Looks like The Witcher’s back on the menu, boys! Netflix has announced that the show’s second season will resume production August 17, evidently with everyone’s favorite bard playing social media intern for the day.
I’m dusting off my lute and quill,
I have some news, some mead to spill:
After all the months we’ve been apart
It’s time for production to restart.
The Witcher and his bard – who’s flawless,
Will reunite on set 17 August.— The Witcher (@witchernetflix) June 22, 2020
Back in March, The Witcher became the first big UK-produced TV show to shut down due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Deadline reported. While this was only supposed to be for two weeks, it continued on as the pandemic got worse and worse, with new cast-member Kristofer Hivju (Game of Thrones’ Tormund Giantsbane) even contracting the virus at one point. (He has since fully recovered.)
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At the time, showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich told The Wrap earlier this month, they were six weeks into shooting the new season: “We were literally in the middle of a big sequence we had been preparing for months.” In the meantime, she told the publication, the cast and crew have been keeping busy with production meetings, health and safety logistics, tweaks to the script, and a LOT of waiting.
As for what we can expect when the season returns to Netflix, Hissrich has been keeping fans updated with tidbits here and there. In her interview with The Wrap, she said that her “favorite additions” to season 2 are the new witchers. “It was, for us really, about getting Geralt back to his roots and sort of learning where he came from and what his story is and what his sense of family is,” she said, adding that she’s “excited to get back in and meet Vesemir, his father figure, for the first time and all of these men that he was raised with since he was seven years old.”
Other sneak peeks from season 2 we can expect? A deep-dive into Fringilla’s backstory, a mysterious original character named Violet, a much-more linear story, much shorter scripts, “a whole new set of fun characters” and other “non-humans,” more about Vilgefortz, a more complex characterization of the Nilfgaardians, queer representation, more aspects of Polish culture and language, and tons more. Plus a whole list of new cast-members, including Hivju as Nivellen (a cursed man who lives in the woods) and Killing Eve’s Kim Bodnia as Vesemir.
The Witcher season 2 is expected to return in 2021. A standalone anime movie called The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf will be landing on Netflix some time in the foreseeable future, as well.
