As THE WITCHER Fans Criticize Season 2 the Showrunner Promises Fans Will Be Heard with Season 3
Fans of The Witcher series have been pretty vocal regarding the creative decisions that have been made with the series franchise. In response to an Instagram post promoting The Witcher: Blood Origins, fans unleashed their concerns about the creative direction of Season 2.
Showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich was reading through these comments and responded to a few of them. In one response she says that Season 3 will see a “shift back to the books” and promises that fans will be heard. Here’s what she said:
"I did hear the fans. And S3 very much shows that shift back to the books, following Sapkowski's amazing character journeys of our mains. I'm super excited for people to see it, and to feel heard. (We also answer a lot of questions from the first two seasons — Cahir's journey, the introduction of the Scoia'tael, and how our family comes back together.)I also think that S3 will calm a lot of the speculation that's going on right now."
It’s kind of funny that she says this after the shocking announcement that Henry Cavill was leaving the show and being replaced by Liam Hemsworth. That’s definitely not something that the fans wanted. On top of that, one of the reasons why Cavill left the show was because of disagreements he was having with the creative in regard to the direction of the story and his character. He was the one championing for the story to stay closer to the books, but now that he’s gone, after Season 3, they’re going to do what they want.
Cavill previously expressed his frustrations about this during the press tour for the second season, saying: "The toughest part for me was finding that balance between the showrunners' vision and my love for the books, and trying to bring that Geralt to the showrunners' vision. It's about treading a fine line there. It's the showrunners' story and so it's an adaptation. The tricky bit for me was finding Geralt from the books' place within that and being able to serve both as much as I could. The things that I pushed for, it was not necessarily just more dialogue. It was bringing a more book-accurate Geralt to the screen. [...] All of my asks and requests were along the lines of just being faithful to the source material."
So, the reason why Season 3 shifts back to the books was because Cavill worked to make that happen. Cavill knows what the fans want, and now that he’s gone it makes me wonder if they will go off track again with Season 4 and Season 5 with Hemsworth.
In The Witcher Season 3, “as monarchs, mages, and beasts of the Continent compete to capture her, Geralt takes Ciri of Cintra into hiding, determined to protect his newly-reunited family against those who threaten to destroy it. Entrusted with Ciri’s magical training, Yennefer leads them to the protected fortress of Aretuza, where she hopes to discover more about the girl’s untapped powers; instead, they discover they’ve landed in a battlefield of political corruption, dark magic, and treachery. They must fight back, put everything on the line — or risk losing each other forever.”
When talking about Cavill’s final season and the last couple of episodes, executive producer Steve Gaub said: "It's a very strong season for Henry, a great final run for him as Geralt. I think the most important thing for us was to make sure he was very proud of those last [scenes], invariably those last moments are the ones you leave an audience with, and those last couple episodes are very strong episodes for him.”
He went on to say that Cavill “left with his head held high and passing the reins as many franchises end up doing, passing a title character from one actor to another, and we're going to be in great hands with Liam."
But, will the series be in great hands with the creative team with Cavill no longer involved? That has yet to be seen.
The first five episodes of The Witcher Season 3 will be released on June 29th, with Volume 2, including the season’s final three episodes, set to drop on July 27th.
Via: ScreenRant