THE Witcher has taken Netflix by storm with its unique take on the fantasy genre.
The eight-part drama has taken traditional elements, such as magic, and blended them with a modern sense of humour to win audiences over.
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However in doing so, show boss Lauren Hissrich has made some substantial deviations from the source material for the series – Andrzej Sapkowski‘s novels.
One such shake-up comes in the manifestation of Princess Cirilla’s (Freya Allan) powers.
The granddaughter of Queen Clanthe (Jodhi May) overpowered her assailants after unleashing a powerful sonic scream, an ability that is never referenced in the books.
However, Ciri ultimately proves to be an unparalleled sorceress one she meets magic maestro Yennefer of Vengerberg (Anya Chalotra) and receives proper training.
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Hissirch explained that she wanted to pave the way for Ciri’s rise to power by drip-feeding in her abilities.
“I think that when you’re telling a story of the most powerful little girl in the world, you’ve got to build that in early,” she told comicbook.com.
What’s more, she said that Ciri’s fear at her own unbridled power gave her development a dark edge.
“Suspense, to me, is much more fun because now the audience knows that she has this power, she knows that she’s scared of the power, and what’s going to happen?” she went on.
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“To me, it aligns us with the character in a really interesting way, and it makes us root for her or root against her… because we’re sharing her secret.
“So that was one of the reasons that we built in something really early that wasn’t actually in the novel to showcase the very special power that she has.”
The comments come after Hissrich took a swipe at the Witcher video game series during a discussion about season 2’s new monsters.
In other Witcher news, spin-off film Nightmare of the Wolf was announced last week.
The Witcher season 1 is available to stream on Netflix now.
