The Witcher: The Wild Hunt explained

Wild hunt just get a quick mention, blink and you’ll miss it in your test witchbut they’re definitely a more prominent presence in the second season—especially in the final season, where they scare everyone away.

While not covered with a lot of depth in season 2, they are an ominous force indispensable for understanding the plot the season and the greater Witcher universe is headed towards. witch season 3. And most importantly, their king is featured prominently in The Witcher: Blood Origin.

What is Wild Hunt?

Wild Hunt was first mentioned in the second part of Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher book, sword of destinyand is the focus of the third video game. Called the Wraiths of Mörhogg by the Skellige Islanders, and known as the Red Riders, the Wild Hunt is a convoy of phantom riders galloping through the sky and is seen as a harbinger of war time. painting is approaching, something witch program seems to be observable. Their first mention in the Netflix series comes just before the Nilfgaard invasion of Cintra, from a king who claims to have seen Wraith. At the start of season 2, sightings of these fearsome racers sparked human whispers of an impending apocalypse upon their world.

The idea of ​​the Wild Hunt actually predates the Witcher books, has a real-world copy of myth in a Norse folklore motif, dates back centuries with various interpretations. together. In Scandinavia, the horsemen are led by Odin, while for some Christians they are led by the devil. Sometimes they are the undead, sometimes they are fairies. Although many accounts line up, the most commonly accepted version was reinforced by Jacob Grimm (of the famous Brothers Grimm) in his book Teutonic Myths, who stated that he was based on verses German story.

Like their counterparts, the Wild Hunt is known for abducting gullible souls to join the ranks of their gruesome cavalry. The people from Skellige claim that the Wraith of Mörhogg attacked their shores on a ship called the Naglfar, a long ship made from the fingernails and toenails of the dead, which resulted in them clipping the fingernails of the dead. died to deprive the ghosts of the building work. material. It’s a pretty raw and terrible image, all told.

So why did Wild Hunt do it?

Image: Netflix

These riders are not just ghosts, nor are they useless. Most of their qualities are the result of psychological warfare: Their skeleton armor is made to look like it was taken from a corpse, their ghostly appearance to inflate numbers and hide people in their ranks is flesh and blood. It’s all just a means to terrify any onlookers as they make their attacks on the human world.

In fact, the Wild Hunt is not a zombie coming to claim the souls of the living. They are actually elves from another world, called Aen Elle, a world that has never been conquered by humans. Aen Elle came to this world to kidnap humans, not to join their cavalry but to enslave them back into their world.

They were once able to move large numbers between worlds, which allowed them to explore and conquer to their liking. But since the Combination of the Orbs, the cataclysmic event that caused dozens of dimensions to collide, their power has been limited. Now, Wild Hunt can only bring in a few riders at a time, so their illusion and stage, both menacing but also conveniently conceals their true numbers.

The fact that they had any power to travel between worlds was a feat possible for riders thanks to the King of the Wild Hunt, known to his brothers as Eredin Bréacc Glas, a general of Aen Elle, who always provides his people with reluctant subjects. . Eredin has nothing but contempt for humans but also considers the elves of the human world, Aen Seidhe, to be inferior due to their being subjugated at the hands of humans.

The Witcher: Blood Origin marks Eredin’s first on-screen appearance in the Netflix Witcherverse, showing how he became the leader of the Wild Hunt—and with a different origin story than the one in the books. Captain Eredin (Jacob Collins-Levy) and a small group of his men are trapped in a strange new world after encountering the evil wizard Balor (Lenny Henry). Desperately kneeling in a wasteland, Eredin saw a broken skull buried in the ground. He put it on his head, and it looked like the Wild Hunt was born.

With several thousand years of history in the universe between the world of blood origin and witch Yes, there are a lot of Wild Hunt storylines that haven’t been taken into account. But like witch As the end of season 2 shows, they’re about to become a lot more relevant. As their ability to move between worlds is dwindling and Wild Hunt now has its eye on a specific prize: finding those of the Elder Blood.