The Witcher has undeniably become a smash hit for Netflix over the years. Based on Andrzej Sapkowski's The Witcher books, the series has spanned two seasons with a third and fourth in the works, an animated prequel movie, and now a miniseries prequel with The Witcher: Blood Origin. However, with big changes and an admittedly confusing timeline in the first season, fans have often wondered if showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich has a solid ending for how she imagines the main series will conclude.
Collider's Steve Weintraub recently spoke with both Hissrich and The Witcher: Blood Origin co-creator Declan de Barra about where the series will end and where the expanded universe could lead. When looking at the series as a whole, Hissrich explained:
It has been my goal with my executives at Netflix to always have an endpoint in mind, because, to me, when you start just writing stories without knowing where they're going, you can get lost. And what I think is so interesting about what we have figured out, to answer your question in two ways, yes, I absolutely know where the series is going to end. I know what season it's going to end, I know how it's going to end, which is very, very exciting.
Hissrich went on to explain that The Lady of the Lake, the fifth novel by Sapkowski in the Witcher saga, would be the last book covered in the main series. But that because the book dips into Arthurian legend, the potential for the story to expand beyond the series is huge. "I was asked a lot, are there going to be other sequels and prequels and spinoffs? I think, certainly, Sapkowski's books are kind of limitless in a lot of ways," Hissrich said. Joking that the show could go on long enough until she turns grey and ends up playing Geralt herself.
The Witcher's Book Readers Won't Have the Answers to Everything
However, just because you've read the books, doesn't mean you will have the road map for the seasons ahead. As Hissrich goes on to say:
I think a lot of people believe that you sort of go into a season of television saying it's going to be this book, but clearly that's something that we have not been able to do because there are some books that are like Blood of Elves, which Season 2 sort of loosely was based around. It didn't have enough action to keep us going, so we ended up having to bring parts of Baptism of Fire into it. Parts of the earlier short stories, I mean Declan's episode, “A Grain of Truth,” was what kicked off Season 2. So immediately we know that we have to be flexible with how the books are split up versus how the seasons are split up and Declan's right. I've been sort of turning that in my head since the very beginning.
So don't expect the road to always be straight and with so much timeline jumping and traveling to different realms and the use of magic, it's bound to get all mixed up. And with the potential for more spin-offs and stories to tell, nothing is set in stone.
Seasons 1 and 2 of The Witcher are now available on Netflix. Check out our interview with some of the Blood Origin cast below: