The first week of The Witcher‘s filming in Moroccan part of the Sahara Desert is done and the second week is now starting. The location will of course represent the Korath desert in the third season of The Witcher, alternatively called as the Frying Pan in The Continent.
Last time we reported about Freya Allan‘s Ciri filming sequences with stunt people and two white horses, with one of them definitely portraying the iconic unicorn called Ihuarraquax. Now we have something more.
READ MORE: The Witcher Season 3 Films an Iconic Ciri Sequence in the Sahara Desert
Ciri will “see” her mother again
As the second week of filming in Morocco starts, Gaia Mondadori, who plays Ciri’s long-deceased mother Pavetta, has confirmed her presence in the Sahara Desert, which means Ciri will be having a vision or a mirage of her mother while wandering in the Frying Pan, dehydrated and in extreme heat.
The extreme heat won’t be difficult to recreate as the temperature in the filming locations these days reaches 43°C/102°F, so Ciri’s reaction to heat can be expected to be 100% authentic on screen.
It’s obvious Ciri misses her mother very much, despite not having a chance to know her since Pavetta died when Ciri was very small. Nevertheless, Ciri keeps repeatedly seeing her, whether it’s with the help of Triss and Dol Durza, or being trapped by Voleth Meir or as an effect of heat and dehydration in the desert.
The director working on these scenes is Bola Ogun, so we can be sure we’ll see Ciri in the Korath Desert in either episode 7 or 8 of the new season as an aftermath of the Thanedd coup, where Ciri enters Tor Lara and teleports straight to the desert as a result of an unstable portal.
Have we already heard the unicorn’s voice in The Witcher?
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Ciri in the desert, by the way. Back in the first season, Ciri drinks the waters of Brokilon from the source, which is the Shan-Kayan tree. She is then induced into a vision of her in a desert with this tree and she hears a female voice say: “What are you, child?”
This is never referenced again in the series, but showrunner Lauren Hissrich assured the viewers in a behind the scenes promo for the first season that the tree will not be forgotten.
“Shan-Kayan is a tree, which the dryads are worshipping. There’s a voice at the end that booms: ‘What are you, child?’ and it’s the first inclination that the dryads have that she is special, that there’s something bigger about her. But as the series continues, much, much later, we’re gonna start to get into exactly what voice was speaking to her and what agenda that voice has. It’s a mystery, actually, that we’re gonna keep building up throughout the series.”
Is it possible Lauren was hinting at none other than Ihuarraquax? Will the unicorn’s voice be female in the series? It’s certainly a possibility and the Season 1 scene could very well have been a foreshadowing of her Frying Pan episode.
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.