The Witcher is one of Netflix’s most popular shows, taking the streaming service by storm. Even though its first season released late 2019, the show made it on the top 10 list that year. The show continued strong into its second season, and now, production has begun on season three. It seems the show is in no hurry to end soon, and neither is the franchise, as Netflix has made plans for several spinoff series with new characters all set in the same universe.
As the seasons for the original show continue to flesh out the story, more and more of the popular book characters are brought to life. The Witcher wouldn’t be anywhere without Geralt and Ciri, the two main characters of the book, but you also can’t forget about two very important figures in Geralt’s life, Yennefer and Jaskier. Seeing as these are the main characters to have carried over from season one into season two, we’ll certainly see more of them in the coming seasons. Though there are other important characters that we also haven’t seen the last of, and more to be introduced, it’s important to understand the main group in order to make sense of the story.
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Geralt
Netflix
With his bright white hair and shockingly yellow eyes, it’s easy to pick Geralt out of a crowd. Played by Henry Cavill, Geralt is one of the main characters of the story, and is a witcher. The witchers are a group of mutants with a complicated history. When monsters first started roaming the world, those with magic helped develop a series of mutagens that, when used properly, permanently heightened the senses and reflexes of a normal human and even allowed them to use a very small amount of magic.
Once trained, this made it so that they could protect others from the monsters that threatened every town and village. The witchers then began to make a living killing these beasts for everyone and protecting them, but because of their mutations, it was believed they were no longer human, losing things like their emotions, so the humans in turn began to dislike them.
Geralt was among the last group of witchers to receive the mutagen, as the recipe is now lost to time. It is a very painful process that only a few children actually make it through. He was subjected to more trials than usual due to his unusual resistance to the mutagens, which is why his hair turned white. Otherwise, Geralt was not really any different from the other witchers until the story begins, spending his days constantly on the road, traveling from town to town and looking for someone to have a monster problem, or for someone to pay him for the monster he killed nearby.
Though the stigma around the witchers remains even though they are dying out, Geralt still manages to find a few friends in his life, for better or for worse. Jaskier seems determined to befriend him and use his adventures for his own songs, hoping to help clear the bad name of the witchers. He also finds a lover in Yennefer, though they constantly chase each other around and never seem to be able to settle down. Then, once he visits Cintra and accidentally gains a child surprise, Geralt’s life changes. As we see in the show, he quickly changes from nothing more than a monster killer into a protective father. As the show continues, you can count on him having more interactions with these three, continuing to prove that witchers can, in fact, feel emotions.
Ciri
The child surprise herself, Ciri, is played by Freya Allan. Ciri takes after her mother, sporting blonde hair and green eyes and inheriting similar inherent magical gifts. She is raised as the princess of Cintra, as she is royalty, but she has no idea she is destined for Geralt. Instead, she learns the ins and outs of politics and frivolity until war threatens Cintra and her last remaining family is killed. This is where her story in season one begins — after running away from the palace before she could die or be captured, she sets out to find Geralt, the person her grandmother had only just told her about.
Having a child surprise was not uncommon for witchers. Often, if a family couldn’t afford to give a witcher money, they might offer whatever surprise waited for them at home, which sometimes ended up being a child. These children were then taken from their parents and raised among the witchers to go through the trials and those who survived would become new witchers. This is why her grandmother was so against letting Geralt have her, and is why she begins to receive witcher training in the second season.
Season two also finally began to show us why Ciri is so important to the story, though some of it is still a little vague. The show mentions she has Elder blood, but doesn’t talk a lot about what this really means. Somewhere high up in her family tree is a special elf who had a child with a mage. That child has the blood of elves and magic within its veins, which is passed all the way down to Ciri. This unknown makes her dangerous, and proves there is a lot more destiny in store for her.
Yennefer
Yennefer is Geralt’s will-they-or-won’t-they, on-again-off-again sorceress girlfriend, played by Anya Chalotra. Though her backstory isn’t touched on much in the books, the show is different from the books in giving us a lot more than we ever had, really helping develop her character for the screen. She starts from humble beginnings, coming from a house and a village that didn’t really like her because of her hunchback appearance. This was blamed on the elven blood in her. Once she uses magic for the first time, she is quickly found and brought to Aretuza to train among the other sorceresses there.
After her training is complete, Yen’s appearance is magically altered to look how she wants to, removing the hunchback and leaving her with her signature long black hair and violet eyes at the cost of her ability to reproduce. She soon regrets this and leaves Aretuza and the path they had set before her to try and pursue a way to regain her ability to have a child. This is where she meets Geralt, and due to a wish from a djinn, she and Geralt are unable to stop running into each other over the course of their lives.
Of course, this doesn’t come without complications. When Yennefer learns of the wish, she thinks it is the only reason they even fell in love and feels betrayed by it, running away from Geralt and leaving him behind in season one. However, they still run into each other in season two, after Yennefer has lost her magic and a witch has her convinced Ciri is the only way she will get it back. Though she does begin to make amends for it after, what their relationship will become in season three as a result is still yet to be seen.
Jaskier
Though he’s the only person on this list who isn’t considered a main character, he is the only one important to Geralt’s life that shows up in both seasons so far. He’s played by Joey Batey, and has definitely become a fan favorite. This eccentric bard is one of Geralt’s closest friends, deciding to accompany him on his journey in order to write songs about his adventures and maybe help fix his reputation. Whenever Jaskier is on-screen, you can almost be certain his brown hair and blue eyes will be practically unnoticeable behind the loud and lavish clothes he usually wears.
We don’t know much about Jaskier’s life before he joins Geralt, but we do know that, in the show, he isn’t a very well-respected or well-liked bard yet. It isn’t until after he writes his hit song, Toss a Coin to Your Witcher, that he finally begins to gain popularity. Even so, he still insists on traveling with Geralt, popping in and out of his different adventures in the first season until, when Geralt is upset, he gets sent off on his own separate path.
Geralt and Jaskier eventually make up again in season two of The Witcher, in which Jaskier helps Geralt find Ciri and Yennefer. However, in the interim, we discover Jaskier has actually begun to smuggle elves out of the city, using his influence and popularity to hide them and get them to safety instead of getting them killed. It begins to show us the many sides of Jaskier other than being a bard — in the books, he spent a bit of time as a spy for Redania. We’re certain to see more of him in the next season due to his popularity, so you can bet we’ll see other facets of his character develop then.
