The Witcher's Showrunner Finally Addresses Eskel's Fate In Season 2

Netflix's "The Witcher" just finished its second season, and it saw the brutal world expanded to contain far more political intrigue, monsters, and Witchers other than Geralt (Henry Cavill). In the episode "Kaer Mohen," Geralt returns to what is essentially his home. In this location, Geralt finds his ersatz mentor and father-like figure Vesemir (Kim Bodnia), as well as fellow monster hunters Eskel (Basil Eidenbenz), Gwain (Jota Castellano), Everard (Nathanial Jacobs), and Merek (Chuey Okoye). The Witchers gather in Kaer Mohen to rest, recuperate, and celebrate their survival over the past year. However, Eskel joins his compatriots having just slain a tree-like creature known as a Leshy, and looking like the battle had taken a massive toll.

Unfortunately for Eskel, the Leshy was far from the normal beasts that the greatly-enhanced Witchers have fought up to that point, and the wounds suffered by Eskel resulted in him being quickly transformed into a Leshy himself. This eventually ends up in an epic battle between Geralt and his former friend, but fans of the video game franchise and the books by Andrzej Sapkowski had something to say about the character, and the showrunner has finally broken her silence on Eskel.

Fans of "The Witcher" source material were shocked to see how quickly Eskel was dispatched since he played a decently-sized part in the books and video games. Despite the fact that Eskel was a bit of a jerk to Ciri (Freya Allan) — a departure from his original characterization — fans were hoping to see the character stick around. Twitter user @xcdubbsx said, "Yeah he just didn't get enough screen-time to make [his] death impactful."

Responding to the fan chatter about Eskel, showrunner Lauren S. Hissrich tweeted, "All of that said: fans miss Eskel. I understand that. I also understand that we made the choice we needed to make in our storytelling, in order to activate Geralt. Is there a right and wrong? For fans, maybe. And maybe time will tell, for us too." She noted that they had planned several flashbacks between Eskel and Geralt, "to demonstrate further to the audience how close Geralt and Eskel were in the past: to reinforce just how far Geralt had had to go in his heart in order to make that sacrifice." 

Twitter user @vitorhsc replied, "That's what I missed. I'm not against the decision made, but IMO the relationship could have been a little more developed before the outcome. These kind of flashbacks should have happened before... so we could know him better."

While some fans of "The Witcher" are still a little salty about the ultimate fate of Eskel, most understand the reason for the decision.