Just when everyone got "Toss a Coin to Your Witcher" out of their heads, Netflix announced the casting for seven new characters who will appear in the second season of The Witcher. Three of those characters should be familiar to anyone who has read Andrzej Sapkowski's books or played CD Projekt Red games‚ because they are...wait for it...also witchers.
Season 1 ended with Geralt finally meeting his Child Surprise Ciri and leads directly into the plot of Blood of Elves, the first full-length novel in Sapkowski's series. Without spoiling too much, suffice it to say that he finds a way to introduce Ciri to his bros back at Kaer Morhan, the witcher stronghold he flashed back to at the end of Season 1. Those bros include Eskel, Lambert, and Coen, all of whom have distinct personalities and their own reactions to finding out their buddy Geralt is a dad of destiny. Let's meet the boys:
Eskel
Thue Ersted Rasmussen will play Eskel the witcher in Season 2. Eskel is roughly Geralt's age and grew up with him at Kaer Morhen, making the two "brothers" of a sort. Characters in the novel even notice that Geralt and Eskel look alike — except for Geralt's white hair and the fact that Eskel has a large, disfiguring facial scar that's kind of hideous. When Ciri meets Eskel in Blood of Elves, she almost screams because his scars are so jarring she thinks he's a monster, but he's one of Geralt's closest friends and an all around good dude.
Interestingly, Eskel's natural affinity for magic is stronger than Geralt's, even if the White Wolf is a more powerful witcher on account of his advanced mutations.
Rasmussen's best-known English-language credit hasn't come out yet — he'll play a character named Otto in the ninth Fast & Furious movie this summer.
Lambert
Paul Bullion is cast as Lambert, who's...kind of the worst. He's the youngest witcher Geralt knows and doesn't like a lot of things. In Blood of Elves, he's actively dismissive of women but trains Ciri in fencing nonetheless.
The Witcher games (specifically The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt) give some context for why Lambert is such a dick — he never wanted to be a witcher and has a lot of emotional hangups over being abandoned to their harsh, isolated lifestyle. Whether that will be the basis for his bitterness in the Netflix series remains to be seen.
Coen
Yasen Atour will play Coen (stylized as Coën in the novels), the second youngest witcher to come out of Kaer Morhen. Since he's had less experience with witchering, he comes off as one of the more human mutants at the castle. In Blood of Elves, Coën bonds with Ciri easily, plays games with her while the "adults" are talking, and gives her piggyback rides around the great hall.
Atour previously appeared in the 2016 Ben-Hur remake and 2018's Robin Hood.
Netflix has not yet announced casting for Vesemir, the fourth and most senior witcher at Kaer Morhen. With Eskel, Lambert, and Coen showing up in Season 2 though, it's impossible to imagine that their mentor Vesemir won't also make an appearance. The lag in casting suggests they might have their eye on someone big, or that old Vesemir's shoes are just harder to fill at this point in the process.
Topics Netflix
