'The Witcher': Netflix Reveals Show Timeline After Viewers Express Confusion on Characters' Overlapping Storylines

The Witcher is one of Netflix's most lauded original series ever, yet many fans are confused about the timeline and the geography of the story. As a remedy, Netflix shared an interactive map to explain the series across space and time. This is a big reveal even to long-time fans of the franchise.

Netflix's new fantasy epic The Witcher takes a bold approach to storytelling, shuffling plotlines across its eight episodes and never making it explicitly clear when some stories are set. The result is a somewhat mythic, episodic adventure that many fans like, even if it left them a little turned around along the way.

For those that want clarification, however, Netflix did post an interactive map online. On Friday, the show's official Twitter account shared a link to the new site, which features a map and a corresponding timeline below. Fans can zoom in and out of the map while scrolling forward and back along the timeline, stopping to note where specific episodes, storylines and events take place.

The map launches first at the town of Blaviken, where the events of Episode 1, "The Butcher of Blaviken" take place. This is denoted as the year 1231 in the show's history. Episode 2, "The Edge of the World," is set a full nine years later in 1240. It is also miles and miles away, in Posada.

The episode are not the only events on the timeline. Another parallel line features important events that were not featured in the show itself, such as Queen Calanthe's marriage to Roegner of Ebbing, or the slow developments in Nilfgaard to the south. There are also timelines for the exploits of Yennefer and Ciri running alongside those of Geralt of Rivia.

Not only is the interactive map helpful for fans of the show looking for clarification, it is also an historic addition to the canon for long-time fans of the franchise. The Witcher began as a series of short stories, then novels written by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. Even after decades of publishing stories about Geralt, Sapkowski has never published an official map for his books. However, he did tell a 2007 interview that the existing maps online are "mostly accurate," and even said he sometimes references a version by the Czech translator Stansilav Komarek.

Timelines and monsters and battles and scriptures!
Ballads and bards and oh you get the picture. https://t.co/Sp6FsXubMv

— The Witcher (@witchernetflix) January 10, 2020

Meanwhile, the video game series of course has its own map, although this is not necessarily as closely tied to the books as the show is. Netflix's version of The Witcher is adapted mainly from Sapkowski's books, not the games, and was created for TV by showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich.

The Witcher Season 1 is streaming now on Netflix. Season 2 is set to begin filming soon, and hopefully premiere in 2021.