The Witcher Books Shrugged at Ciri’s Sexuality — Netflix Put It Center Stage
As Netflix’s new Witcher season drops, social media is once again fighting over Ciri’s sexuality, with some insisting she was always a lesbian — but the books chart a far messier coming-of-age, from early sparks with Hjalmar an Craite to the grind of political pressure.
The new season of The Witcher hits Netflix, and like clockwork, the internet is back debating Ciri. Specifically: is Ciri gay, and was she always written that way? Short answer: the books are messier (on purpose), the show is clearer (also on purpose).
"She was always a lesbian."
What the books actually do with Ciri
On the page, Ciri is not written around a clean, fixed label. Andrzej Sapkowski builds her as a kid who grows up in chaos: constantly moved, constantly used, constantly adapting. Her arc is survival and self-definition, not a tidy romance plot.
- She bounces between cultures and mentors while prophecies mark her as a living weapon long before she knows what that means.
- Everyone wants a piece: Nilfgaard tries to install her as an imperial figurehead, Northern rulers treat her like a bargaining chip, and the sorceresses view her Elder Blood as a resource to manage.
- She shows early interest in Hjalmar an Craite.
- There’s political pressure to marry male heirs to continue her Elder Blood line.
- Her stint with the Rats is a dark, chaotic chapter where she pushes into freedom, rebellion, and identity under brutal circumstances.
- Her bond with Mistle starts under a power imbalance and later becomes emotionally real and complicated.
- Across all of that, the novels emphasize trauma, power, and survival over slapping a label on her.
You’ll see fans cite a line floating around Reddit along the lines of "But I dislike men, I like girls only." That sentiment gets tossed out as proof, but the books never plant a flag that defines Ciri as a lesbian or reduces her to one relationship. It’s more fluid and situational than that.
What Netflix changes (and why)
Netflix makes Ciri’s attraction to women more explicit. It draws a solid line where the books left some edges blurry. That’s not random; it’s very much how Netflix handles adaptations in general: take thorny, ambiguous book threads and shape them into clearer, TV-ready character beats that fit the season-to-season machine.
We’ve seen the same playbook elsewhere on the platform. Shadow and Bone merges timelines and sharpens motivations to create a tighter ensemble. Avatar: The Last Airbender streamlines or reframes arcs to foreground emotional stakes the animated series mostly implied. The Sandman updates dynamics and worldbuilding to sync with modern storytelling expectations. The pattern is consistent: prioritize accessibility and thematic clarity over a strict one-to-one translation. Identity arcs — romantic, cultural, moral — get more explicit so the emotional through-line stays steady across seasons.
So with Ciri, Netflix isn’t rewriting the character out of nowhere. It’s taking threads the books leave open-ended and making them more defined. You can like that choice or not, but it tracks with how the streamer adapts pretty much everything.
Where I land
The novels give Ciri a raw, unstable coming-of-age shaped by other people’s agendas. The show gives her a cleaner, more intentional through-line around who she’s drawn to. Both can be true: the source thrives in the gray, the adaptation favors clarity. Your mileage will depend on which flavor you prefer.
Ciri is played by Freya Allan. All seasons of The Witcher are streaming now on Netflix. Thoughts on how the show handles her? Drop them below.