Netflix's The Witcher arrived at San Diego Comic-Con 2019 with a teaser trailer and several clips shown to the gathered Hall H audience. The Witcher stars Henry Cavill as its titular character, a monster-hunter called Geralt of Rivia, who has been genetically enhanced to give him heightened senses, durability and fighting abilities. The TV show is based on a book series by polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, and has also been adapted into a series of video games by CD Projekt Red.
The first teaser trailer for The Witcher has been released online, but the clips were Hall H exclusives. The first clip was an action-packed fight scene, designed to highlight the fact that Cavill did all of his own stunts for the show. Cavill explained that he spent all of his free time with a sword in his hand, to get used to the feel of it, and that he had three swords at home and four at work. The clip showed Geralt and an ally fighting guards inside the feast room of a castle, and was described by Screen Rant's Molly Freeman as being "very violent and kinetic." The clip ends when the queen herself picks up a sword and joins the fray.
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The second scene focused on Anya Chalotra's Yennefer of Vengerberg, a powerful sorceress. The Witcher will reveal Yennefer's backstory, as shown in the teaser trailer's shots of her with a hunched back and disjointed jaw. In the books, Yennefer was born with a spinal deformity and had an extremely rough childhood, and this is hinted at in an unsettling clip where Yennefer sits on a beach with a dead baby beside her. She looks up at a circling carrion bird overhead and asks which one of them it's there for. She tells the dead baby that it might may be better off having died young, especially since it's a girl, as women are only seen as vessels in this world. The scene ends with Yennefer burying the dead baby in the sand.
The final clip from The Witcher shown during the Comic-Con panel focused on Freya Allen's character, Ciri, a young princess with a grand destiny. In the clip, Ciri is lost in a forest and comes across a group of dryads. She pleads with them for her life, explaining that she's lost and she doesn't know how she got there. As they try to take her away, Ciri grabs the leader's arm, which causes the leader to get angry. As with Yennefer, The Witcher will include flashbacks for Ciri and her character will be more fleshed out than she was in the books, which are primarily told from Geralt's perspective.
The Witcher was developed for TV by Lauren S. Hissrich, who also worked on Netflix's Marvel series Daredevil and The Defenders. A release date wasn't announced at SDCC, but the series will arrive in Netflix in late 2019.