NOTE: This discussion contains spoilers for Season 1 of The Witcher. If you haven't watched it yet and care about plot points, avoid reading further!

The COVID-19 Pandemic has, unfortunately, set a lot of things back on their schedules. Conventions and conferences have been (and are still being) canceled, movies have been delayed, and filming for a certain hit Netflix series ground to a halt. While we might have to wait just a bit longer to resolve some of the cliffhanger questions from season 1, we don't have to wait for some info - showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich recently shared some tidbits through an interview over at The Wrap.

76 million households tuned in to binge the show's dynamic first season, which debuted in December of 2019. While reception of the show has been mostly favorable, some fans took issue with the multiple timelines running throughout the 8-episode season. Schmidt Hissrich assured fans during her interview that the story for season two would be far more linear, focusing now on how Geralt (Henry Cavill) and Ciri (Freya Allan) will need to learn how to coexist in each other's company.

"What I think is really fun about Geralt and Ciri is they are the most unexpected family you can imagine," said Hissrich. "You have a witcher whose sole job is to kill things for money and you have a little girl who is trying to escape her past and it’s like, how do they come together To me, one of the most fun things we get to explore in Season 2 now is how they get to change and shift each other. Coming out of Season 1, you have a pretty good sense of who Ciri is, you have a pretty good sense of who Geralt is. And now we get to throw that all in a blender and see what happens when two people who are completely different have to be forced together in circumstances."

The Witcher's first season took a bold approach to setting up the pieces for an arc for the show that will last through multiple seasons, jumping between origin stories for Geralt, Ciri, and the sorcerer Yennefer (Anya Chalotra). Through these three lenses, we learn a huge amount about the world and the society in which the show is set, though for those who haven't engaged with the books or the video games, the timeline was probably made more confusing.

Season 2 now sees all of those timelines converged, which takes away some of the confusion. Fans can look forward to many newcomers to the cast, including a few new Witchers - hopefully, they'll last longer than the guy did in episode 3 (seriously, he lived for like 10 minutes). 

Hissrich, when asked about how it felt to have the show become such a huge success, had this to say:

"It’s still kind of incredible to me. You spend so long pouring all of your energy and brain power and creativity into a show and you never have any idea how it’s going to be received. I was incredibly proud of what we did with “The Witcher,” but of course there were a lot of unknowns out there. Everyone kept comparing it to “Game of Thrones,” for instance. I’m a huge “Game of Thrones” fan, but I also knew that people would show up and see that “The Witcher” was something different, and would they like that or would they dislike that? Would people be able to understand some of the fantasy and the lore of the show that a lot of the book lovers and video game lovers have? We hoped to attract them but also a new audience."

Check out the full interview with Lauren Schmidt Hissrich here.

Are you a fan of The Witcher - the show, the games, the books, or otherwise? Let us know!