“The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt” rocked the gaming universe with its unparalleled open world and high fantasy story. In 2015, developer CD Projekt Red earned legions of fans with the game, and at the 2024 Game Awards, the company delighted gamers everywhere by dropping the first trailer for “The Witcher 4.” Fans were shocked to see that former protagonist Geralt is apparently being replaced by Ciri from “Wild Hunt,” but they were absolutely flabbergasted when the trailer revealed that, between games, Ciri has become a Witcher herself.
Author Andrzej Sapkowski introduced the world to the universe of “The Witcher” when the series’ first novel was published in 1990. Since then, Sapkowski has written many more novels and stories set in the same world, and they’ve been translated into numerous languages and read across the globe. Thanks to the games and the TV adaptations, even people who never encountered the books know about “The Witcher.”
The entire “Witcher” timeline follows both Geralt and Ciri, with the latter becoming an even more important character as the series progresses, so it’s not a complete surprise that Ciri is the lead in “The Witcher 4” game. That said, the process of becoming a Witcher is anything but easy, and some gamers think that it simply shouldn’t be possible for Ciri to be a Witcher in the upcoming game. Let’s take a look at the world of the books — and some direct comments from the franchise’s creator — to see if they’re right.
What happened to Ciri in the books?
To understand what happened to Ciri at the end of Andrzej Sapkowski’s “Witcher” series, you’ve got to know certain details from her history. Ciri has Elder Blood running through her veins, which gives her access to a wide range of powers that make her a formidable opponent even when she isn’t a Witcher. Her Elder Blood doesn’t give Ciri the same mutations as Geralt, but in the novels and in “The Witcher 3” game, her powerful abilities let her train and fight monsters alongside her adoptive father as though she were a true Witcher.
Ciri is known as the Lady of Space and Time because her abilities allow her to manipulate other dimensions to her advantage. In the “Witcher” book “The Lady of the Lake,” Ciri uses her powers to transport herself to our world, or at least a version of it. There, she meets Sir Galahad of Camelot, and she shares her tale and the end of Geralt’s story with him. When Ciri decides not to return to her homeworld, the series concludes with her riding off into the sunset toward Camelot with Sir Galahad.
What has the Witcher’s author said about Ciri’s new role?
“Witcher” creator Andrzej Sapkowski recently commented on the changes CDPR is making to Ciri’s storyline. Speaking at the Opole Book Festival in Poland, the author said that sometimes the developers reach out to him with questions about the story, but he said that the devs are such fans of “The Witcher” series that he imagines they know more about the universe than he does. In response to Ciri apparently completing the trials and attaining the Witcher mutations in the fourth game, Sapowski said (via The Gamer), “I never wrote that adult women can’t go through them, maybe someone did, but it wasn’t me. I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it.” Clearly Sapkowski isn’t bothered in the slightest that CDPR is making some changes to the source material.
According to franchise lore, most people who undergo the trials to become a Witcher die in the process. The trials are typically undertaken by young boys, but while the books specify that adults are all but guaranteed to die in the trials, they don’t say anything at all about women going through the process. As an adult, Ciri’s Witcher transformation is obviously something special, and judging by the way she fights in “The Witcher 4” trailer, becoming a Witcher may have cost Ciri her other magical abilities. The Netflix show has also made its own controversial changes to Ciri’s story, so CDPR’s decision here isn’t really unprecedented. Ciri was already a fan-favorite character from the previous game, and there’s little doubt that whatever story leads her to become a Witcher will be a good one.
