The universe of The Witcher is vast, spawning several novels and three classic video games. So it makes senes that it would take some time to cover all the stories of the world of The Continent. It turns out, however, that it will take longer than expected.
In an interview with Comicbook.com, executive producer Tomek Bagiński revealed that the first season of the Netflix series only covers a portion of the first book of the series.
"Actually the books were a lot more source material than we could fit into eight episodes," Bagiński said, "so we have to really be very, very careful with choosing which stories we want to tell. And Lauren [S. Hissrich, showrunner,] did a really great job. Not only choosing the right stories to tell the story of Geralt, but also by giving some background both to Yennefer and to Ciri."
Bagiński went on to explain how the show would expand the world and focus on the stories of Yennefer and Ciri.
"The goal was always [to] tell a bigger story. A bigger story comes up first with the saga, and the saga there is not only about Geralt and his friends, it's also about Yennefer, it's also about Ciri, and we knew that we have to build those characters earlier."
The Witcher stars Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia, Anya Chalotra as Yennefer of Vengerberg, Freya Allan as Ciri and Joey Batey as Jaskier. The series will be available to stream on Netflix starting Dec. 20.