Brace yourselves, winter is coming. Well, a different kind of winter — and hopefully there won’t be any Red Weddings.
This weekend at San Diego Comic-Con, Netflix debuted the trailer for their upcoming fantasy series The Witcher. Based on the novels by Andrzej Sapkowski, it stars Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia, a witcher tasked with fighting beasts and dangerous magical beings, and treacherous power-hungry humans.
The Witcher trailer features first looks at Cavill battling monsters and taking names, while also revealing that in this world, humans might be the worst thing that has ever happened to the planet (global warming metaphor, anyone?). Specifically, in telling the history of the land, one character remarks that elves used to be the most powerful beings and once they taught magic to humans, the humans slaughtered them.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
Unsurprisingly, the elves appear to be all women, following a recent pattern of fantasy and sci-fi using magical badass women as a way to expose how misogyny often destroys its greatest assets. It doesn’t feel coincidental that the Children of the Forest from Game of Thrones appeared to be led by women and were forced to create the Night King to defend themselves from the invasion of men.
Game of Thrones fans might notice The Witcher appears to tackle the same theme of humans being the actual danger, even in a world where mythical beasts and magic exists simultaneously. The Night King was bad, but we all know the Cersei was worse. Can we expect there to be another dynamic in The Witcher? Netflix hints that morality is more of a question mark than a hard line, so we may be once again forced to watch our favourite justice-driven character descend into deadly rage (RIP Daenerys Targaryen).
Netflix’s The Witcher will premiere later in 2019.