Netflix's wildly popular series 'The Witcher' has everything you could want from a fantasy adventure, including terrifying beasts, magical feats, sword battles and power plays. In the first season, we watched as the destinies of the title character, a monster hunter named Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill), became inextricably linked with that of the tormented sorceress Yennefer of Vengerberg (Anya Chalotra) and the young princess Cirilla (Freya Allan) — whose role and powers begin to emerge in the long-awaited Season 2, which was unveiled on Dec. 17.

But the show, based on a world created by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski, also has a sense of humour that often borders on the wacky, and it has even generated a pop-rock cult earworm, “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher.” The series’ stylistic range is as unpredictable as it is wide.

To keep the inspiration flowing, showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich tapes ideas and references on a door. She was still a writer and executive producer on the Netflix superhero show “The Umbrella Academy” when she landed her new gig, back in August 2017, so the door did double duty for a while.

“When it was opened, it was all ‘Umbrella Academy,’ and when it was closed I could start delving into ‘The Witcher,’” she said.

Schmidt Hissrich, 43, spoke by video from Los Angeles about some of the inspirations behind “The Witcher.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

‘Labyrinth’

Schmidt Hissrich has long loved the Jim Henson film “Labyrinth” (1986), in which the teenage Sarah is lured into a strange world of goblins and fairies.

“You have live action, you have songs, you have fun, and you also have these creatures, and they all feel of the same world,” she said. “For ‘The Witcher’ we struggled at first with, ‘How do you have people take a story seriously when there are monsters flying left and right?’ I loved how ‘Labyrinth’ wrapped all these things together.”

The showrunner singled out the scene in which the Junk Lady dangles the lure of material possessions to distract Sarah from her mission. “There is that sense of, ‘If only I could stay here, if only I could believe this,” Schmidt Hissrich said. “And yet [Sarah] knows it’s not real.”

She compared the scene to one in the new season in which Ciri must make a decision between the past and the future — “and that’s really also what ‘Labyrinth’ is.”

Michal Koralewski

When she started on the series, Schmidt Hissrich felt it was important to understand where Sapkowski came from. Her research included going on a two-week trip to Poland and following Polish photographers on Instagram. Among them was Michal Koralewski, whose image of the Old Town in the medieval city of Poznan has been on her wall for a few years now.

“Fantasy is often represented as dire and dour and gray, and it’s all dusty because it’s the worst time in the world,’” she said, laughing. “One of the things that I wanted to bring to ‘The Witcher’ is a sense of light and color, so I was immediately attracted to the colors, the buildings, the brightness in the photo.”

Schmidt Hissrich also liked that the photo does not look like a Middle Ages cliché. “The show doesn’t take place in our conception of the medieval world — it’s a fantasy world with no boundaries of time and space,” she said. “A lot of times our characters speak with a little bit more modern language than you would expect. I know that’s a lot for a photograph but to me it hit all of those things.”

'The Witch’

Schmidt Hissrich does not seek out scary movies (“They give me nightmares”) but she makes an exception for Robert Eggers’ period shocker “The Witch,” from 2016. “The idea of telling a horror story by what you don’t see deeply informed how we approach things in ‘The Witcher,’” she said.

More specifically, she draws parallels between the film’s heroine, Thomasin (played by Anya Taylor-Joy) and Yennefer. “Thomasin is going for acceptance of who she is in Puritan New England, and independence and power against societal restraints,” Schmidt Hissrich said. “Their journeys are really interesting to me, and also, more generally, the blurring of good and evil. Temptation versus resistance: That theme from ‘The Witch’ directly informs Yennefer’s story this season.”

'Elektra’

Schmidt Hissrich’s association with Netflix began on the “Daredevil” series a few years ago, and she wrote the episode introducing the slinky Marvel assassin Elektra Natchios in Season 2. Pulling a copy of Michael Del Mundo’s “Elektra: Bloodlines” comic book from a shelf, she flipped to a couple of pages.

“Visually, she goes from being a dancer to being an assassin and all of those ribbons become the blood,” Schmidt Hissrich pointed out. “It’s a character who is forced to let all other parts of their identity fall away, to become this one thing, an assassin. Geralt is a witcher and we see what happens when that facade has to start to break down.”

The choreographic element seeped into Geralt’s fight in a library in Season 2. “It is such a beautiful dance, and it’s a very environmental fight — he is picking up a stool here, a lamp there, because he does not have his weapons,” Schmidt Hissrich said. “There is something that evokes ballet in it.”

A teacup

Sitting on Schmidt Hissrich’s desk is a lovely little teacup — with the word “poison” printed on it. “I love to write about contrast,” she said. “There’s a scene in Episode 6 that’s very quiet; the music is kind of lovely and nice. And then something very violent happens. Presenting those contrasts is a way to keep our audience on board.”

Clearly, “The Witcher” has its share of sex and violence, but it does not uncomfortably linger on either, unlike other series that may come to mind. “It’s an adult show — kids should not be watching it,” Schmidt Hissrich said. “But it doesn’t mean that every time we see someone get their head cut off, we should stay on the head and see everything spurting out.”

Netflix's wildly popular series 'The Witcher' has everything you could want from a fantasy adventure, including terrifying beasts, magical feats, sword battles and power plays.

Netflix's wildly popular series 'The Witcher' has everything you could want from a fantasy adventure, including terrifying beasts, magical feats, sword battles and power plays. In the first season, we watched as the destinies of the title character, a monster hunter named Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill), became inextricably linked with that of the tormented sorceress Yennefer of Vengerberg (Anya Chalotra) and the young princess Cirilla (Freya Allan) — whose role and powers begin to emerge in the long-awaited Season 2, which was unveiled on Dec. 17. But the show, based on a world created by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski, also has a sense of humour that often borders on the wacky, and it has even generated a pop-rock cult earworm, “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher.” The series’ stylistic range is as unpredictable as it is wide. To keep the inspiration flowing, showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich tapes ideas and references on a door. She was still a writer and executive producer on the Netflix superhero show “The Umbrella Academy” when she landed her new gig, back in August 2017, so the door did double duty for a while. “When it was opened, it was all ‘Umbrella Academy,’ and when it was closed I could start delving into ‘The Witcher,’” she said. Schmidt Hissrich, 43, spoke by video from Los Angeles about some of the inspirations behind “The Witcher.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation. ‘Labyrinth’ Schmidt Hissrich has long loved the Jim Henson film “Labyrinth” (1986), in which the teenage Sarah is lured into a strange world of goblins and fairies. “You have live action, you have songs, you have fun, and you also have these creatures, and they all feel of the same world,” she said. “For ‘The Witcher’ we struggled at first with, ‘How do you have people take a story seriously when there are monsters flying left and right?’ I loved how ‘Labyrinth’ wrapped all these things together.” The showrunner singled out the scene in which the Junk Lady dangles the lure of material possessions to distract Sarah from her mission. “There is that sense of, ‘If only I could stay here, if only I could believe this,” Schmidt Hissrich said. “And yet [Sarah] knows it’s not real.” She compared the scene to one in the new season in which Ciri must make a decision between the past and the future — “and that’s really also what ‘Labyrinth’ is.” Michal Koralewski When she started on the series, Schmidt Hissrich felt it was important to understand where Sapkowski came from. Her research included going on a two-week trip to Poland and following Polish photographers on Instagram. Among them was Michal Koralewski, whose image of the Old Town in the medieval city of Poznan has been on her wall for a few years now. “Fantasy is often represented as dire and dour and gray, and it’s all dusty because it’s the worst time in the world,’” she said, laughing. “One of the things that I wanted to bring to ‘The Witcher’ is a sense of light and color, so I was immediately attracted to the colors, the buildings, the brightness in the photo.” Schmidt Hissrich also liked that the photo does not look like a Middle Ages cliché. “The show doesn’t take place in our conception of the medieval world — it’s a fantasy world with no boundaries of time and space,” she said. “A lot of times our characters speak with a little bit more modern language than you would expect. I know that’s a lot for a photograph but to me it hit all of those things.” 'The Witch’ Schmidt Hissrich does not seek out scary movies (“They give me nightmares”) but she makes an exception for Robert Eggers’ period shocker “The Witch,” from 2016. “The idea of telling a horror story by what you don’t see deeply informed how we approach things in ‘The Witcher,’” she said. More specifically, she draws parallels between the film’s heroine, Thomasin (played by Anya Taylor-Joy) and Yennefer. “Thomasin is going for acceptance of who she is in Puritan New England, and independence and power against societal restraints,” Schmidt Hissrich said. “Their journeys are really interesting to me, and also, more generally, the blurring of good and evil. Temptation versus resistance: That theme from ‘The Witch’ directly informs Yennefer’s story this season.” 'Elektra’ Schmidt Hissrich’s association with Netflix began on the “Daredevil” series a few years ago, and she wrote the episode introducing the slinky Marvel assassin Elektra Natchios in Season 2. Pulling a copy of Michael Del Mundo’s “Elektra: Bloodlines” comic book from a shelf, she flipped to a couple of pages. “Visually, she goes from being a dancer to being an assassin and all of those ribbons become the blood,” Schmidt Hissrich pointed out. “It’s a character who is forced to let all other parts of their identity fall away, to become this one thing, an assassin. Geralt is a witcher and we see what happens when that facade has to start to break down.” The choreographic element seeped into Geralt’s fight in a library in Season 2. “It is such a beautiful dance, and it’s a very environmental fight — he is picking up a stool here, a lamp there, because he does not have his weapons,” Schmidt Hissrich said. “There is something that evokes ballet in it.” A teacup Sitting on Schmidt Hissrich’s desk is a lovely little teacup — with the word “poison” printed on it. “I love to write about contrast,” she said. “There’s a scene in Episode 6 that’s very quiet; the music is kind of lovely and nice. And then something very violent happens. Presenting those contrasts is a way to keep our audience on board.” Clearly, “The Witcher” has its share of sex and violence, but it does not uncomfortably linger on either, unlike other series that may come to mind. “It’s an adult show — kids should not be watching it,” Schmidt Hissrich said. “But it doesn’t mean that every time we see someone get their head cut off, we should stay on the head and see everything spurting out.”

A look at the inspirations behind ‘The Witcher’

Before “Squid Game,” before “Bridgerton,” there was “The Witcher.”

In late 2019, it was by some measures the most popular television show in the world, and it was Netflix’s second most-viewed TV debut to that point. Then COVID-19 set in, and two years passed without more “Witcher.” A few shows, notably “Squid Game,” overtook it in the all-time Netflix rankings. But Season 1 of “The Witcher” is still hanging in there, comfortably in fifth place.

That’s impressive, and a little surprising, for a “Game of Thrones”-on-a-budget sword-and-sorcery adventure whose visual and dramatic quality ranged from “hey, not bad” to “(helpless giggle).” Maybe it was a testament to the popularity of the source material, a cycle of stories and novels by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski that has also inspired a successful video game franchise. Maybe the audience for sprawling medieval fantasy, even when it’s medium grade, is simply that large.

Or maybe people were just drawn in by the show’s charms, of which it had several: a playful sense of humor (an area in which it scored quite a bit higher than “Game of Thrones”); a refreshingly straightforward episodic structure; and an amusing, minimalist performance by Henry Cavill as the witcher, Geralt, a mutant mercenary charged with hunting down all manner of CGI beasts.

Now the show’s pandemic-delayed second season is here, premiering Friday on Netflix, and based on six of the eight episodes, a lot of what made the series charming has been set aside. But that may not stop it from racking up equally impressive viewership numbers this time around.

Picking up in the wake of the scorched-earth battle between kingdoms that ended Season 1, the show takes Geralt away from peripatetic monster-slaying for hire and puts him on a narrower path, as bodyguard and teacher to Ciri (Freya Allan), the refugee princess with mysterious powers. The third major character, the mage Yennefer (Anya Chalotra), has lost her magic and is also on the run. Jaskier (Joey Batey), the traveling bard — the 13th century’s version of a fabulous cabaret star — who was responsible for much of the sniping humor is offstage in the early episodes.

It feels as if, after the good times of Season 1, the series’ creator and showrunner, Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, decided it was time to get serious — to start incorporating more of the elaborate mythology and terminology of Sapkowski’s books.

Now there are more and longer conversations filling in the history of the story’s setting, called the Continent, and of the various species who inhabit it, including elves, dwarves and humans. Geralt and Ciri come off the road and hunker down in a witcher fortress where she trains to be a warrior, leading to discussions of whether she’s a savior or a destroyer. (There’s also a sheen of topicality, with elves representing an oppressed indigenous population.)

We also get a raft of new characters, some of whom seem to pop up out of nowhere; keeping track of all the faces and folklore, not to mention beasts — a grisly central European menagerie of wyverns, strzygas, chernobogs and the like — starts to feel like studying for a final exam without any notes.

On the positive side, the influx of new cast members includes Simon Callow and Liz Carr as a pair of paranormal investigators, Kim Bodnia of “The Bridge” as a veteran witcher and “Game of Thrones” alumnus Kristofer Hivju as a tusked nobleman in a subplot recalling “Beauty and the Beast.” The storylines begin to coalesce, and the action begins to pick up, around the fifth episode.

Cavill, who’s as lethal with a disappointed sigh or a sidelong glance as Geralt is with a dagger, is still a steady, engaging presence at the center of the action. Geralt’s scenes with his new sidekick, the somewhat grim young Ciri, don’t have the kick of his banter in Season 1 with Jaskier, though. The new season also finds less time for heart-to-hearts between Geralt and the one character who really understands him, his horse, Roach.

Overall, you probably know whether you’re the kind of viewer who’s willing to add another complicated Brothers Grimm-meets-Middle Earth saga to your schedule. And if you like your costumed fantasies mythology-forward and you find the mechanics of world building to be an end in themselves, then this new, more mysterious and portentous season of “The Witcher” may be for you. Plan accordingly. 
&nbsp;

Before “Squid Game,” before “Bridgerton,” there was “The Witcher.” In late 2019, it was by some measures the most popular television show in the world, and it was Netflix’s second most-viewed TV debut to that point.

Before “Squid Game,” before “Bridgerton,” there was “The Witcher.” In late 2019, it was by some measures the most popular television show in the world, and it was Netflix’s second most-viewed TV debut to that point. Then COVID-19 set in, and two years passed without more “Witcher.” A few shows, notably “Squid Game,” overtook it in the all-time Netflix rankings. But Season 1 of “The Witcher” is still hanging in there, comfortably in fifth place. That’s impressive, and a little surprising, for a “Game of Thrones”-on-a-budget sword-and-sorcery adventure whose visual and dramatic quality ranged from “hey, not bad” to “(helpless giggle).” Maybe it was a testament to the popularity of the source material, a cycle of stories and novels by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski that has also inspired a successful video game franchise. Maybe the audience for sprawling medieval fantasy, even when it’s medium grade, is simply that large. Or maybe people were just drawn in by the show’s charms, of which it had several: a playful sense of humor (an area in which it scored quite a bit higher than “Game of Thrones”); a refreshingly straightforward episodic structure; and an amusing, minimalist performance by Henry Cavill as the witcher, Geralt, a mutant mercenary charged with hunting down all manner of CGI beasts. Now the show’s pandemic-delayed second season is here, premiering Friday on Netflix, and based on six of the eight episodes, a lot of what made the series charming has been set aside. But that may not stop it from racking up equally impressive viewership numbers this time around. Picking up in the wake of the scorched-earth battle between kingdoms that ended Season 1, the show takes Geralt away from peripatetic monster-slaying for hire and puts him on a narrower path, as bodyguard and teacher to Ciri (Freya Allan), the refugee princess with mysterious powers. The third major character, the mage Yennefer (Anya Chalotra), has lost her magic and is also on the run. Jaskier (Joey Batey), the traveling bard — the 13th century’s version of a fabulous cabaret star — who was responsible for much of the sniping humor is offstage in the early episodes. It feels as if, after the good times of Season 1, the series’ creator and showrunner, Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, decided it was time to get serious — to start incorporating more of the elaborate mythology and terminology of Sapkowski’s books. Now there are more and longer conversations filling in the history of the story’s setting, called the Continent, and of the various species who inhabit it, including elves, dwarves and humans. Geralt and Ciri come off the road and hunker down in a witcher fortress where she trains to be a warrior, leading to discussions of whether she’s a savior or a destroyer. (There’s also a sheen of topicality, with elves representing an oppressed indigenous population.) We also get a raft of new characters, some of whom seem to pop up out of nowhere; keeping track of all the faces and folklore, not to mention beasts — a grisly central European menagerie of wyverns, strzygas, chernobogs and the like — starts to feel like studying for a final exam without any notes. On the positive side, the influx of new cast members includes Simon Callow and Liz Carr as a pair of paranormal investigators, Kim Bodnia of “The Bridge” as a veteran witcher and “Game of Thrones” alumnus Kristofer Hivju as a tusked nobleman in a subplot recalling “Beauty and the Beast.” The storylines begin to coalesce, and the action begins to pick up, around the fifth episode. Cavill, who’s as lethal with a disappointed sigh or a sidelong glance as Geralt is with a dagger, is still a steady, engaging presence at the center of the action. Geralt’s scenes with his new sidekick, the somewhat grim young Ciri, don’t have the kick of his banter in Season 1 with Jaskier, though. The new season also finds less time for heart-to-hearts between Geralt and the one character who really understands him, his horse, Roach. Overall, you probably know whether you’re the kind of viewer who’s willing to add another complicated Brothers Grimm-meets-Middle Earth saga to your schedule. And if you like your costumed fantasies mythology-forward and you find the mechanics of world building to be an end in themselves, then this new, more mysterious and portentous season of “The Witcher” may be for you. Plan accordingly.

Review: 'The Witcher,' the OTT heavy hitter, finally returns

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A look at the inspirations behind ‘The Witcher’

Review: 'The Witcher,' the OTT heavy hitter, finally returns