There’s a lot to like about The Witcher’s first season. Kickass magic! Henry Cavill in a bathtub! That banger of a song! Henry Cavill, in a bathtub! Cool fight scenes! Henry Cavill! In a bathtub! But one repeated source of confusion for some fans was how the series played with time—which will thankfully not be a problem coming into season two.
Speaking to IGN about the upcoming season—and the production team’s decision to spend 2020 iterating on scripts and planning for the season, rather than rushing out season two to release later this year—showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich also touched on how the sophomore season’s storytelling will be much more focused.
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“What we’ve done by the end of season one is bring everyone onto the same timeline, and their stories will start to intersect a lot more,” Hissrich told the site. “I personally was sad that the timelines weren’t received as well as I hoped they would’ve been. I think they’re fun. But I think the audience lucked out a lot because, in season two, those were already gone anyway. So I do think that it’s going to be an easier season to follow. But I think more than that, the storytelling is a lot more focused.”
This shouldn’t be too surprising, of course. As Hissrich mentioned, by the end of the first season, the time displacement between Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri’s arcs had settled, with Geralt and Ciri at least reunited in the final moments. While Yennefer is absent following the Battle of Sodden Hill, it’s at least happening concurrently with the events of Geralt and Ciri’s reunion, so even if just where she is right now is currently a mystery, at least it’s happening at the same time.
But given that it was one of the most consistent detractions coming out of the first season, it’s nice to know the second season won’t have a similar problem.