The Witcher Season 3 Release Is Sooner Than You Think

The Witcher Season 3 might be coming sooner than we would expect on Netflix. There are already plans to put it into production.

By Doug Norrie | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

henry cavill the witcher season 3

In this day and age of streamers and studios competing in what seems like a content arms race for the ages, it’s almost never good enough to wait eagerly for the next movie or series to come out. No, we have to do one better and wait for the follow-up to the yet unreleased productions. It’s just the way of the content world, with eyes always looking down the road for what is coming next. That’s the case with The Witcher season 3 which already has a production date set even though the second season hasn’t even hit Netflix yet. 

The folks at Redanian Intelligence (via ComicBook) have it that The Witcher Season 3 is gearing up for an early 2022 production timeline, which is a pretty fast turnaround all things considered. With Season 2 not even released on Netflix yet, it might be strange to already think ahead to the next season. But there are a couple of factors at play here. The first is that this second season is already coming much later than originally planned. The Witcher first hit Netflix in December of 2019. The plan was to begin production in short order but then a little thing called the Global Pandemic hit and that delayed the timeline for many months. 

What also delayed The Witcher production was a Henry Cavill injury that had them have to stop filming for a bit as well. So while it would seem that The Witcher season 3 is getting a faster turnaround than one could normally expect, the reality is that they seem to mostly just be making up for lost time here. It’s been two years since the first season hit, keeping it close to an every-year release schedule would mean starting things up sooner than later. And plus, Giant Freakin Robot had the exclusive that a The Witcher movie was in the works as well. Completing a third season before that production could be part of the plan. 

henry cavill

But of course, before we get The Witcher Season 3, we have a second season to deal with here. The story is set to pick back up on Netflix on December 17th, just a couple of months away. From the early trailers and some show descriptions, it looks like this season will focus much more on the relationship between Henry Cavill’s Geralt of Rivia and Freya Allen’s Ciri, with the two having come together at the end of last season. He becomes a guardian and protector for her to start, but it very much appears she has her own path as well. With continued world-building here there is plenty of space to grow this show considering the fantasy element and source material (books and movies) lends itself well to a narrative expansion. 

And Netflix would be incentivized to get The Witcher Season 3 out in short order considering the popularity of this series. While we, of course, don’t have numbers around the second season yet the prevailing wisdom is that this will be another incredibly popular offering for the streamer. The first season was one of the most-viewed series ever put out on the platform. Netflix reported 76 million viewers in the first month. Can The Witcher season 3 (or season 2) reach the same heights? Time will tell but it looks like Netflix is banking on just such a result.