In The Witcher lore, one of the more recognizable events for both casual and diehard fans of the series is the legendary “Wild Hunt” storyline. It was, after all, the prevailing subject of the popular Witcher game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Now showrunner Lauren Hissrich has provided a sense of how it plays into the latest season of the show.
It seemed like at the end of season 2 we were going to go directly into the meat of the Wild Hunt storyline, but Hissrich recently told EW this won’t be the case, and that the infamous supernatural riders that make up the hunt will remain an ominous threat that looms over everything.
“I think a couple of things are gonna happen right now. We set up the Wild Hunt for Ciri in the middle of season 2 as her thinking, ‘I don’t quite understand what this is. I don’t understand why they’re in this dreamscape that I’m having.’ And then, obviously, at the very end, she visits the dark elves’ sphere and she realizes these people are after me.”
This obviously will give the storyline a little more room to breathe and not force it down the path where Ciri and Geralt have to face this ever-present existential threat. There’s also the opportunity to explore the Hunt on its own, especially with the introduction last season of Deathless Mother Voleth Meir, who feeds on others’ despair.
Meir is only one of the Hunt, and it makes sense that introducing more of them will only make an eventual showdown that much more meaningful.
“When we were talking about the pressure on Ciri and what she is experiencing from all of these people that seem to want her, what’s great is she has a run-in with the Wild Hunt so it becomes much more palpable to her and much scarier. One of the things that I love in the books that [author Andrzej] Sapkowski did beautifully is he teases the Wild Hunt for so long. They pop up, then they go away for a while. So we are definitely sticking to that school.”
Geralt also isn’t necessarily completely privy to the threat just yet, so there’s the opportunity in the show to let that happen organically, Hissrich said.
“We all know that, eventually, Geralt is going to learn a little bit more about the Wild Hunt, as will Ciri, but right now it stays this ever-looming threat to her. It sort of goes between her fingers. She can’t quite catch it and figure it out yet.”
The Witcher season 3 premieres sometime in the summer.