The Witcher author gives his take on the Netflix show: “I’ve seen better, I’ve seen worse”

Between the book series by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, Netflix’s ever-growing television franchise, and the mega hit video games from CD Projekt Red, The Witcher is easily one of the biggest fantasy series in the world right now.

It all started with Sapkowski’s short stories, which eventually grew into novels as he got into The Witcher Saga proper. The series currently consists of two short story collections, five full-length novels, and one “sidequel” novel which Sapkowski wrote years after the mainline series had concluded. That book, Season of Storms, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.

With the broader success of The Witcher, it begs the question: will Sapkowski write more books? If you’ve ever wondered that, we have good news for you.

Andrezj Sapkowski has “plans” for more Witcher books

Per Redanian Intelligence, Sapkowski appeared at the Taipei International Book Exhibition 2023 this week, where he was asked about future Witcher books. The author kept his answer short and sweet: “They are in the plans.”

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard that Sapkowski may write more Witcher books. At Warsaw Comic-Con in 2018 (video above), the author hinted about when these novels might be set in the chronology of the series; saying they would not be sequels. The Lady of the Lake is the definitive end of The Witcher story in Sapkowski’s books. “The story is complete, the saga has been concluded, so if by any chance I write something in The Witcher universe, and I sure have such intention, it would probably be something like a prequel or a sidequel. Not a sequel.“

It sounds like any future Witcher books will likely be closer to Season of Storms — which is set around the time of the short stories — than the main saga, showing us some of Geralt’s other adventures. That’s probably a good thing; The Lady of the Lake wrapped up Geralt’s story pretty well, so going the prequel or sidequel route would leave that ending intact.

The Witcher author assesses the Netflix show: “I’ve seen better, I’ve seen worse”

Netflix has been building out its Witcher television franchise at mach speed these past few years. Since the show premiered in 2019, there have been two seasons of The Witcher starring Henry Cavill, the animated prequel movie Nightmare of the Wolf, and the recent live-action limited series spinoff The Witcher: Blood Origin. This year we’ll see the third season of the mainline show, the last with Henry Cavill in the lead role. After that, he will be replaced by Liam Hemsworth for another two seasons. And beyond that, Netflix is reportedly developing a spinoff about a group of teenage bandits called The Rats. There’s even been talk of a Witcher kid’s show.

Needless to say, Netflix is going all in on this thing. However, the streamer hasn’t had a great track record of sticking to the source material. Season 2 of The Witcher show ditched the vast majority of the book it’s based on, Blood of Elves, in favor of entirely new plotlines, while Blood Origin explored a period of Witcher history Sapkowski had only written a small amount about, but still somehow managed to ignore even those handful of crucial details.

How does Sapkowski feel about the way Netflix is using The Witcher? This is another topic that the author addressed during his appearance at the Taipei International Book Exhibition 2023. He didn’t go into a lot of detail, preferring once again to keep things short and to the point. “I’ve seen better, I’ve seen worse,” Sapkowski said of the show.

The Witcher author: “[I]n general, adaptations are always worse”

This isn’t the first time that Sapkowski has shared opinions about Netflix’s Witcher franchise, though he’s always been careful to keep his wording pretty neutral. During an interview at Poland’s Łódź University shortly after the release of season 1, Sapkowski was asked whether he was satisfied with the scripting for the series in relation to his books.

“Why not…I am. It’s far from my books. Well, but adaptations are like that,” the author said, eliciting a laugh from the crowd. He then launched into a somewhat absurd analogy to get his point across:

"Adaptations of any literature, any medium, can be thematically represented by a curve called the Gauss curve…it looks like a giant boob. At the bottom of the “boob” of the Gauss curve are adaptations that are monstrous, are so bad and so far from the original, it’s despairing. Then you go up, up, and at the very top of that Gauss curve there are adaptations that are worse, just worse [than the book]. Nothing more, just worse. Then…we go down and there are adaptations less worse, less worse, less worse…and at the very bottom there are better adaptations. Great rarity…rarity. We’d sooner see a pond turtle in the Ner River than see such an adaptation…but I myself know at least three."

European pond turtles — the only naturally occurring turtle in Poland — are extremely rare and have been under strict environmental protection since 1935, which I did not know before watching this interview. But now I do and so do you.

“But in general, adaptations are always worse, always…can’t be better,” Sapkowski concluded.

The Witcher season 3 is due out on Netflix this summer.

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