The Witcher (TV Series)

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About

The Witcher is an upcoming fantasy television series set to be released on Netflix in late 2019. The show is based on a series of novels written by Andrzej Sapkowski, which also inspired a video game series of the same name.

History

On May 17th, 2017, The Telegraph^[1] reported that Netflix was producing a series based on Sapkowski's The Witcher novels. On September 4th, 2018, actor Henry Cavill uploaded a post to Instagram^[2] revealing he would be playing the protagonist Geralt of Rivia in the upcoming series (shown below).

Trailer

On July 19th, 2019, the first trailer for the upcoming series was released that the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con (shown below).

That day, the trailer reached the front page of the /r/witcher,^[5] /r/television^[6] and /r/videos^[7] subreddits. Meanwhile, Redditor Scientiam submitted a discussion thread for the trailer to /r/witcher.^[4] On July 20th, Ebaum's World^[3] published a collection of the memes in an article titled "Fans are Roasting Netflix After The Official Witcher Trailer."

Ciri Casting Controversy

On September 7th, ResetEra^[8] member Potterson submitted a thread titled "Ciri in Netflix Witcher series probably won't be white," noting that the ad^[9] specified it was looking for a “Black, Asian, and other non-white minority ethnic" actress. The following day, Redditor fabaresv posted a screenshot of a tweet posted by the series screenwriter Lauren S. Hissrich from early May 2018, when she claimed she would not change characters "ethnic makeup or gender" because she was "feeling really liberal" (shown below).

Meanwhile, a megathread related to the controversy reached the front page of /r/witcher.^[10] On September 10th, Hissrich tweeted that she would be taking a "Twitter hiatus" (shown below).^[11]

Henry Cavill Screen Test

On October 31st, Netflix unveiled a screen test of Henry Cavill as Geralt (shown below).

Fans reacted to the teaser by making comparisons to similar-looking pop-culture characters, such as Legolas from Lord of the Rings and Lucius Malfoy from Harry Potter (shown below).

Others reacted with jokes to the news. Twitter user @IanFortey tweeted a joke referencing the actor's deleted mustache from Justice League (shown below, left). User @JNapierr made a Be Careful Who You Call Ugly In Middle School joke (shown below, right). Jokes were covered by Daily Dot.^[11]