The Witcher season 2 will introduce new characters, among those Nivellen – and here’s who he is. Based on the book series of the same name by Andrzej Sapkowski, The Witcher made its debut on Netflix in December 2019 and was so well-received by critics and viewers that it might be the streaming giant’s biggest first TV season ever. Netflix knew what it had with The Witcher, mostly due to the popularity of the books and their videogame adaptations, and renewed the series for a second season before the first one was out.
The team behind The Witcher decided to approach Sapkowski’s stories differently and instead of just following the title witcher, it focuses on three characters in different places and points in time, and whose paths converge towards the end of the season. These characters are Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill), an enhanced monster hunter known as a “witcher”; Yennefer of Vengerberg (Anya Chalotra), a powerful sorceress; and Ciri (Freya Allan), the crown princess of Cintra who has powers of her own. Season 2 will continue exploring their stories but it will also introduce new characters that go from witchers (as Ciri will now be trained by them) to creatures like the bruxae and even one character who has been living under a curse.
Among the characters confirmed to appear in The Witcher season 2 is Nivellen, played by Kristofer Hivju (Tormund Giantsbane in Game of Thrones). Nivellen was the leader of a gang of highwaymen and cutthroats, and during the robbery of a temple in Gelibol, the gang coerced Nivellen into raping the young priestess that was there. Little did they know, the woman was a priestess of Coram Agh Tera, the Cult of the Lionhead Spider, and before she killed herself, she spat on Nivellen’s face and cursed him to become a “monster in a monster’s skin” as he was already a “monster in a man’s skin.” A few days later, Nivellen’s body began to change, but his mind and personality remained the same, and while the priestess told him a way to lift the curse, he didn’t understand it and was unable to free himself from it.
Nivellen made his debut in the short story “A Grain of Truth”, part of the book The Last Wish, in which he met Geralt 12 years after he was cursed when the witcher was investigating the deaths of a merchant and a female companion near his manor. Now, back in December 2020, Netflix shared the first page of the script for the first episode of The Witcher season 2, and while it seems to not reveal much, the story of the merchant, his wife, and his daughter is very similar to the one in “A Grain of Truth”, and thus points at Nivellen making his debut in the series in the very first episode of the new season. This also means that Vereena, another confirmed character and played by Agnes Bjorn, will also show up in the season premiere, as she falls in love with Nivellen – but she’s a very powerful bruxa, a type of vampire that takes on the appearance of a dark-haired young woman, and things get complicated.
Of course, season 2 of The Witcher will also introduce more monsters and has already teased some of them, but Nivellen’s case is a special one, as he’s a man living under a curse that is very similar to that of the Beast in Beauty and the Beast, but a lot darker as is the universe of The Witcher. In the end, viewers will judge if Nivellen was really a monster by the time he met Geralt or if he learned his lesson after a decade of living like a beast, and it’s to be seen if he will survive the first episode or not.