With only days left until the return of Netflix’s adaptation ofThe Witcher, no doubt you’ve been combing over every little detail and Easter egg that can be gleaned from thelatest trailers. But there’s also only so much that we can decipher from a trailer in terms of what will happen to our favorite characters on the Continent, among themHenry Cavill’s Geralt of Rivia — who will be leaving the show in this particular incarnation at the end of Season 3,replaced byLiam Hemsworthin the roleof the titular witcher. Until then, Geralt has a lot on his plate. Not only have he and Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) reluctantly joined forces in order to train Ciri (Freya Allan) in both the realms of fighting and chaos magic, but they’ve also got to keep the princess safe from several different forces, each of which has their own sinister plans for her.
But, as we’ve seen so far in the trailers for Season 3, Ciri is slowly growing into quite the capable fighter of her own, including having the use of her own sword. Ahead ofThe Witcher’s return on Netflix later this week, Collider had the opportunity to speak to several members of the show’s production team, and stunt coordinator/second unit directorWolfgang Stegemannand armorerNick Jeffriesfilled us in on what it takes to stage the impressive fights we get on-screen. One early Season 3 scene, where Geralt fights off a group of sellswords looking for Ciri, introduces some intriguing camerawork, as Stegemann revealed:
“That’s always the way we approach those sequences to make them unique and special. As you rightly said, it’s all about the camera. How is the camera moving in the fight? What I do is put the camera person into the mix, so it becomes another fighter. For the audience, it feels like it’s another person involved, but it’s basically the cameras living in the fight. We wanted to show different variations of how the fights can look. To achieve that, it needs a good team, a good crew, and a great actor.”
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There’s an Easter Egg Hiding in Ciri’s Sword in ‘The Witcher’ Season 3
In terms of the weapons used on the show, there are a lot of factors to take into account with regard to who’s wielding them — naturally, Ciri wouldn’t be using the same sword that Geralt is (although Season 3 hints at the fact that she might actually prefer how his blade handles over her own). As Jeffries outlined for us, Ciri’s sword, in particular, is designed not only to be used by someone of Allan’s size and stature, but also for a unique purpose that sets it apart from other weapons:
“You have to take into account people’s physical size. How big they are is obviously a major factor, and what they need to do with the weapon and really combine the two. If it were too heavy and unwieldy for someone of a shorter stature and smaller, it wouldn’t work so well. It’s also the first sword that [Ciri]’s had that wasn’t a standard training sword.”
That said, there is an intriguing Easter egg in the weapon itself, which Jeffries also alluded to: “It isn’t the first time we’ve seen most of the sword. It has a previous life, which, hopefully, if someone knows theirWitcher, will work out what that is. Then, once they’ve worked out what that is, it will make massive sense.”
Season 3 ofThe Witcherwill besplit into two parts, with Volume 1 premiering on Netflix on June 29, with Volume 2 coming to the streamer on July 27.
