The second season of Netflix’s The Witcher is almost upon us, and that means more of Henry Cavill’s brooding (and not quite eternally grunting) Geralt of Rivia and his new, youthful charge Ciri. With a promise of more monsters to meet the business end of a steel or silver sword, a clip for the new season sees the white-haired monster hunter go up against a particular nasty foe that fans may be intimately familiar with: the Myriapod.
Myriapods are big arse centipedes, and showed up in Sapkowski’s anthology Sword of Destiny, where Geralt and a dryad named Braenn have their first meeting with Ciri as they save her from a myriapod. Since Geralt meets his adoptive daughter in a noticeably different way in the show proper, you can look at this as a callback of sorts. And if you played The Witcher 3, you likely recognise this ugly thing from 2016’s much beloved expansion (and farewell to Geralt) Blood and Wine. The CG for the thing isn’t great, but it still looks like a pretty gnarly thing that’ll give Geralt a run for his money. Hopefully it’s just the one and there aren’t others waiting to pop out of the ground.
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The clip is short, but notably, Geralt uses a “Quen” sign to create a shield against the big bug’s strike and his sword is glowing orange, which usually means a rune or oil is at use. Given how Cavill has professed how much of a fan he is of the games, so much that he just spent his time in the pandemic replaying the trilogy, you have to imagine that he probably gave some input on how the fight would go. If that’s the case, it’s possible that he had some more things to say about the other monsters Geralt and Ciri will surely face throughout the season.
The Witcher will release its second season on Netflix on December 17.