SPOILER alert:This contains spoilers from“The Witcher,” now streaming on Netflix.
“The Witcher” Season 3 Volume 1 returns June 29 on Netflix with Volume 2 dropping July 27, promising more battles, fantastical creatures, magic, intrigue and the driving philosophy that family is worth fighting for, according to showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich.
Henry Cavill returns as Geralt, the titular character, who’s on the road with Ciri (Freya Allan) and the mage Yennefer (Anya Chalotra). They make a dysfunctional little family, with Ciri coming into her own as a warrior princess. Season 3 also sees the elves battle over their agenda, while the forces of other kingdoms work against Geralt, Ciri and Yennefer. There’s also a fantastic mages’ ball on Aretuza, which is a visual showstopper in design and storytelling.
“What’s really fantastic is that with a project like ‘The Witcher,’ you’re able to kind of continuously build on a visual language that and bring more detail and sophistication to it,” says Andrew Laws, production designer and concept designer. “And I think that you see a lot of that in Season 3, we see more of the worlds, we see different parts of the world. We recognize things that we’ve maybe established before, you know, Cintra, Redania, etc, but we’re seeing different parts of it and maybe more detail. But similarly, even in the parts of the world that we haven’t been to before … we’re now in a place where we’re getting more into the sophistication of detail and layering and the more microcosmic world as opposed to the macrocosmic world as a way of helping to accent or move the story along and be a part of that as a visual character.”
Season 3 also embraces a more epic look and feel.
“We were sort of coming out” of the “pandemic season, and there was a sort of liberation there and that we can spread our wings again, and opens it up a little bit more,” says Laws.
Locations are more diverse.
Says Laws, “We were in a position where we could be a little bit more global with where we wanted to be and that was very exciting. We knew that could add a lot, particularly when we open the story up but also further down the line and in the later episodes. It just allows our world to breathe again, which I think is really important.” Laws continues, “We were able to shoot in some environments that gave us multiple looks all within a certain regional area, which was very exciting.”
As the characters evolve, so do their clothes.
Costume designer Lucina Wright joined the show in Season 2, and says that she thought the scripts needed more grittiness and she wanted to create a stronger look for the characters. “And at that time, because of COVID when we were filming, the real world was darker so I thought well, why don’t bring it into ‘The Witcher,’ which is pretty dark anyway. So I introduced a lot of masks and a lot of hooded clothes,” adding that those garments were good to use during pandemic protocols. “And then when it evolved into Witcher Season 3, because they are going on different journeys, the costumes just illustrate what’s written” in the script and books.
Wright says that her extensive research includes the original books of course, “but then the most important thing is to work very closely with the actors, especially Henry [Cavill and] his armor for Season 2. … It’s like you work together to make sure they’re confident and they feel it’s their own character because they’ve had these characters since Season 1.”
One character that gets a deeper storyline in Season 3 is the troubadour Jaskier (Joey Batey), a charismatic rogue with a shallow point of view and a taste for colorful jackets who grows intellectually and emotionally over the course of the series.
“I will be honest, he’s the one character from Season 1 that I really wanted to get my hands on, because he did have a different portrayal in Season 1. In Season 2, he’s traveled. He’s been around the world, and he’s done a lot and he had to have his own level with Geralt [Cavill]. I thought they were both equal. And so that’s why I introduced the raspberry leopard coat and the fanciful shirt.
Wright notes that in Season 3, Jaskier falls in love, so his shirts have little heart details, and “if you look closely he’s got more jewelry around his neck” and more rings, while “the hair and makeup is more worldly.”
For Yennefer, “I tried to harken back to Season 1 when she had those power coats and strength … So when I met Anya on Season 3 I said, ‘You’re a tiger mom.’ I mean, she carries the series, she’s got an amazing presence.” She also wears billowy culottes, not a skirt, a very practical choice for a mage on a mission.
Another character who matures is Ciri — she’s still learning to fight but is now much more formidable. Wolfgang Stegemann, second unit director and stunt coordinator, says they wanted to show how she’s increased her abilities and technique, so they worked closely with Allan on training. “She gave a lot of input,” says Stegemann. “We learned where her talents and skills are and achieved a fighting style” that fit her. “We did a lot of training, a lot of choreography training, and we discovered — and Freya discovered — that actually works very well so that we could shoot a lot of the fights with her. We didn’t need to double her [in many of the scenes], which is amazing. And that shows then obviously the result of having her right in front of the camera — fighting super strong.”
As fighting and battles figure hugely in the series, armorer Nick Jeffires is key to the production. “I can take influences for many periods of history, and just out of my own brain but I always go through a manufacturing style of 1400, so 1400 to 1475, somewhere in there. So whatever we make has that medieval look about it. So there is a degree of license in there. We need to make it fit for the job, fit for purpose, but in the world we’re in, as long as we make it look as though it’s been made in the correct years we’re winning really.
“If the stuff doesn’t work in a fight, then it’s no good.”
For the ball in Episode 5, Wright was told to “go for it” and bring a Met Gala vibe to the costumes.
“I went for so black and white and then each character had their own color coming through, like Tissaia with teal, and Yennefer would have a shot of purple. So it was keeping it very stylized but having that color and then trying to get the most interesting fabrics to go with the lighting and because it was at night. And of course, Geralt in a pattern was quite a revelation for us also, and Henry went for it.”
With the costumes, production design and all the crafts that go into ‘The Witcher,’ Season 3 builds out the world even more. “I think part of it also is the evolution of the story and beginning to expand our point of view out of the individual kingdoms, and begin to understand the vastness of the continent and the conflict that’s on the continent,” says Laws. “So there’s a bit of a maximum there, that part of it is also us as an audience beginning to understand how vast this world is. And it continues to get vaster — that’s one of the fantastic things about ‘The Witcher’ is that from a design standpoint, there’s just so much to work with, it never seems to repeat itself and continues to get interesting. Even in places we’ve been before so that the scale and scope or the intimacy of those places evolves.”
