The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf focuses on Vesemir

Anyone familiar with the many iterations of The Witcher — Andrzej Sapkowski’s fantasy books, the video games, or the recent Netflix adaptation — knows of the sword-swinging hero, Geralt, a role currently owned by Henry Cavill. They also may know of Geralt’s teacher, the Witcher Vesemir, who remains a relatively unseen figure in Geralt’s history in the Netflix series. But in the season 1 finale, Vesemir manifested in a warmly voiced echo: “Geralt, I’ve been waiting for you.”

We now know that Vesemir’s voiceover was an Easter egg for a then-unannounced The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, a film focused on Geralt’s mentor in his younger years. Written and produced by Beau DeMayo, a staff writer on The Witcher, with The Witcher showrunner and executive producer Lauren Schmidt Hissrich co-producing, the animated feature — now out on Netflix — finds Vesemir working as a disgruntled servant of a noble estate. He soon flees servitude and seeks coin and glory under the brutal Witcher headquarters of Kaer Morhen. There, his body and soul undergo numerous trials and magical experiments to mold his mortal body into a suitable and magical physicality for the monster-slaying vocation.

DeMayo, who penned the third episode of The Witcher flagship series, “Betrayer Moon,” says he’s fortunate to fill in the blanks of Witcher history through Nightmare of the Wolf since Sapkowski’s source material left those areas untouched: from Vesemir’s dirt-poor adolescence to the Witcher-populated Kaer Morhen eons before a Witcher like Geralt was a rarity of his kind.

“The Witcher is about family. It’s about Geralt raising Ciri, it’s about Yennifer raising Ciri,” DeMayo says referring to the arc of the next Witcher season. “[This anime] is a question of who raised Geralt?” We are hoping Season 2 will come to Netflix soon, where Geralt meets Vesemir. Get your Netflix Subscription with OffGamers today!

[table]