It feels like ages since we've joined Geralt (Henry Cavill), Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) and Ciri (Freya Allan) in their adventures, but Season 3 of The Witcher finally has a release date. Right after Netflix announced it would be splitting the third season of its beloved fantasy series into two volumes, we also got a delicious teaser trailer that announced the return of some fan-favorite villains.
After their brief appearance at the end of Season 2, the Wild Hunt is back to hunt down Ciri. Fortunately, now that The Witcher: Blood Origin has established the origins of the Continent, we can have a pretty clear idea of how Season 3 of the main series will use the villains.
Who Are the Wild Hunt?
Netflix’s The Witcher is based on Andrzej Sapkowski’s acclaimed book series of the same name, which follows a monster-hunter named Geralt in a world split by political turmoil and racial disputes. Inspired by Slavic folklore, Sapkowski created a unique fantasy universe filled with danger and strange creatures. One of the enemies mentioned multiple times in Sapkowski’s books is the Wild Hunt, a procession of skeletal horseriders that cross the night sky looking for people to kidnap and things to destroy.
While the common folk of the Continent believes the Wild Hunt to be an ominous sight that people see before disaster strikes their lives, the riders are actually Elves from a different dimension who cross the barriers between worlds. In fact, the Wild Hunt elves come from a world where their species was not subjugated by humans, contrary to what happens in the Continent after the Conjunction of Spheres. That is why they come to Geralt’s world to find humans and bring them home as slaves.
While Spakowski uses the Wild Hunt to deepen Ciri’s journey, as the girl spends some time in their kingdom, they are a minor threat in the books. Even so, the villains were made iconic by CD Projekt Red’s fan-favorite line of video games based on The Witcher. In the games, the Wild Hunt is a looming shadow in the first two chapters of the trilogy before they become the main antagonists of The Witcher 3. As The Witcher 3 explains, the Wild Hunt’s world is dying, so they are after people with Elder Blood, like Ciri.
For its first two seasons, Netflix’s The Witcher tried to stick closer to the books than the games, which pretty much came up with their own storylines based on Sapkowski’s work. However, by teasing the Wild Hunt in Season 2, Netflix has nodded at fans of the games that the villains would become a bigger part of the show. Since the Wild Hunt is also present in the first teaser trailer for Season 3, we can be certain that Netflix has decided to take note of the game adaptations’ playbook.
How Will Season 3 of 'The Witcher' Explore the Wild Hunt?
At the end of Season 2 of The Witcher, Ciri (Freya Allan) has a vision about the Wild Hunt in which she sees the warriors clad in metal and bones riding toward her. Season 2 also reveals how the barrier between worlds is shattering, with the huge monoliths buried all over the Continent serving as gateways to other dimensions. Ciri’s Elder Blood also seems connected with the ability to cross dimensions, which explains how she sees the Wild Hunt and why the warriors will come after her. While all of that is intriguing, it doesn’t give us much to speculate about for Season 3. However, the events of the Blood Origin prequel offer some new clues about the Wild Hunt.
In the books and video games, the Wild Hunt is an elite squad of the Aen Elle, Elves who inhabit a different world. More than two thousand years before the Conjunction of the Spheres, the elves were driven out of their dying world. A group of these elves, the Aen Seidhe, found the Continent and made it their home. Meanwhile, the Aen Elle elves discovered a different world inhabited by unicorns, where they built the mighty city of Tir ná Lia. After the Conjunction of the Spheres, the Aen Elle lost their ability to cross dimensions freely, so now they must hunt down people of Elder Blood.
While there’s a big chance Season 3 of The Witcher will stick to the same story from the books and video games, Blood Origin teases the Netflix adaptation might give the villains a new origin. One of the main characters of Blood Origin is Eredin (Jacob Collins-Levy), the High Commander of the Golden Empire. By the end of the spinoff series, Eredin is trapped in another dimension, scavenging bones to wear them as armor. This alternate dimension is identical to the one Ciri sees in her visions in Season 2 of the main show. Since Eredin is the name of the Wild Hunt’s leader in the books and the games, it’s clear that the prequel series shows the audience how these villains came to be.
The question now is if the Wild Hunt is acting alone or if the kingdom of Tir ná Lia will be somehow part of Season 3 of The Witcher. The Netflix adaptation could shake things up by explaining how Eredin found the powerful elven kingdom after being transported to a different dimension, pledging his alliance to Tir ná Lia. There’s also a chance the series will tell its own story about the Wild Hunt by making Eredin and his soldiers the only interdimensional elves that exist. It’s not a bad idea per se, as it can potentially turn Eredin into a dangerous villain, motivated by his will to escape the hellish landscape that is now his prison. Since the Netflix adaptation has shown it’s not afraid to change things so that the story can work better on TV, we wouldn’t be surprised if they gave the villains a brand-new objective.
We’ll find out more about Netflix’s version of the Wild Hunt once The Witcher Season 3 Volume 1 arrives on Netflix on June 29.