Warning: This article contains spoilers for season 2 of The Witcher.
Season 2 of The Witcher challenged Geralt and Ciri in ways that neither of them was quite prepared for, but the finale also deftly set up future narrative threads that the writers will undoubtedly pick up in season 3 and beyond.
This second chapter, which became available for streaming on Netflix the day before yesterday, loosely adapts Blood of Elves, the first novel in The Witcher pentalogy. In it, Geralt and Ciri make their way to the Witcher fortress of Kaer Morhen, where the princess can start her training and learn to control her powers.
While the series changed a lot of elements from the books, the heart and soul of the narrative still remained the same.
Warning: Spoilers to follow.
For instance, we learned that there’s more to Cirilla’s powers than merely a natural aptitude to seize Chaos and channel magical energy. Being a child of the Elder Blood, a descendant of a forgotten line of half-human and half-elven royals, the show reveals that Ciri can tap into a much more powerful and primordial source that gives her insight into the past as well as the future.
That already makes her a target for a number of ambitious individuals in the world of the Continent, or more specifically the Northern Kingdoms, and the closing moments of the finale reflect that by depicting all the people who are looking to either capture or kill Ciri.
For one, there’s the mage assassin Rience who is working for a mysterious client. Geralt already went toe-to-toe with this Rience and his assassins, and he barely managed to hold his own, so it’ll be interesting to see how he fares the next time they come to a confrontation. As for the elves, it seems that they’re on a quest for retribution to avenge the death of the first pure-born elf in years. The wizard Istredd gives them a clue as to where their salvation lies, and they decide to find this child of the Elder Blood.
Elsewhere, Tissaia convinces the kings and queens of the Northern Kingdoms to band together and send assassins to find and kill Princess Cirilla, as it’s the only viable way to secure the north and make sure that spymaster Dijkstra won’t get his hands on her and marries her to his king Vizimir, uniting Redania and Cintra and making Vizimir the most powerful ruler of them all. (Though it’s not a stretch of the imagination to assume that the rest are simultaneously making similar plans themselves.)
Nilfgaard has also adopted a special interest in the Cintran princess, and the White Flame is seeking her out for reasons of his own, just like the first season. Then there are the Wraiths of Mörhogg, of course, colloquially known as the Wild Hunt, also hunting Ciri, the purpose of which is anyone’s guess for now.
As you can see, for one reason or another, almost everyone is seeking out Ciri to either gain power or save the world from her power, and they’ll no doubt give Geralt a very difficult time in future seasons of The Witcher as he endeavors to dodge each threat and protect his ward.