When the first season of Netflix’s The Witcher landed late last year, the biggest complaint and source of confusion for it stemmed back to the fact that it actually featured several timelines interwoven together, making for what was arguably an unnecessarily complicated watch. Showrunner Lauren S. Hissrich has regularly defended the decision to structure the first season this way, but because of how the first season ended, it would appear that all of the previous season’s timeline shenanigans are done and through. According to a new interview with Hissrich, the structure of Season 2 looks vastly different by comparison.
“Obviously, it was one of the most controversial parts of Season 1 and I didn’t expect it to be as controversial as it was. But it’s something I still stand behind, in terms of storytelling,” Hissrich told The Wrap about the decision to include multiple timelines in the first season. She also noted that the “goal was to get to know each of these characters individually, and the only way to do that was to separate their timelines.”
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“What’s great though is they have intersected now,” she continued. “So what we’ll see in Season 2 is that all of our characters are existing on the same timeline. What that allows us to do storywise though is to play with time in slightly different ways. We get to do flashbacks, we get to do flash-forwards, we get to actually integrate time in a completely different way that we weren’t able to do in Season 1. Because, if you can imagine, if we were in three different timelines (in Season 1) and then flashed forward or flashed back, we would have been in four or five or six timelines โ even I know that’s too much. So I think it will be a lot easier for the audience to follow and understand, especially a new audience coming in. But there are still going to be some fun challenges with time.”
The first eight-episode season of Netflix’s The Witcher is available to stream on the platform now. A second season is in the works, but it has paused filming due to coronavirus concerns. It is reportedly set to pick back up this August. Lauren S. Hissrich serves as showrunner. It stars Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia, Anya Chalotra as Yennefer, and Freya Allan as Ciri. New cast members for Season 2 include Kim Bodnia (Killing Eve) as Vesemir, Yasen Atour (Young Wallender) as Coen, Agnes Bjorn as Vereena, Paul Bullion (Peaky Blinders) as Lambert, Thue Ersted Rasmussen (Fast and Furious 9) as Eskel, Aisha Fabienne Ross (The Danish Girl) as Lydia, Kristofer Hivju (Game of Thrones) as Nivellen, and Mecia Simson as Francesca. You can check out all of our previous coverage of Netflix’s The Witcher right here.
Have you had a chance to watch Netflix‘s The Witcher? What did you think of the multiple timelines? Let us know in the comments, or hit me up directly on Twitter @rollinbishop to talk all things gaming!