The Witcher: 10 Things We Want To See In Season 1 | ScreenRant
Studios have been clamoring to fill the Game of Thrones-sized hole in our hearts since it left the air earlier this year and Netflix is the first to strike with The Witcher. With eight books of material to draw upon, Netflix is playing the long game.
We're hoping that Netflix will take the time to capitalize on the things that have made the books an international sensation, not simply make Game of Thrones redux. Here are a few things we want to see in The Witcher's first season.
10 World Building
If there's one thing there is no shortage of in the world right now, it's fantasy books. What separates the average from the great is the building of the world in which the fantasy takes place. A book or a video game, of which The Witcher took its first two forms, can take its sweet time doing this. But an eight-episode TV series doesn't necessarily have the same kind of luxury. We're hoping that the show not only manages to bring us a good Witcher story but one that sets up its world for the future as well.
9 Not Too Married To The Book
Many fantasy novels are told very linearly to establish the worlds in which they take place. Not The Witcher. At least, not at first. When the first book in The Witcher series was released, it was a compilation of short stories by Andrzej Sapkowski that took place in the world of The Witcher. While some of the chapters were sequential and built off the previous one, plenty of others were self-contained. With the denseness of the first book, we know that season one will not cover it in its entirety. Let's hope that the elements and storylines that have been chosen for adaptation will best serve an eight-episode arc.
8 Plenty Of Ciri And Yennifer
As mentioned above, there's a lot of territories that are covered in The Last Witch, not the least of which are Ciri and Yennifer. These are two parties that are not just integral to Geralt's story, but the entire world of The Witcher as well.
However, The Last Witch doesn't always give them ample time or consideration in the compilation of short stories. We want these women to be at the forefront with Geralt, not just in the background. Each of them has gotten their own poster, so we're hoping that bodes well!
7 Great (Well Lit) Battles
Thanks to clips Netflix has been kind enough to provide in their trailers, we know that we will definitely be seeing some battles in this series. But let's be clear that we want quality over quantity. There's been a trend in recent TV shows that are inherently known for being dark and edgy LITERALLY making things darker around them (looking at you Game of Thrones).
We know that The Witcher is a dark, mature story already. Even a neophyte to the series can glean that from the posters that have been released. We're hoping that whatever awesome battles we get to see, we won't have to adjust the lighting settings on our TVs to see them.
6 Not Too CGI Heavy
It's important to note that while it's taken a few decades for The Witcher to finally come to our TV screens, it has had quite a life of its own in the video game world, spawning three highly profitable video games between 2007 and 2015. Just a few months ago, despite it being four years since its initial release, the third installment was released on the Nintendo Switch, driving the sales up 999% for at least one week. With that in mind, while we want some great action sequences, we're hoping they're not too CGI driven. If we really want to experience feeling like Geralt, we can just grab a copy of the game and do it that way.
5 Easy On The Shocks
Game of Thrones gained a great deal of infamy for being the first fantasy TV series to show such a great deal of graphic sex and violence in almost every episode. While there was plenty to be seen in the books as well, Game of Thrones had to prove that it wasn't your mom's fantasy TV series, by establishing more blood, gore, and nudity than they were expecting. While all of these elements have their place on TV and we're almost certainly going to see our fair share of graphic violence and nudity, we're hoping that Netflix isn't betting the farm on trying to shock us into bingeing season one. You guys invented the automatic start next episode button; we've proven we don't need a whole lot more than that.
4 Fantastic Beasts
We know that a big part of Geralt's job is hunting down monsters and things that go bump in the night. A lot of other things happen over the course of the book series that we would love to see, but this is one of his defining attributes. So far, the trailers have been fairly light on showing these monsters.
We're hoping that this means they're just saving the best for the actual series. We know, we know. The monsters manifest in the people within Geralt's circle are the truly terrifying ones, but let's give him at least a few beasts he can best before taking on the other ones.
3 An Epic Score
In addition to fantastic gameplay, The Witcher video games managed to have fantastic scores in the backdrop. While there will most certainly be plenty to take in as we watch The Witcher, we're hoping that there is a great score to accompany the series as well. It has been announced that Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli will be scoring the series, and while neither may be the most recognizable composers on the market, a few of their first tracks from the series were dropped online. We're hoping that these tracks a sign of good things to come!
2 Henry Cavill: The Witcher
Henry Cavill has been perhaps best known for his work as Superman in Man of Steel, Batman vs. Superman, and Justice League. However, for a myriad of reasons, it is arguable that he hasn't really gotten to take this role to the next level as DC's expanding cinematic universe has taken many twists and turns, resulting in no true sequel MoS (no, we're not counting BvS). While all of those films made plenty of money at the box office, they haven't necessarily cemented Henry Cavill as this generation's Superman. We're hoping that The Witcher gives him another chance to make an iconic role all his own through Geralt/The Witcher.
1 A Fitting Season Capper
We know that the showrunner has multiple seasons planned out and another season has already been officially ordered by Netflix. However, we won't be seeing season two before 2021 (yes, 2020 is just weeks away at this point, but doesn't entering another decade inherently feel longer?). We know that Netflix wants us to be excited for season two, but we're hoping that wherever Geralt lands, it's not a complete cliffhanger that we'll simply lose interest in over the course of at least 13 months, if not longer.