The Witcher's final, epic trailer sees Ciri on the run from a Nilfgaard creepo

With Geralt of Rivia now just eight days away from his big television debut, Netflix has dropped one final trailer for The Witcher that sets the scene for an epic showdown between the Empire of Nilfgaard and the Northern Kingdoms, and the crossed paths of a monster hunter, a sorceress, and a runaway princess.

Pretty dramatic, eh? I lifted that from the YouTube video description, which goes into no further detail at all about what's going on here. Fortunately, the Witcher subreddit has some thoughts on the matter. (And you might want to stop reading here if you're concerned about potential spoilers.)

I thought that the armored woman who appears at about the 30 second spot might be Meve, Queen of Lyria and Rivia, whose realm was conquered during the Second Nilfgaard War. FearDFortis of Reddit, however, says that it's actually Calathe, the Lioness of Cintra, Pavetta's mother and Ciri's grandmother—they can tell because the two lions on her armor are Cintrian.

It does appear to revolve around that war, though: I don't want to get too deep into it, on the off-chance that I'm right (the Witcher Wiki has more information, if you'd like to dig in) but the short version is that, through a series of political and military maneuvers that would make George R.R. Martin's eyes boggle, a whole bunch of people decided that Ciri needed to be dead, while some others figured it would be better if that didn't happen.

Whatever the story ultimately proves to be, I'm excited by how it all seems to be coming together. I had my doubts about the show, and Henry Cavill's casting, but at this point I'm thinking that it just might work. The Witcher debuts on Netflix on December 20.

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.