Fan Theories From 'The Witcher' That We Really Want To Believe

From Redditor u/Mishu2019:

After watching, I couldn't help but think - was geralt a child of the Law of Suprise too? I thought he could have been, which is why he despises destiny, the sword of destiny has two blades does it not?

From Redditor u/CephRedstar:

"He knows this law better than anyone else, because it applied to him once. He was taken from his home because he was what his father hadn't expected to find on his return. Because he was destined for other things. And by the power of destiny he became what he is... a Witcher." This was said by Mousesack in the books, I haven't read anything concrete to refute the above so far.

From Redditor u/lemurwars:

In the second episode of season 1, Filavandrel talks about how humans have polluted chaos to be able use magic. He says that humans “synthetically enhanced” chaos. I believe he’s referring to the eel conduits in the pool at Aretuza.

Could be some interesting worldbuilding. Continuing with Istredd’s story about the elvish bones in Aretuza...maybe the original elven sorcerers that built Aretuza taught magic to humans, but humans were not as good at organizing chaos as the elves were and their magic remained basic. I bet the human mages felt envious of their elven masters’ innate abilities and conspired against them. After killing them and taking over Aretuza, humans must have run experiments to figure out how to control as much power as the elves did and landed on this “pool of conduits” solution. Transform human apprentices into magically conductive animals to power some sort of medium that artificially organizes chaos at scale and distributes it to the world from Aretuza. Human mages then more easily tap into this pre-organized chaos to make powerful magic, rather than try to organize raw chaos from scratch — which the elves were able to do.

With regard to their control over chaos, Geralt tells Filavandrel that humans “adapted better”. Perhaps this means the synthetically organized chaos technology humans created allows them to surpass what the elves could do with raw chaos. Maybe it also disturbs and changes the natural matrix of raw chaos around the world, that could be why Filavandrel says “you say ‘adapt’, I say ‘destroy’”.

But maybe there’s a different cost to using this synthetic chaos. Human mages can only harvest limited amounts of it before getting physically weak. Whereas elves maybe could use raw chaos for longer...who knows.

AND perhaps Yennefer is able to use raw chaos more readily since she’s quarter elvish. The reason she was behind all the other mage apprentices at the beginning was perhaps because it took her body longer to learn how to use synthetic chaos. But it took her only one try to open a portal using elder magic, which amazed Istredd. She seems to be able to command both synthetic chaos through discipline/learning and tap into remaining raw chaos through emotional catharsis. That’s maybe what we see happening in Sodden.

From Redditor u/boomsc:

Is Dandelion cleverer than he lets on with 'Toss A Coin'?

I rewatched the season last night and it got me thinking. Jaskier generally comes across as a happy go-lucky 'lets be friends' from the outset, and 'Toss a coin' is just him doing his barding. But is it possible Jaskier sings it out of concern for the townspeople in Ep.2?

We see him extend friendship to Geralt pretty damn hard and get solidly rebuffed the entire time by someone who clearly wants nothing to do with people and it's not hard to see Geralt's shooing anyone away, not just the overly talkative bards, and in a pretty misanthropic way; most people who just want alone will at least tolerate the odd interaction when it's forced on them but Geralt utterly ignores 99% of everything Jaskier says, even direct questions and his willingness to save others morally isn't as readily obvious.

He then watches Geralt completely shrug off a 'minature cannonball' before effortlessly overpower a 'devil' and then emphatically separate himself from 'humans', condemn them, and demand that the elves recognise him as non-human if they mean to kill him.

On top of all this, Jaskier knows of Geralt's personal history and moniker The Butcher of Blaviken and that when asked, openly feels 'butcher' is more appropriate than White Wolf. And as a learned, literate travelling bard is almost guaranteed to know stories and rumours of Witchers 'going rogue' when they don't get paid.

All of this combined adds subtext to the tavern scene. Jaskier is very aware the village are toying with the idea of not paying up and acutely aware that Geralt also knows this. He only has a hunch Geralt would take the loss and leave; but it's 100% in his presented character, history and racial identity to massacre the whole room without remorse as punishment.

The song isn't just to make sure his new buddy gets paid, it's to protect everyone in the room and they don't even know it.

Even more so, he starts writing it on the journey back, meaning he might have been anticipating and worried about such an eventuality from the get go.

From Redditor u/marvin_mumble:

TL;DR: Yennefer gets dimeritium poisoning from her chains and cures herself in the final episode by performing an accidental bloodletting procedure on herself.

When we first meet Yennefer in season 2 she is sporting a pair of dimeritium chains courtesy of Fringilla. She stays in these chains for what seems like several days (if not weeks) in the company of Fringilla and the elves.

Wearing chains for that length of time is gonna cause chaffing and potentially open wounds. So what if it was possible that Yen had a sliver of dimeritium embed in her wrists or somehow got "dimeritium poisoning" from long term exposure of the metal to an open wound?

Here's a few things I noticed that made me give this theory some further thought:

• Yen admits to feeling "off" while cuffed to Fringilla in the forest with the elves and goes so far as to blame the dimeritium.
• Yen's hands and wrists twitch when she tries to perform magic as if her body is trying to tell her something. Someone even goes so far as to mention it at some point but I can't remember who.
• Finally, in the final episode, Yen admits to feeling her powers return when she "sacrificed" herself for Ciri. She did this by cutting her wrists and loosing a serious amount of blood in the process! Maybe this was enough to drain the poisoned blood from her system or maybe remove any slivers of dimeritium that were still embedded in her wrists?

From Redditor u/Indiana_harris:

So in S2 we very unfortunately saw half the surviving Witchers used as Canon Fodder or redshirts. At the end of Nightmare of the Wolf we see Vesemir with his new charges (4 surviving boys including Geralt). Now in S2Ep2 we see that Geralt says there are about 20 surviving Wolf Witchers of which 11 are at Kaer Morhen that winter. While we lose a load I’d argue that only the 4 young ones from NotW are Vesemir's “sons”.

These would be Geralt, Lambert, Coen & Eskel.

So the other Witchers are ones (from their appearance in the show) recently on the path when the attack happens and are more Vesemir's brothers than his sons like the others. So while he’s lost most of them (I think there are 6 Witchers left after S2 of the ones at Kaer Morhen) he still has 3 of his 4 sons alive.

From Quora user Theo Noble:

In The Witcher, is Queen Calanthe's refusal to give Cirilla up and thus breaking the Law of Surprise the reason for Citra's demise? Not the reason, but a factor.

Cintra’s sack was planned before Ciri’s birth. Vilgefortz and Emhyr had planned all of this back when Emhyr was still “Dunny / Eimyr,” or “The Hedgehog.” All of this was years before The Sack of Cintra and Calanthe’s choice to refuse Geralt.

However, the concept of Free Will is not agreed upon in Witcher and it is confused. Calanthe’s choice may’ve been known centuries before her birth. But the Law of Surprise is incredibly powerful, as are the Sages, so perhaps this was all foretold and is the direct cause of the Sack.