The Witcher season 3 ending sets up Freya Allan as the true star: 'It's Ciri's story'
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Warning: This article contains spoilers from The Witcher season 3 finale, "The Cost of Chaos."
Fans of The Witcher have expressed concern over Henry Cavill's departure and Liam Hemsworth's impending arrival as Geralt in season 4 — but it turns out the titular character isn't the series' true star anyway. That would be Freya Allan's Princess Cirilla.
"One of the more important things about Ciri is that we will slowly discover that she is the main character of the Witcher saga. Not Geralt, not Yennefer. It's Ciri's story," executive producer Tomek Baginski said in a new making-of feature that dropped on Netflix Thursday alongside the season 3, Vol. 2 episodes.
At Aretuza, amid the Thanedd Coup, Ciri destroys the Tor Lara tower and tumbles through a portal to the Korath Desert, where she is forced to wander aimlessly while facing various visions. One such vision is that of Falka (Hiftu Quasem), a Redanian princess who launched a violent rebellion against her father after he cut her out of the line of succession. She was later burned at the stake, but not before vowing that the descendants of her enemies would suffer the wrath of a child with her own blood — which, it now turns out, could be Ciri.
"Falka introduces to her this potential other path you can take, which is brutal," Allan said in the behind-the-scenes footage. "The fire draws her in and Falka draws her in... and she basically relinquishes her powers."
Falka tempts Ciri with taboo fire magic that the young princess then uses to save her unicorn helper's life in the desert after a monster attack. Doing so, however, causes the pure creature to flee from her. Falka urges Ciri to burn down the whole system and shows her a future in which she's in power. Later, after Ciri is kidnapped by men who hope to sell her to Nilgaard, she kills her captors and joins up with a gang of kids called the Rats. When asked her name, she tells them to call her Falka.
As Ciri prepares to go into hiding with the Rats, Nilgaard welcomes who they think is Ciri among their ranks, but it turns out they are really welcoming Teryn (Frances Pooley), a.k.a. fake Ciri, the young Aretuza girl who was manipulated by Vilgefortz (Mahesh Jadu) to believe she is the princess. It appeared Teryn was cured of this magical tampering but has now clearly succumbed again to dark influence.
"We learned she's powerful. We learned that this power can either turn good or bad, but even Ciri is not really sure who she really is," Baginski said. "The more she discovers how to control what's inside of her, the more she asks herself a question. Maybe she is the villain of the story. For a person that young, it is a devastating question to ask because everyone wants to be the hero of their own story... Maybe her real destiny is not to become a Witcher, a savior, somebody who is good. Maybe it's to become a villain and to actually destroy the world."
It's worth noting that there have been rumblings online about a supposed spin-off series about the Rats, which would certainly stem from this season 3 ending. However, Netflix has not announced the spin-off, and there are no official updates on the matter at this time.
Geralt, too, goes through a tremendous change by the conclusion of season 3. He has given up his long-maintained neutrality and sets out in pursuit of Ciri with Jaskier (Joey Batey) and one of the dryads that saved his life after a near-fatal face-off with the mage Vilgefortz.
Showrunner Lauren Hissrich teased in the making-of special, "We've seen [Ciri's] power accidentally kill people before, we saw that as early as season 1. But Geralt has really tried to impress on her that the idea of taking a human life, of making that choice, has huge consequences." We'll find out one way or the other what Geralt thinks of Ciri's newfound burn-it-all-down mentality when we meet him again in season 4.
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