The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf is an animated feature film from Netflix extends the story of the Netflix live action series The Witcher. While the series is an adaptation of the stories from Andrzej Sapkowski’s series of novels, this anime-style film from director Kwang Il Han tells the backstory of the witcher Vesemir and the sacking of Kaer Morhen that resulted in this world’s shortage of witchers. Both Vesemir and Kaer Morhen will be part of Season 2 of The Witcher coming December 17, and this film should enrich your Season 2 experience if you’ve been following the series.

The film itself is beautiful to watch with intriguing characters and engaging storytelling. It has the style of a modern 2D anime like Attack on Titan. Be warned, though, that it also has violence and gore on par with both The Witcher series and with many teen+ anime series (like, again, Attack on Titan). Like its live-action counterpart, the film is definitely not made for either young kids or the faint of heart.

In its storytelling, the film makes no assumptions that you have read the books or played the games. The books and games do feature some of these characters and refer to the events depicted in the film, but the film is a completely original backstory for those characters and events. That said, the film is easier to connect to if you’ve at least seen Season 1 of The Witcher series.

If you do want to know a bit more before you seeing Nightmare of the Wolf (without any spoilers), here’s the scoop:

Both novel readers and those who played the Witcher games from CD PROJEKT RED will recognize Vesemir as the mentor of Geralt, the main protagonist that gives the Witcher stories their name. They will also recognize Kaer Morhen as an old keep where witchers trained from childhood and where they gathered annually to live out each winter season. 

The film gives us a glance at Vesemir’s life before Kaer Morhen, his trials to become a witcher, and his early life as a witcher around the time that Kaer Morhen was sacked. The sacking of Kaer Morhen was an event mentioned briefly in Season 1 of the Netflix series, and I suspect Season 2 will describe it in more detail. This film reveals the history leading up to that attack and how it all played out.

Definitely check out The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf! Not only is it the perfect companion for Netflix series fans, but book and game fans should also have fun seeing familiar faces and references and an adventurous young Vesemir in action!

Have you seen The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf? What did you think? Share your reactions in the comments.