Netflix's 'The Witcher' creator spills secrets of Season 2, new hit songs
The people behind Netflix's "The Witcher" also spent long nights with the show's earworm of an anthem, "Toss a Coin to Your Witcher," stuck in their heads.
"The sound team, we’d come back in the morning and everyone would be like, ‘Oh, that ('Toss a Coin') was stuck in my head all night,'" series creator Lauren Schmidt Hissrich told reporters at a Television Critics Association panel Thursday. She expects more hit songs from the show's second season, due Dec. 17. Musician Jaskier (Joey Batey) "is back in Season 2, and we have some good songs," she said.
"The Witcher" returns about two years after the fantasy epic – starring Henry Cavill as a monster-hunting warrior in a fictional world whose path intersects with a sorceress and a princess – premiered to great success. Like so many other TV series, the second season was delayed by the the COVID-19 pandemic, although Schmidt Hissrich says that actually helped the writers make Season 2 better.
"For the creative team, we got the chance to look at the scripts as a whole and see what was working and what wasn’t," she said. "What we really wanted to refine was the relationships between Geralt (Cavill) and Ciri (Freya Allan) and Yennefer (Anya Chalotra). ... We wanted to see if we had enough moments that showed their emotional connections."
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After a long lead-up in Season 1, Geralt and Ciri, his "destiny," finally met in the finale, setting up a second season in which the two are a team, although it's not easy for either character to trust anyone.
"Ciri is lacking trust in people generally, and Geralt is trying to understand who this girl is he’s looking after," Allan said. "They knock heads."
Chalotra also teased a big season for Yennefer, whose display of huge magical powers at a battle led to her being taken by enemy forces.
"She’s captured, her whereabouts are unknown and she has to survive being a prisoner of war," the actress said. "We know she meets Ciri this season. ... Now the choices she makes in Season 2 will resonate with people a lot more, and they’ll be able to empathize with those choices this season."
Chalotra couldn't share much about Yennefer's path. "It would be a spoiler to speak of anything that happens with her."
"Witcher" has a dedicated fanbase from the series of books by author Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski and a popular video game, and Schmidt Hissrich is well aware of the intense feelings those fans express about the series.
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"I’m constantly reading what resonates and what doesn’t," she said, noting she's always on social media. "The thing I really react to is what people love, what people want to see more of. People really want to see more of, Ciri and Geralt together, Geralt and Yennefer together. ... I think that part of my job is to listen to what the fans like, we have a lot of them and I want to make sure they enjoy it too."
She also noted that one of the most controversial elements from Season 1 – two different timelines without explanation – won't return. But that doesn't mean the plot will be simple.
"We’re not going to play with time as much in Season 2," she said. "We play with stories, (it's) not completely linear storytelling. ... Ciri’s story moves back and forth in her head a lot. We want to make sure we’re not telling the simplest version of the story, we want to tell the best story."
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