Production for the third season of Netflix’s The Witcher is fast approaching to its eventual conclusion, but while it’s still on, we still get interesting new info now and then about the Henry Cavill, Anya Chalotra and Freya Allan fantasy series.
Today we have a return of an iconic book location that was subject of some heated discussions back when Season 1 came out.
Back to the Brokilon Forest
For the past three weeks, The Witcher has been filming scenes that take place in the Brokilon forest, the home of dryads. The helmer for those scenes is Bola Ogun, who directs episodes 7 and 8 of The Witcher Season 3.
Henry Cavill and Meng’er Zhang (Milva) are among the cast who are involved in the scenes, which make perfect sense. After a crushing defeat at the hands of Vilgefortz, Geralt is taken to Brokilon so the dryads heal him. There he meets Milva, who eventually becomes a very valuable ally of his.
For the first season, Brokilon was filmed in the woods located on the Canary Islands. Now, however, they are filming it in the local woods in Surrey, England.
But there is something else about the Brokilon sequence that we didn’t expect.
Cahir in Brokilon as well
We’ve heard that Eamon Farren‘s Cahir is also among the cast involved in the Brokilon sequence in the last weeks. This takes us back to something we heard months ago, but didn’t know where to place it at the time.
Around the very end of the final episode of Season 3, Milva helps an injured Geralt escape, while Cahir is watching them from afar.
When we heard this, filming was only in its first month and at the time we were still under the impression that Thanedd was to be in the final episode, not episode 6 and assumed Milva helps Geralt escape from Thanedd.
But it’s now apparent that something forces Geralt and Milva escape from Brokilon, not Thanedd as the coup takes place two episodes earlier than that.
Is Brokilon under attack?
It’s hard to say for certain, but the clues point to something bad happening in Brokilon involving Cahir and Nilfgaardians. Bad enough for Milva and Geralt to escape.
In the books, Brokilon has never been breached or conquered and the dryads have been living in the forest since anyone can remember. Even after the events of the books, Duen Canell, the dryad capital was still standing strong.
It would certainly be sad to see Brokilon breached and massacred at the hands of Nilfgaardians, but not entirely unexpected as the post-Thanedd events in Time of Contempt have almost zero action, while the show always ups the action when it’s possible.
Still, we don’t know for certain, but allow ourselves to speculate and connect the dots based on the clues that we know.
In any case, we’ll work hard to find out more about what happens there and try and bring clarity to the situation.
Season 3 of The Witcher is in production until September 2022 for a 2023 release. The live-action prequel The Witcher: Blood Origin is in post-production after two weeks of reshoots and is currently eyed for a Christmas 2022 release. Stay tuned to Redanian Intelligence and do pop into our Discord server to join in on The Witcher conversation.