Season 4 of The Witcher is here, and as usual, it brought along heaps of controversy. Apart from the fan backlash over Liam Hemsworth’s casting, the fourth season infamously kills off several characters that made it into Andrzej Sapkowski’s books.
In a recent interview with GamesRadar+, the showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich explained the reason why.
We’ve had some controversy with characters that we have killed off before, that aren’t killed in the books. Yet we always do it for a reason.
In the fourth season, it was Vesemir who met his end during the Battle of Montecalvo. Then, later at Styygga Castle, Istredd the mage sacrificed himself. As Hissrich explains, these deaths were not based on a whim but for the still-living characters to evolve through trauma.
I don’t think anyone is sitting around going, ‘Let’s just kill that person. Let’s have that shock value.’ One of the things that our characters have to deal with is the trauma of losing someone and how that changes who you are and how you view the world.
She continued that while several character deaths featured in this season are unexpected, they serve the purpose of changing other characters. Wanting to add a sort of human experience to the mystical and fantasy world of The Witcher, these deaths are, thus, larger than shock value.
The Witcher Season 5 Will Have An Even Higher Kill Count
The Witcher Season 4 was full of unexpected deaths, and the showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich teased that the final season will feature even more such unfortunate endings. Talking to GamesRadar+, she remarked that The Witcher is not always a happy place with a lot of death in the fifth season.
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In another interview with Variety, when asked about the death count in the fifth season, she stated:
Yes, the death count this season was huge, also think the death count of people who were really important to us. Anyone who’s familiar with this source material knows that it’s not a happy ending, and I do think that the body count just keeps on growing from here. It feels fitting. Obviously it’s going to be a goodbye to the series. We have to start to say some real goodbyes to these characters.
Well, whether or not it feels fitting, fans will surely be upset given how far the series has deviated from the source. Judging from her comments, it seems the fifth season will certainly feature more such creative decisions.
The Witcher Showrunner Explains Controversial Creative Decisions
Netflix’s adaptation of The Witcher, based on the books by Andrzej Sapkowski, has long been plagued by criticism for not being truthful to the source. It is also one of the reasons why Henry Cavill is rumored to have departed from the show.
However, Hissrich has no qualms, and nor does she seem to care about the backlash. Instead, in an interview with Dexerto, she defended the decision by insisting each medium requires its own adaptation.
You have book fans, you have video game fans, and then you have fans that knew nothing about this world until the show existed. And the truth is we can’t choose one audience. We have to remember what we are doing, which is a television show.
She added,
It is different than any other genre in any other form that you could tell this story, and we have to make the choices for that. We have eight hours every season to tell these stories, and we’re never going to be able to tell everything from the books.
Hissrich continued that for the sake of continuing the story, such changes are necessary since every detail in the books cannot be adapted onto the screen. While at the start, such creative decisions were seen as connective tissues helping them weave the story, by the end, such decisions were taken to give fans a perfect ending that can be summed up in five seasons.
One of the things that I’ve talked a lot to the author about and a lot to fans about is that the books still exist. No one is taking the books away. No one is taking the video games away. I think everyone can have their version of The Witcher and this is this version.
Hissrich’s defence might be seen as controversial as the decision itself, but it does not look like the fifth season will be as faithful to the source as fans would like. Nonetheless, the Netflix show deserves praise for adapting the complex world of The Witcher books.
What do you think about the showrunner’s latest remarks? Let us know in the comments below.
The Witcher, Seasons 1 to 4, is now streaming on Netflix.
