With Geralt of Rivia now just eight days away from his big television debut, Netflix has dropped one final trailer for The Witcher that sets the scene for an epic showdown between the Empire of Nilfgaard and the Northern Kingdoms, and the crossed paths of a monster hunter, a sorceress, and a runaway princess.
Pretty dramatic, eh? I lifted that from the YouTube video description, which goes into no further detail at all about what's going on here. Fortunately, the Witcher subreddit has some thoughts on the matter. (And you might want to stop reading here if you're concerned about potential spoilers.)
I thought that the armored woman who appears at about the 30 second spot might be Meve, Queen of Lyria and Rivia, whose realm was conquered during the Second Nilfgaard War. FearDFortis of Reddit, however, says that it's actually Calathe, the Lioness of Cintra, Pavetta's mother and Ciri's grandmother—they can tell because the two lions on her armor are Cintrian.
It does appear to revolve around that war, though: I don't want to get too deep into it, on the off-chance that I'm right (the Witcher Wiki has more information, if you'd like to dig in) but the short version is that, through a series of political and military maneuvers that would make George R.R. Martin's eyes boggle, a whole bunch of people decided that Ciri needed to be dead, while some others figured it would be better if that didn't happen.
Whatever the story ultimately proves to be, I'm excited by how it all seems to be coming together. I had my doubts about the show, and Henry Cavill's casting, but at this point I'm thinking that it just might work. The Witcher debuts on Netflix on December 20.
