The Witcher Showrunner Poised for a Game of Thrones-Style Twist — and One Fan Favorite Could Pay the Price
As The Witcher races toward its endgame, showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich teases Ciri’s most harrowing turn yet — a trial by fire that pushes her into the darkest corners of herself and changes everything.
The Witcher is heading into its endgame, and the show is basically telling us to brace for impact. Showrunner Lauren Schmidt-Hissrich is framing Ciri's next chapter as a 'baptism of fire' — not the triumphant kind, the blistering, change-you-forever kind.
Ciri's 'baptism of fire,' straight from the boss
"This is going to be Ciri letting go and touching those deepest, darkest places within herself that she's always pushed away — once she deals with the heartbreak and loss of the Rats, we get to see her start to access that for a while. It's her baptism of fire that needs to happen before she can be redeemed."
That 'fire' inevitably invites a Daenerys comparison — yes, the Game of Thrones Season 6 inferno. But Hissrich's version sounds a lot less purifying and a lot more scalding. Think cauterization, not coronation.
Where Season 4 leaves Ciri
- Ciri (Freya Allan) falls in with the Rats, an outlaw crew that briefly gives her freedom and family.
- Enter Leo Bonhart (Sharlto Copley), a relentless bounty hunter. He ambushes the Rats at the Chimera's Head and wipes them out with nasty efficiency.
- He forces Ciri to watch as he beheads the Rats one by one, saving her love interest Mistle (Christelle Elwin) for last. It is exactly as brutal as it sounds.
- Ciri goes at him, fueled by grief and rage, but Bonhart still overpowers her and takes her prisoner.
- Behind the scenes, this is bigger than one bounty: Nilfgaard is pulling strings. Emperor Emhyr — yes, Ciri's biological father — wants to marry her to fulfill a prophecy and nail down his rule.
- Bonhart is operating under the orders of Emhyr's agent Stefan Skellen. His cruelty is the start of Ciri's descent — the 'baptism of fire' setup for who she has to become before the series wraps.
What Bonhart thinks he's doing (besides being monstrous)
Copley says Bonhart clocked Ciri's 'potential for violence' and is basically stress-testing it. In his mind, he's seeing whether she has the stomach to be the fighter he believes she can be. He feels a twisted kinship, gets genuinely excited by her talent, and that's why he doesn't kill her. For a guy who only lights up around fighting and killing, Ciri reads as both a challenge and a project. Horrific logic, but logic all the same.
Freya Allan on the darkness knocking
Allan backs up that turn inward. She links Ciri's pull toward darker choices to Falka — not as a costume, but as a force that represents the shadowy parts Ciri has tried to avoid. In Season 3, Ciri had a cleaner, more idealized version of who she wanted to be. Now she is knee-deep in the other path.
What that means for the finale
Put it together: Hissrich, Copley, and Allan are all signaling that Ciri's arc is about to get rougher, not cleaner. The loss of the Rats is the emotional fuse; the Nilfgaard plot is the external pressure; Bonhart is the accelerant. The 'baptism' is the prerequisite to redemption, not the redemption itself. Expect scars before salves.
The Witcher is streaming on Netflix.