Production for the third season of Netflix’s The Witcher concluded several days ago after five months of hard work. And while there’s still a lot of post-production to be done for the Henry Cavill, Anya Chalotra and Freya Allan-starring series, there is already a small glimpse into the future.
Several months ago, director Stephen Surjik revealed that Season 4 of The Witcher was already being mapped out by the producers of the show. Now, we have an update on that front.
The Witcher Season 4 and Season 5 planned to be produced back to back
We have been informed by different sources that there currently is an intention within the Witcher production to make Season 4 and Season 5 back to back, both the writing and the filming.
There is no word regarding when they intend to start filming The Witcher Season 4 and 5, but we heard the writing should begin within the next few months, just like Season 3 was already in the process of being written three months after Season 2 finished filming.
Making just one season is an incredibly difficult task and making two back to back will no doubt be even harder, considering each season takes 5-6 months to shoot and it’s a very big cast to coordinate with their schedules and commitments to other projects.
It’s certainly rare for a TV series, but is has been done, even recently and within the Netflix family. All three seasons of Vikings: Valhalla were shot almost back to back with a couple of months of breaks between each.
If they follow through with their intentions, here as well there probably won’t be 12 months of non-stop filming since that would be extremely exhausting and miserable for everyone involved. If when the day and date comes for scheduling all of that and the plan become unnecessarily troublesome, they can always do things the usual way.
In any case, the mere planning of such a significant feat should indicate that Netflix most likely isn’t cancelling The Witcher after three seasons, as some feared, and has likely given the team the green light to go ahead and make big plans.
We are hoping to hear more about this at the Tudum virtual event on September 24, 2022. Perhaps Netflix will officially announce the next chapter in The Witcher universe since Season 3 was officially confirmed during Tudum last year as well, along with updates on its multiple spinoffs.
When might The Witcher Season 4 and 5 arrive on Netflix?
The first three seasons of The Witcher were produced more or less conventionally, and it wasn’t too hard to point a quarter of a certain year and predict an approximate release window. This time around it’s more difficult, not knowing how exactly are they planning to execute things.
We’ll allow ourselves to speculate a little. If after many months of writing, Season 4 begins filming sometime in the second half of 2023, a traditional December 2024 release would be possible within a traditional TV production time-frame. Meanwhile Season 5 could still be in production then and could be aiming for a December 2025 release, eliminating the 1.5-2 year gap between seasons this time.
But we’ll have to wait and see a very long time to know what will happen and when.
Could Season 5 be the last for The Witcher?
We certainly hope not. The next two novels from Andrzej Sapkowski that The Witcher is adapting are Baptism of Fire and The Tower of the Swallow. Baptism is a very Geralt-heavy book, while Tower is mainly focused on Ciri, with a lot of the events of the two books happening concurrently.
Both books cover a lot of interesting events worthy of adapting and could require two seasons to fully explore. Especially with more attention and screen time in the series dedicated to other characters outside the main trio.
Season 4 and Season 5 could possibly adapt halves of Baptism and Tower each, with Season 6 potentially adapting Lady of the Lake. That is the optimistic version.
Things could be different as well. There has been an observable pattern among productions when the last two installments of a long TV or film series were done back to back in order to power through and finish. The last two Harry Potter films, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and 3 back when it was still a trilogy, the final two Hunger Games films, Breaking Bad extra large Season 5A and 5B, Ozark extra large Season 4A and 4B, among others.
In that case, Season 4 would have to condense the events of both Baptism of Fire and Tower of the Swallow into one season and leave Lady of the Lake to Season 5. That is the pessimistic version, especially for Hansa lovers because we’d see much less Hansa content than in the books.
But again, we will have to wait and see. In the meantime, let’s just hope for the best.
Season 3 of The Witcher is in post-production 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.