The Witcher Season 3: Everything Different From the Books in Volume 1

Spoiler Warning: This article features full spoilers for the entirety of The Witcher as available on Netflix, including Season 3, as well as The Witcher book series.

The Witcher Season 3 Volume 1 has been released on Netflix and, following suit from previous seasons, it features a lot of changes fans of the original book series won’t recognize.

Netflix took a wide berth from Andrzej Sapkowski’s original story in Season 2, leaving it some catch-up to do this time around. Season 3 therefore includes elements of both Book 3, Blood of Elves, and Book 4, Time of Contempt, as well as some sprinklings of other stories throughout.

While it definitely sticks to the book’s story a lot more than the previous season, Netflix still makes a lot of changes to the tales of Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri in Season 3, and IGN has you covered by explaining each of these differences below.

Shaerrawedd

Season 3 of The Witcher is generally based on Book 4 but opens with a story from Book 3, as Netflix has almost shuffled the two books together here. Remember in Season 2 when Geralt takes Ciri from Kaer Morhen to Melitele’s Temple? That’s when the Shaerrawedd story told in Episode 1 unfolds in the books.

Geralt and Ciri (and Triss, actually) are travelling undercover in Yarpen’s caravan, just as they are here. They eventually come across Shaerrawedd, the ancient Elven palace, and the story is told fairly similarly. Humanity was committing genocide against the elves and this was essentially their last stand.

But it’s the attack against Ciri that doesn’t line up with the book. Rience isn’t involved at all, first of all, nor are the non-Scoia’tael elves like Francesca from Season 2. Ciri isn’t the target either. In the books, the Scoia’tael are solely attacking Yarpen’s caravan for supplies.

While Ciri’s side eventually wins, it’s the reaction to the battle that most stands out as different. In Sapkowski’s version, this is a solemn victory for Yarpen and his dwarven party as they were forced to kill fellow non-humans.

Humans had also set him up; his caravan was full of fake supplies, sent to see if the dwarf was trustworthy. Both he and the Scoia’tael were therefore manipulated by humans into killing each other, on the same ground where the elves’ last stand against human atrocities had taken place. There’s an incredible amount of depth and symbolism in the battle which doesn’t really come across in the show. There’s certainly no “you’re gonna f**king die squirrels.”

Happy Families

Another instance of Netflix shuffling the two books together is in Yennefer’s training of Ciri and the pair joining Geralt in playing happy families in the opening of Season 3’s first episode. The trio don’t link up at all in either of the two books. It’s actually part of the driving force behind each character: living in peace together is all Geralt, Ciri, and Yennefer really want, but it’s always just beyond their grasp.

Translating that to a TV series is difficult, of course, because never featuring your stars on screen at the same time isn’t very appealing. The books also offer the added bonus of putting you inside these characters’ heads; you’re quite literally reading their minds. Understanding their motivations therefore comes easier, while Netflix has to rely on showing the viewer through scenes like these.

A similar change comes at the conclusion of Episode 1 when Geralt decided to hunt Rience, and Ciri and Yennefer head for Aretuza. This actually happens between Books 3 and 4. All of Ciri’s training in magic comes when she and Yennefer are alone (and at Melitele’s temple), giving them the chance to form a mother daughter bond just as Geralt had become Ciri’s de facto father while training at Kaer Morhen.

The hunt for Ciri

While Season 3 Volume 1 depicts Ciri and her adopted parents running from house to house, there isn’t any active hunting of her at this point in the books. She’s assumed dead by most, and those that are hunting her – the likes of Redania, Rience, Nilfgaard – are doing so with caution, behind the scenes.

The elves aren’t chasing her either. In fact, the entire subplot surrounding Francesca and Filavandrel doesn’t exist at all. These characters are off doing their own thing in the books, nowhere near the events of Geralt or Ciri.

The Belleteyn Festival is the final new addition from Netflix. The annual event itself is definitely a thing, but Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri don’t attend it here. There’s no maze, there’s no monster tracking Ciri’s scent, and there’s no monster-keeper named Veldhoek.

Redania

The entire Redanian subplot doesn’t exist in the books. Important events are happening in the background, of course, still led by Dijkstra and Phillipa, but you only learn of these passively or retroactively.

Netflix is taking a similar approach to how it handled the sorcerers and sorceresses. Instead of just bringing these characters in at key moments as Sapkowski does, the show is feeding readers the backstory in anticipation of these major events happening.

The inclusion of Radovid is a hard right turn though. The prince is King Vizimir’s young son in the books, not brother, and is essentially irrelevant to the general storyline surrounding Geralt and company. Netflix is almost feeding into plotlines that take place in the video game series from CD Projekt Red, where Radovid is a central character.

Jaskier isn’t really relevant here either. The bard is a spy for Redania in the books, but his questioning starts and ends with him lying about Geralt’s whereabouts. He doesn’t agree to help them capture Ciri, doesn’t feed information to the royal family, and doesn’t doubt that Ciri and Geralt should remain together.

Finally, it’s Vizimir here that loses his head, not his wife Hedwig. The king’s assassination happens alongside the events of the Thanned ball for reasons we’ll likely find out in Volume 2. But in the books, Hedwig reluctantly takes over from Vizimir with the assistance (and manipulation) of Phillipa, which spurs a lifelong hatred of sorceresses in the young Radovid.

Aretuza

As mentioned, the set up of sorcerers and sorceresses has been ongoing for a long time in the show, as opposed to the books where the conclave is the first main introduction of the likes of Sabrina, Keira, and so on.

One of the key mages here, Stregobor, also doesn’t exist in the books beyond the initial short story with Renfri, which became Season 1’s premiere episode. There’s therefore no behind the scenes plot to get rid of half-elven sorceresses, no chasing missing girls from Triss and Istredd (the latter isn’t in the books at this stage at all), and no sleuthing from Geralt and Yennefer to place the blame on Stregobor.

There’s no investigation whatsoever because it’s Dijkstra, not Geralt, who finds the creepy cave in the books. There’s no fake Ciri here though, and no giant hand monster or heads sticking out the wall, as Dijkstra just finds remnants of utterly morbid experiments. It’s Rience who introduces the concept of a fake Ciri as, having failed to obtain the real one, he attempts to deceive the Emperor. The girl is just ordered to pretend she’s Ciri though; there’s no brainwashing.

The Thanned ball is therefore just that, a ball. It’s still full of political intrigue and meddling mages, of course, but there’s no detective work. The conclave was also planned before Yennefer arrived, meaning she had nothing to do with its organising. Phillipa was actually the key figure behind it, unlike in the show when she reluctantly agrees to attend at the last minute.

Smaller changes

Emhyr var Emreis, the Emperor of Nilfgaard and Ciri’s father, isn’t an active part of the story this early on in the books. In fact, he’s only revealed to be Ciri’s father towards the end of Book 7, the Witcher Saga’s finale. His character is also very different here. In the books, Emhyr is an intimidating, terrifying figure whose presence alone forces his subjects to their knees. He isn’t a nonchalant ruler who chinwags with Cahir in bed.

Gallatin, the elf leading the Scoia’tael, isn’t called Gallatin in the books. He’s called Isengrim Faoiltiarna but better known as the Iron Wolf or Wolf Isengrim. The character otherwise isn’t introduced until the next book and doesn’t have such an active involvement in the story, nor does he get killed so quickly.

Fringilla isn’t imprisoned by Emhyr as she doesn’t really have any purpose in the story at this stage of the books. You know she’s a Nilfgaardian sorceress but that’s all, and it’s not until Book 5 where she meets Geralt and plays a bigger part.

Ciri doesn’t make an impassioned speech about becoming the ultimate ruler of the world. She wants to be a witcher in the books, simple as that. This, just like Radovid’s heavier involvement, almost lends itself to a subplot of the game series, where Ciri dabbles in the possibility of becoming Emperor in place of her father.

Jaskier’s introduction in Episode 1 is a reference to a short story from book two called The Eternal Flame. It almost plays out scene for scene, with Jaskier being kicked out of his soured lover Vespula’s house in Novigrad. In the short story, however, it’s Geralt who happens upon him and not Phillipa, Radovid, or Yarpen.

Leo Bonhart and his cousing Dominik Houvenaghel, who Yennefer claims will now be coming after Ciri, aren’t mentioned yet. There’s also no scene where Ciri frees a child in Keira’s shop because there’s no Keira’s shop (her introduction comes at the ball). Ciri is introduced to Houvenaghel and Bonhart later and for different reasons.

Valdo Marx, Jaskier’s rival bard who makes an appearance in Episode 4, isn’t from the books, though the two’s hatred for each other is. When Geralt and Jaskier uncover the djinn in Book 1, which is when Geralt meets Yennefer for the first time, one of Jaskier’s wishes is to have Valdo killed.

Cahir does work with the Scoia’tael to instigate what’s likely about to happen in Volume 2, but Gallatin, or Wolf Isengrim in the books, wasn’t an old friend or someone he had to kill to gain Emhyr’s respect. Nilfgaard was already using the Scoai’tael as disruptors in the north, so killing its leader makes little sense for Emhyr in this context.

Geralt doesn’t know his mother in the books outside of a brief meeting where he’s delusional from almost dying. This is another pillar of his character and also a key plot point of the entire universe, related to why witchers are dying out. It’s therefore a little odd for book readers to see Geralt completely aware of who his mother is and even hang out with her mates in Episode 3.

Otto’s character and the rest of this scene don’t exist in the books either, though he does appear based on a character from Book 8 called Dussart, who’s also a werewolf that Geralt saved. Otto losing his medallion shouldn’t have spurred his transformation into the monster either. The whole premise of a werewolf is that they only transform during a full moon, not in broad daylight as Netflix depicted.

The ferry scene in Episode 4 seems pulled from another part of Book 3, where Geralt essentially advertises his position to Rience by becoming security on a river boat. It’s just Geralt here, with no Ciri or Jaskier, but he still fights a giant water monster. We’ll also ignore that Geralt and Ciri travelled on horseback to this town but had to cross a sea to get back.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.