If you thought your days of seeing Henry Cavill play a fan-favorite hero on a screen were over, let me brighten up your day! You were wrong. He will be starting on Netflix’s upcoming adaptation of the best selling fantasy series by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski The Witcher, and he will be playing none other than the main hero of the story: Geralt of Rivia. If you’re not familiar with the series, The Witcher is a 7 (now 8) fantasy series that tells the story of Geralt of Rivia, a Witcher who kills monsters for a living and is trying to find his place in the treacherous world he lives in and protect his loved ones at the same time.
It’s always good to know that The Witcher series was also developed as a video game trilogy by polish video game publisher CD Projekt Red. Said trilogy was released as a role-playing game through 2007, 2011 and “ended” in 2015. It is known for being one of the best video game series out there, and that explains two things: why Netflix has high hopes for it, and the pressure they have on them by trying to please not only the book fans but also the gaming ones, while also trying to gain some new fans.
But anywho! If you have no idea what to expect from Cavill’s upcoming series, as a book fan myself, I’m here to help with some minor yet important details!
1. A rich and beautiful setting!
The Witcher is set in the Continent, and being a medieval fantasy, you can expect a vast and beautiful setting to enjoy during a peaceful horse ride, an intense monster hunt, or a fight for your life! Expect to see Geralt visiting villages that are threatened by monsters, woods that are deadly for any kind of intruders, ruins of what used to be powerful kingdoms, bloody battlefields, and…I think you get the idea, right?
2. Lots of magic!
Magic has a very important role on this series. It can be seen all across the world of The Witcher, and it can be conjured by those who learn how to channel it like the sorcerers and even the witchers. After all, the main reason they’re skilled monster hunters is because they undergo hard training and mutations that lead them to develop supernatural abilities! Interesting, right? But besides magic, magical and supernatural creatures like: vampires, werewolves, dryads, elves, dwarfs, unicorns and many, many more also have a very important role and, in many cases, they’re more than just monsters. And talking about monsters…
3. Expect to see lots of monsters!
And when I talk about monsters, I mean all kinds of them! You can easily google a list of all the monsters that are present in The Witcher and lose yourself in it! It goes from ghouls to griffins, to shapeshifters and strygas, to wyverns, succubusses and the list goes on! But the tricky thing of this series is that sometimes, the real monster isn’t any of these creatures…
4. A good adventure!
I’m not saying that this will be the same in any way, but if you’ve loved the action-packed adventures present in The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, you might want to keep an eye out for this one! Because, in a vast world full of magic, monsters, political conflicts and battles, you’re bound to get an active and captivating adventure with some deaths along the way!
5. Good and complicated relationships!
As a busy monster hunter who spends his days traveling along the Continent, Geralt meets and is known by a lot of people across the lands. But only a few have managed to develop some sort of closer relationship with him like the bard Jaskier, becoming his best friend, the sorceress Yennefer, becoming his lover, and the lovely Ciri, who ends up becoming more important than he ever imagined possible. If you’re wondering what I’m referring to when I mentioned some complicated relationships, it’s because the romance in this world is good and fun, don’t get me wrong on that, but also…a little complicated. I’d love to let you know why, but that would be quite a spoiler fueled so I’ll just leave it as a warning/clue! But, in the end, the relationships we get to see across this series are deeper and way more fun than they look so let’s hope they’re close to that on the show!
6. One big and powerful cast!
In October 2018, a month or two after Cavill’s cast as Geralt of Rivia was announced, a list of the rest of the cast came out and it’s not that diverse, but it’s also not as white as it was feared to be. From left to right on the first row we have Henry Cavill (Geralt), Anya Chalotra (Yennefer), Freya Allan (Ciri), Jodhi May (Calanthe), and Mimi Ndiweni (Fringilla). On the second one, we have Therica Wilson-Read (Sabrina), Millie Brady (Renfri), Adam Levy (Mousesack), Björn Hlynur Haraldsson (Eist), and MyAnna Buring (Tissaia). And the cast has been growing ever since! It now counts with appearances by Joey Batey (Jaskier), Lars Mikkelsen (Stregobor), Mimi Ndiweni (Fringilla), Royce Pierreson (Istredd), Anna Shaffer (Triss) and many more! So far we have a lot of important book characters that go from sorcerers to kings and queens coming to life and that’s exciting!
Overall, if you’re a fan of big and powerful fantasy worlds, I’d recommend you keep this 8-episode Netflix series that is said to be coming between the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020 on the lookout! I’m really hoping it’s an intriguing and fun as the book, but I’m keeping my hopes coherently low in case the whole thing flops—which I hope doesn’t happen—, but in case it does, feel free to check the books or the games out if you’re interested! They’re great and even end up being more than just monster hunting, romance and adventure books!