it’s also not unheard of to do something like this; Vikings: Valhalla filmed all three of its seasons in relatively close succession, while Breaking Bad and Ozark both filmed their two-part final seasons together.
Will The Witcher end with season 5?
When multiple seasons are produced back to back, it often signals that a show is moving toward its ending. It would make a lot of sense for The Witcher to end with its fifth season. As things stand, season 3 is adapting Andrzej Sapkowski’s book The Time of Contempt, with a few events from other books sprinkled in as well. That particular novel is widely considered one of the high points of the series, and for good reason: it features a particularly large set piece that totally changes the course of everything that comes after.
But after The Time of Contempt, the next three Witcher books (Baptism of Fire, The Tower of Swallows, and The Lady of the Lake) become a bit more of a meandering journey. We’re going to get into very mild spoilers for the books here, but suffice it to say that a large portion of those final three novels revolve around Geralt and a group of companions (known as the Hansa) traveling around in search of another character. There’s a lot of great stuff in there, but on the whole, those three books are one slow-moving journey for Geralt. Yennefer, by comparison, spends a ton of time offscreen; we do get some cool scenes with her, but for the most part her whereabouts are a mystery.
Ciri, however, has a pretty substantial journey. But some of Ciri’s journey in The Tower of Swallows happens concurrently with Geralt’s journey in Baptism of Fire, so merging those two books would be a natural choice.
Combining the last three Witcher books into two seasons and ending there might be the way the team opts to finish the show. For my money, it would work well.
More Witcher news is coming at Tudum later this month
As we mentioned, this report about The Witcher being potentially renewed for season 4 and 5 comes from inside sources, and as such we can’t say anything for certain. However, Netflix is holding its Tudum event on September 24, where it will unveil a bunch of information, trailers, and announcements about many of its upcoming shows and movies. Per The Wrap, both The Witcher and its prequel series The Witcher: Blood Origin are on the docket for this year’s Tudum. So if The Witcher is actually renewed for two more seasons, there’s a good chance we’ll find out then.
As for Blood Origin, after being seemingly reworked into a shorter limited series, that show is still expected to debut this year. Barring any huge twists, we’ll most likely get the release date for that at Tudum.
Now, if we can just get a renewal announcement for The Sandman…
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