The second season of The Witcher will continue the first season’s adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski’s novels, but showrunner Lauren S. Hissrich says the new season will feature more monsters than the book from which it draws inspiration.
In an interview with Sci-Fi and Fantasy Magazine (via Redanian Intelligence) earlier this week, Hissrich said monsters will appear more frequently than they do in the third of The Witcher novels Blood of Elves, in part because the video games feature a wider array of monsters than the books.
“Blood of Elves lacks monsters,” Hissrich said. “There’s just not very many. But we know from the games that people really like to see Geralt battling monsters, so we continued adding more monsters to Season 2.”
One reason Blood of Elves is relatively lacking in the monsters department is because most of it takes place at the home and training grounds of the Witchers of the School of the Wolf, Kaer Morhen. Geralt takes Ciri here to train her in the ways of the Witcher in preparation for what’s to come.
For die-hard fans of the books, this change might come as a disappointment, but since most fans of the series were likely introduced to the franchise through the games, it makes sense that Hissrich would want to incorporate elements that made the games so popular into the show.
The Witcher season 2 is set to premiere on Netflix on December 17th and in addition to veterans like Henry Cavill and Anya Chalotra reprising their roles as Geralt and Yennefer respectively, new characters will also make their debut including Kim Bodina’s Vesemir and Kristofer Hivju as Nivellen.