Season 2 of Netflix's hit-fantasy series The Witcher is only a week away and the streaming giant is starting to hype audiences up. Part of that means teasing viewers with new clips from the upcoming show, featuring some of the many monsters fans expect to see, including the franchise's iconic leshen.
In a clip released exclusively on The Graham Norton Show, Geralt of Rivia can be seen in the halls of Kaer Morhen, where a leshy has invaded. Though the video does not offer viewers any context, fans can see the witcher swing his sword at the many root-like limbs of the monster.
The leshen was teased as by actor Paul Bullion as one of the first monsters that audiences will see in Season 2 of The Witcher. The creature was heavily featured in marketing for CD Projekt Red's The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which brought the franchise into the mainstream, though the creature itself was first mentioned in Andrzej Sapkowsk's novel series. Prior to the WitcherCon event in July, Netflix released photos and short clips teasing the arrival of the forest spirit. This followed months of rumors suggesting that the leshen would play a major part in the upcoming season.
Netflix's first full trailer for The Witcher Season 2 finally debuted the live-action adaptation of leshen, which displayed control over plant life, like its video game counterpart. The trailer featured the leshen attacked Geralt of Rivia and his newfound ward, Princess Cirilla of Cintra, in the forests of the Continent. It's unknown when or how this encounter will occur.
Showrunner Lauren S. Hissrich has previously revealed that The Witcher Season 2 will feature more monsters than Blood of Elves, which inspired the bulk of the season. In an interview with Sci-Fi and Fantasy magazine, Hissrich explained, "Blood of Elves lacks monsters. There's just not very many. But we know from the games that people really like to see Geralt battling monsters, so we continued adding more monsters to Season 2."
The leshen was mentioned in The Last Wish, but it wasn't until the release of the pen-and-paper game Wiedźmin: Gra Wyobraźni (The Witcher: A Game of Imagination) from MAG Publishing House that the monster was given a detailed description. CD Projekt Red's video games took some inspiration from these descriptions -- keeping the monster as a woodland spirit -- but redesigned it and brought to life its ability to control both flora and fauna. It is this depiction that appears to have inspired the Netflix series.
Source: The Graham Norton Show, via Reddit
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