Season 2 of The Witcher is coming, and this is what we know about Geralt’s return, including the show’s release date.<\/b>
\nWe know exactly when to expect Geralt of Rivia\u2019s return. The Witcher season 2 release date is now confirmed for December 17,2021 \u2013 and the WitcherCon virtual event in July 2021 has even treated us to a trailer, giving us our first proper look at the eagerly awaited follow-up. Netflix\u2019s big-budget adaptation of Andrzej\u2019s Sapkowski\u2019s bestselling novels \u2013 which have also spawned a hit videogame series \u2013 has proved every bit as epic as Game of Thrones, as the story of monster-hunting Geralt of Rivia, orphaned princess Ciri, and powerful mage Yennefer of Vengerberg introduced us to the vast world of the Continent. The Witcher season 2 is set to reveal more Witchers, more magic, and loads more double-crossing and political intrigue. Below we\u2019ve plundered footage from the trailers, interviews with the show\u2019s creators, episode titles and more to pull together all the important intel on one of the most eagerly anticipated TV shows of 2021. Here\u2019s everything we know about The Witcher season 2 on Netflix so far, from the trailer to the cast and beyond. Toss a coin to your Witcher\u2026 The Witcher season 2 will be released on December 17,2021, as revealed by Netflix during the WitcherCon virtual event in July 2021. The wait is almost over! Netflix has released the full two-minute teaser trailer for The Witcher season 2 in July 2021, as part of the WitcherCon event \u2013 check it out above. Seeing as much of the first season focused on Geralt’s efforts to fulfil the Law of Surprise binding him to Ciri, the young, orphaned heir of Cintra, it’s no shock that this first The Witcher season 2 trailer picks things up with them. Now that Geralt has made contact with Ciri, he takes her under his wing, taking her to Kaer Morhen \u2013 the citadel where he learned his Witcher skills. Presumably he’s planning to train her in the ways of the Witcher, while she works out her place in the Continent after the deaths of her family and loss of her kingdom \u2013 she admits that \u201csometimes I feel so afraid, I feel like I could burn the whole world.\u201d There’s also a brief sighting of the final member of The Witcher’s central triumvirate, Yennefer of Vengerberg, in the aftermath of season 1’s climactic Battle of Sodden Hill. She’s been found by Fringilla, the Nilfgaardian mage who was pivotal in the downfall of Cintra, who simply tells her: \u00ab\u00a0Welcome back…\u00a0\u00bb Does this mean Yennefer will start The Witcher season 2 in Nilfgaardian custody? Surely Fringilla and Yennefer aren’t about to become friends… \u201cWe’re digging deeper into [Fringilla\u2019s] past and how she ended up at Nilfgaard,\u201d showrunner Lauren S Hissrich told Vulture. \u201cWho she is as a person, and how she and Yennefer ended up on such different paths.\u00a0\u00bb An extra teaser video was shown during WitcherCon, but only gave a behind-the-scenes look at season 2: You can check out the Witcher stream below \u2013 the key info from the stream was the release date, and a few first glimpses of what’s to come next season. The episode titles for season 2 were revealed as part of WitcherCon. They are: The eighth and final episode’s title is apparently so secret we’ll have to wait to learn what it is. The episode titles offer up a few clues about The Witcher season 2. ‘A Grain of Truth’ takes its name from a short story in Andrzej Sapkowki\u2019s book The Last Wish, which features Nivellen, the character played by Game of Thrones\u2019 Kristofer Hivju in The Witcher season 2. ‘Kaer Morhen’ is the name of a fortress where Witchers are trained. ‘Redanian Intelligence’ refers to Redania, a country on the Continent that possesses an exceptional spy network \u2013 Redanian Intelligence is also the name of a news site devoted to The Witcher. ‘Dear Friend’ presumably refers to a letter Geralt wrote to Yennefer in the Witcher books. And ‘Voleth Meir’ refers to a new character played by Ania Marson. Voleth Meir is reportedly elven for ‘Deathless Mother’, and it seems the character will be important in Ciri’s arc. Netflix has announced most of The Witcher season 2 cast \u2013 including confirmations of who’ll be playing some major new characters from the books. The list of returning characters is as follows: The list of people joining The Witcher season 2 cast looks like this: While Geralt was something of a lone (White) wolf in season 1, we\u2019ll be meeting a few more Witchers in season 2. We know that Killing Eve’s Kim Bodnia is playing Witcher trainer Vesemir, and that we\u2019ll be visiting the Witcher school at Kaer Morhen. Paul Bullion, Yasen Atour and Basil Eidenbenz are also joining the cast as fellow Witchers Lambert, Co\u00ebn and Eskel, respectively, while Redanian Intelligence has reported that Joel Adrian will play another Witcher named Hemrik. Fans of the book and videogames will already be familiar with Lambert and Eskel, both of whom belong to the Geralt and Vesemir\u2019s School of the Wolf. It’s interesting that the producers are seemingly throwing in extra Witchers for season 2, seeing as these monster-slaying professionals are typically considered to be a dying breed. While there are references to other Witcher schools like the Cat and Bear in the books, Geralt\u2019s faction seems to be one of the few Witcher groups actively doing anything to fight the monster threat facing the Continent. In terms of other official announcements for the cast, Kristofer Hivju \u2013 best known as Game of Thrones’ Tormund Giantsbane \u2013 will play Nivellen, a man cursed with the body of a monster. (We\u2019re guessing we\u2019ll see him in the first episode of The Witcher season 2, \u2018A Grain of Truth\u2019, seeing as that\u2019s the name of the Andrzej Sapkowski short story where he appears.) In March 2021, Netflix revealed seven more characters who had been added to the cast. They were: Bridgerton\u2019s Adjoa Andoh as Nenneke, a priestess of Melitele in the books; Silent Witness\u2019s Liz Carr as Fenn; Four Weddings and a Funeral\u2019s Simon Callow as Fenn’s partner, Codringher; Outlander\u2019s Graham McTavish as Redanian armed forces head Dijkstra; Clique\u2019s Chris Fulton as the mage Rience; Cassie Clare as Redanian royal advisor Philippa Eilhart; and Downton Abbey\u2019s Kevin Doyle as Ba’Lian, a new character. Other castings include Mecia Simson as Francesca, Aisha Fabienne Ross as Lydia and Agnes Bjorn as Vereena. Deadline has also reported that Carmel Laniado has joined the cast as a young character called Violet for at least three episodes. At least one character from The Witcher games is destined for The Witcher season 2, too. According to Redanian Intelligence, the witty, powerful Queen Meve of Lyria and Rivia, introduced in the game Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales, is to be played by Rebecca Hanssen (Enola Holmes). Then there’s Alastair Parker, who played Cleaver in The Witcher 3 video game (also via Redanian Intelligence), who\u2019ll appear in an as-yet unrevealed role. The Witcher season 2 will have entirely different directors to season 1, and Netflix has confirmed their identities: Now that we’ve seen the trailer and read the official synopsis for The Witcher season 2, it’s confirmed that, as expected, Ciri will take center stage. Here’s Netflix’s official logline on the show’s return: \u00ab\u00a0Convinced Yennefer\u2019s life was lost at the Battle of Sodden, Geralt of Rivia brings Princess Cirilla to the safest place he knows, his childhood home of Kaer Morhen. While the Continent\u2019s kings, elves, humans and demons strive for supremacy outside its walls, he must protect the girl from something far more dangerous: the mysterious power she possesses inside.\u00a0\u00bb It’s a season about Geralt becoming a father figure to Ciri, according to showrunner Lauren S Hissrich, so expect that relationship to drive season 2. A big talking point of The Witcher season 1 was how it told stories in multiple places and across a non-linear timeline \u2013 the now-released official Witcher map and Witcher timeline really help make sense of the show \u2013 resulting in a multi-tale anthology of sorts. In an interview with Vulture discussing the odd structure of season 1, Hissrich said that while she believes \u00ab\u00a0the audience is incredibly smart\u00a0\u00bb, she had \u00ab\u00a0misunderstood what everyone was looking for in their entertainment\u00a0\u00bb. She said \u00ab\u00a0I love to be challenged when I’m watching TV,\u00a0\u00bb but conceded that wasn’t the case for everyone. However, season 1’s climax brought all the separate threads together nicely, priming The Witcher season 2 for a simpler plot. Hissrich has confirmed that Geralt, Ciri, and Yennefer exist in the same timeline now, so their stories will be told simultaneously. Indeed, this season will mark the first time Freya Allan and Anya Chalotra have actually acted together \u2013 so it should be more straightforward in terms of structure. \u00ab\u00a0That\u2019s where we ended season 1. That\u2019s absolutely where we will pick up in season two. The stories will be told in a much more linear fashion. They won\u2019t all be one story. It\u2019s not like all three are together and happy all the time. But, I do want to employ some different ways to look at time series-wide.\u00a0\u00bb That doesn’t mean we won’t see any of the episodic Geralt monster-hunting adventures that we loved in season 1. Hissrich will be mining \u00ab\u00a0different short stories\u00a0\u00bb for The Witcher season 2 \u2013 such as the aforementioned ‘A Grain of Truth’ \u2013 and suggests there’s an opportunity for flashback scenes. Some other changes are coming next year, too. The wrinkly Nilfgaardian armor, which some fans on the internet didn’t like, will be upgraded in The Witcher season 2. Hissrich told Flickering Myth’s Writer Experience podcast that, \u00ab\u00a0the Nilfgaard armor will be totally different. You have that opportunity [in season 2] to go back and course correct if you want to.\u00a0\u00bb And when asked by Pure Fandom for a teaser about The Witcher season 2, Hissrich simply had this to say: \u00ab\u00a0Without spoilers, I will say that there\u2019s a crop of new monsters, a new cost to magic, and new and unexpected pairings of our favorite characters.\u00a0\u00bb In addition to The Witcher season 2, an anime-style Witcher movie has been announced for Netflix called The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf. No release date has been set for that one yet, but we expect it before season 2 arrives. A leaked (but now-pulled) runtime for the film suggested it’ll be one hour and 21 minutes long. It’ll be written by Beau DeMayo (who scripted episode 3 of The Witcher season 1), and it focuses on Vesemir, Geralt’s mentor. He’ll be familiar to anyone who knows the games and the books. It’ll be animated by Studio Mir, which was behind the acclaimed Legend of Korra series. The story will take us \u00ab\u00a0back to a new threat facing the Continent\u00a0\u00bb. Now we know Kim Bodnia is playing Vesemir in The Witcher season 2, our prediction is he’ll voice him here too. An official synopsis was added to Netflix for Nightmare of the Wolf, which was later pulled. \u00ab\u00a0Long before mentoring Geralt, Vesemir begins his own journey as a witcher after the mysterious Delgan claims him through the Law of Surprise.\u00a0\u00bb A live-action prequel spin-off called The Witcher: Blood Origin is in the works, too. The first season of The Witcher shrugged off the idea that it was just here to fill a Game of Thrones-shaped hole in our lives. It confidently told stories in its own way and presented a fantasy world that has already captured people’s imaginations on their Xboxes and PlayStations. And, while we are unlikely to see much spillover from the games in the Netflix show \u2013 they are not really canon according to author Sapkowski but rather a \u00ab\u00a0free adaptation containing elements of [his] work\u00a0\u00bb \u2013 we know fans will enjoy various subtle references to the series, as they did in season 1. The Witcher could run on Netflix for a long time, too. Lauren S Hissrich claims to have thought out ideas for a massive seven seasons. And we’re pretty certain there’s enough source material left for that to be viable. We’ve got the entirety of Geralt, Ciri and Yennefer’s stories to play out. It takes them across the Continent to a rich variety of locations and introduces us to some of the best fantasy characters around. Ciri’s development is a great basis for future tales in The Witcher universe that combine themes of family and love, and mystery and magic. There’s plenty of books and external material for the creators to draw on, so it stands to reason we can expect to see more of them adapted into animated shorts or multiple seasons. Bring it on. We’re in for the long haul.<\/p>\n