5 storylines to remember before The Witcher season 3

Season 3 of The Witcher is just around the corner. This is set to be a pretty big season for The Witcher; not only is it adapting some of the bigger events from Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher books, it will be the last time Henry Cavill plays Geralt of Rivia.

Since The Witcher’s second season premiered all the way back in the winter of 2021, you could be forgiven for forgetting some of the particulars. As such, we’ve prepared this guide to help get you up to speed before season 3 premieres later this month. Season 2 ended with a number of large cliffhangers. But none of them were bigger than this:

1. The battle at Kaer Morhen

The Witcher season 2 finale featured a bloody face-off at Kaer Morhen, the imposing castle the witchers of the Wolf School make their home. Throughout the season, we saw Geralt’s on-again-off-again sorceress paramour Yennefer struggle to reclaim her magical powers after they were seemingly sapped away following her use of forbidden fire magic during the battle of Sodden Hill. In order to restore her abilities, Yennefer makes a pact with Voleth Meir, an otherworldly being sometimes referred to as the Deathless Mother. Late in the season, this seemingly ancient creature possesses Ciri. It’s then that things got nasty.

Hoping to keep Ciri safe, the witchers bring her to Kaer Morhen…but they don’t know of her possession by the Deathless Mother, who harbors a centuries-long grudge against the monster hunters for sealing her away. She takes control of Ciri’s body and begins murdering the witchers in their sleep.

It all culminates with a brawl in the great hall of the keep, where we discover that the Deathless Mother is attempting to use a hidden monolith to get back to her own world.

While Vesemir believes the only way to stop the Deathless Mother from opening a gateway is to kill her Ciri, Yennefer finds another solution by drawing her own blood in order to channel the Deathless Mother. She, Geralt, and Ciri fall through a portal into a blasted plane, where they see the Deathless Mother’s spirit rejoin a group of spectral riders: the Wild Hunt.

As they race toward Ciri, our trio of heroes goes back through the portal Ciri created to the Continent and seal it off.

When the dust settles, Geralt and Yennefer have reached an uneasy alliance in the name of protecting Ciri, while the looming threat of the Wild Hunt has been established. That will be important, since we know we’ll see them at least once in season 3. They want Ciri for their own mysterious ends, and they’re far from the only ones: