The Witcher season 3 vol. 2 trailer breakdown

The Witcher took a page out of the Stranger Things playbook for its third season, with its latest installment arriving on Netflix in two separate volumes spaced roughly a month apart. Volume 1 contained five episodes and hit the service on June 29. Volume 2 will contain the final three, and is slated to land on the streaming service on July 27.

Considering how much of a step up volume 1 was for the series, the anticipation is high for the final three episodes. It helps that the season’s fifth episode, “The Art of Illusion,” ended on a major cliffhanger with the beginning of a coup at the mage’s enclave on the Isle of Thanedd.

While it’ll be a couple weeks yet before we can see season 3 volume 2, Netflix has dropped a teaser trailer to tide us over in the meantime. You can watch it if you hang around after the credits of “The Art of Illusion,” or in the tweet below:

We’re going to break down this trailer frame-by-frame, using what we know from Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher book series to figure out what’s going on. As such, there will be SPOILERS from the books below.

We begin with the man himself, Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill) walking through a cavern and looking suspiciously about. Based on some shots we see later in the trailer, I’m betting the witcher is about to engage in an epic duel.

Fast cut to the forest, where Geralt is chopping up some soldiers in a chaotic melee. We can’t be certain who the soldiers are, but our best guess is that it’s a group of Nilgaardians, since their armor is pretty ornate and matches the empire’s black-and-gold color scheme. Jaskier is with Geralt in this fight; that’s him in his trademark red jacket in the lower right-hand corner of the screen.

Next we cut to an aerial shot of Aretuza, where the mages’ great conclave is being held. We’re guessing we’ll see this shot right around the beginning of Episode 6, as everyone awakens to find the coup underway.

Yennefer appears to be holding Tissaia de Vries’ bracelet, which she was examining at the end of episode 5.

Jaskier, looking teary-eyed. This appears to happen in the aftermath of the battle we saw a second ago between Geralt and a band of (probably) Nilfaardian soldiers. Most of season 3 is adapted from Sapkowski’s novel The Time of Contempt, but the bit with Geralt and Jaskier is most likely taken from or inspired by the following book, Baptism of Fire, which sees the duo get back on the path after the devastating events on Thanedd.

This looks like a  tearful goodbye for Yennefer and Ciri. Grim times ahead. And we have a good idea of at least one of the people responsible…