Copyright Screen Rant
Warning: There are spoilers ahead for The Witcher season 4 and The Rats: A Witcher Tale. .The Witcher showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich explains how the major deaths in the season 4 finale will impact Ciri (Freya Allan) in season 5. Ciri spent the season as part of a group of teenage criminals known as the Rats. During The Witcher season 4's ending, all the Rats except for Ciri are brutally killed by the bounty hunter Leo Bonhart (Sharlto Copley). This concludes the season on a devastating note, as Ciri loses her new found family and is taken captive by Bonhart. In an interview with Variety, Lauren Schmidt Hissrich explains that because seasons 4 and 5 were written as "one big season that we split", she did not want to end this installment on "higher moments" for Ciri and the other characters. Instead, Ciri is pushed to her lowest point before the final season. Check out Hissrich's comments below: We made a really conscious decision to not end this season on the characters’ higher moments. When we’re doing Seasons 4 and 5 back to back, in some ways it feels like one big season that we split. It really is one long journey back toward each other. We thought it would be interesting, as we’re chugging toward the end, to put all of our characters in the darkest places imaginable because we know that some redemption is going to come. This is going to be Ciri letting go and touching those deepest, darkest places within herself that she’s always pushed away. She’s said several times across the series that she worries that there’s something wrong with her. She worries that death follows her, that she is a monster inside. Once she deals with the heartbreak and loss of the Rats, we get to see her start to access that for a while. It’s her baptism of fire that needs to happen before she can be redeemed. With season 5 being written almost as The Witcher season 4, part 2, Ciri has to experience the heartbreak of losing Mistle (Christelle Elwin) and the rest of the Rats before she can embrace her destiny and stop running from it. Netflix's The Rats: A Witcher Tale, a movie that was released on the same day as season 4, offers a glimpse of how this will impact Ciri in season 5. As Bonhart's captive, the normally fiery young woman is shown feeling defeated and hopeless as they travel with her friends' severed heads. The Witcher season 5 is poised to begin in the same manner for Ciri, where she will still be reeling from the Rats' deaths and feeling as though there is no way forward. This will only be temporary, though, as Hissrich emphasizes that this is the "baptism of fire" that Ciri has to undergo before finding her path again. That path involves finally reuniting with Geralt of Rivia (Liam Hemsworth) and Yennefer of Vengerberg (Anya Chalotra), who, except for some flashbacks, she was separated from for the entirety of season 4. In addition to dealing with Bonhart, Ciri's future also involves finally confronting the larger threats of her father, Emperor Emhyr (Bart Edwards), and Vilgefortz (Mahesh Jadu), who have relentlessly pursued Ciri for their own villainous schemes.
