The Witcher Season 2 – VFX Review
After a nearly three-year-long wait, the hit Netflix show, The Witcher Season 2, came out on December 17th 2021. Because they had started filming at the beginning of 2020 when COVID was becoming rampant, there were many delays. Nevertheless, they delivered a second season full of incredible visual and special effects and fantastic cinematography, sets, and stunt work.
Not having seen the first season since 2019 when it was released, it was confusing to watch the second season. Overall, the entire show is a bit confusing because there are different timelines and planes of existence, but the show slowly helps you understand a bit more as you watch it through. In season 1 of The Witcher, big studios such as Cinesite and Framestore worked on the visual effects. Then in season 2, more big studios were brought on, such as Industrial Light and Magic, Rodeo FX, Mr. X, and more. Many fans had complained about the visual effects of the first season not being too good, but in the second season, there were fewer complaints.
Monsters and entire CG environments were created just as in the first season of The Witcher. Some new creatures in the second season went after the two main characters, Geralt and Ciri. I found the Myriapod from one of the episodes incredibly creepy, probably because of how they made the chase where multiple times a character almost gets caught. It is neat to see that the TV show makers keep in mind some aspects of the video game. For example, there are centipede creatures in The Witcher video game, which this Myriapod creature references. Although it is not entirely like the ones from the video game, it is interesting to see how they incorporate the video game in live-action.
Another creature, the Leshy, was also very interesting. This tree/root creature fights Geralt in the woods for a scene, but it also had infected one of the other witchers. Eskel, the witcher that gets transformed into a sort of human Leshy, was not all done in CG. A team of makeup fx artists worked on making the top half of his body into a realistic-looking tree creature. Then after filming, the VFX team seamlessly blended his body with a CGI body of a tree creature. Although there were certain times that the visual effects looked a bit unrealistic, they were able to hide most of it due to the helpful fact that his scene was done in a dark room.
Because of the restrictions of COVID, it was difficult for the Witcher team to go to specific locations and shoot. Instead, they decided to build their own sets for the production. For outdoors town scenes, most of the time, they were able to go to a location and film, but when they weren’t because of COVID restrictions, they created facades to make it look like a town. The vast majority of season 2 was filmed at Kaer Morhen, which was the stronghold of the witchers. Because of how many times scenes would be shot, the team decided to rebuild the inside of Kaer Morhen based on references from the video game. The entire last episode was shot inside there, so there was great attention to detail for making the stronghold look lived in and old.
Along with visual effects, there were plenty of stunts and stunt choreography done for the film because of how many fight scenes there were. Stunt doubles would reenact and work on fight scenes in closed environments. These closed environments have padded floors, foam/cardboard walls/boxes to fall upon, and lines attached to the stunt performers for security or for pulling them backward. Afterward, some of the stunt doubles would perform on set for filming, but some of the time, the actors themselves would perform them. There was a lot of work for fight choreography in this season, along with characters falling a lot, so there had to be a lot of security measures.
It is incredible to see behind-the-scenes work from films or tv shows such as The Witcher. In the second season, there was a push for great visual effects, and I believe they were able to achieve it compared to the last season. If you haven’t already seen The Witcher, it is out on Netflix, both the first and second season and I highly recommend you watch it if you love fantasy/medieval-themed shows. If you want to see some more entertaining breakdowns of the visual effects from The Witcher season two, there are some great videos here: https://80.lv/articles/the-witcher-season-2-monster-visual-effects-breakdown/