It is, apparently, not all sitting around in a tub before you kill a monster for coins and bardic inspiration, apparently.
Speaking during a pre-recorded panel at the online Annecy Film Festival (as reported by Variety), Witcher showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich and co-executive producer Kwang Il Han opened up about Studio Mir’s work on the new Witcher animated prequel Nightmare of the Wolf. “There are things I wanted to know about what it takes to become a Witcher, how Geralt became a Witcher, where his journey started and who was important to him,” Hissrich said of the series’ goals.
That important person, the focus of Nightmare of the Wolf, is Vesemir, a major character from the Witcher novels and CD Projekt Red’s gaming adaptations, and Geralt’s Witcher mentor. While Vesemir will appear in The Witcher’s second season in live-action, played by Kim Bodnia, its still unknown if the Killing Eve actor will voice the younger Vesemir in Nightmare of the Wolf.
According to Variety, the Vesemir we meet in the series is “seemingly unshakable” until a crisis affecting the entire Continent will force him to “re-evaluate why he does the work he does.”
As well as exploring the origins of the Witchers as an organisation — and the climactic events in the Continent that gave rise to the existence of magic and monsters alike, as well as the eventual distrust between mages and Witchers — Hissrich emphasised that Nightmare of the Wolf will explore Vesemir’s arc and how that maps onto Geralt’s eventual worldview, as well as the latter’s burgeoning relationship with his young ward, Ciri.
“Families are multi-generational. The things I teach my children, I learned from the generation ahead of me. When we meet Geralt in The Witcher he is a full adult, he’s 100 years old and he’s been living on his own for a very long time,” Hissrich said. “But you can’t help wondering how he learned the things he practices regularly and is going to teach Ciri.”
Nightmare of the Wolf is set to hit Netflix sometime later this year, ahead of the second season of the show.