Witcher Showrunner Explains Why Jaskier Doesn't Have His Hat
In adapting The Witcher book series for Netflix, there were bound to be some changes made to the source material to fit both the visual medium and the episodic format. But even beyond that, the Netflix show had to make small (and sometimes big) changes to each character to better suit the tone of the piece. As a result, though, fans have had questions about why some changes were made, while others were kept the same.
One small change that most didn’t notice (or even care about) was the removal of Jaskier’s signature hat from The Witcher novels. In the books, Jaskier wears a rather large hat/bonnet that matches his bard-like personality, but in the Netflix series Jaskier (played by Joey Batey) wears no such hat.
While there were plenty of theories about why Jaskier doesn’t wear his hat in The Witcher, the answer is fairly simple. According to showrunner Lauren Hissrich, the production tried the Jaskier hat, but it didn’t look right. In fact, Hissrich says that the production “couldn’t stop laughing” at the hat, which suggests it was too comical for the tone of the show.
Ah, yes, the hat! It was made, we tried it on Joey, and we couldn't stop laughing.
Will we try again? Sure. Nothing is impossible. And yes, we dropped the ball on aging him up over the course of the show. It's hard to show the passage of time when everyone looks the same, so we'll be approaching that differently in S2.
But even though Jaskier’s hat didn’t end up working out in Season 1 of The Witcher, Hissirch did leave the possibility open that they might try it again. As with any show, the production will better learn its characters over time and refine the look. It also helps that The Witcher was successful enough to warrant a bigger budget, which can help iron out these smaller details. Then again, the expectation is that The Witcher Season 2 will use that increased budget to deliver bigger monsters and set pieces, so fans may just have to get used to a hatless Jaskier.
In addition to the missing hat, there were a few changes made to Jaskier that may have confused people who are only familiar with The Witcher game. In CD Projekt Red’s series Jaskier is known as Dandelion but his character is relatively the same. For the show, the creators wanted to use the polish translation for Dandelion (which is also used in the original books) instead of Dandelion, but they are roughly the same name.
Regardless of the changes, The Witcher fans should expect to see more of Jaskier in the Netflix series for Season 2, which started pre-production recently. Perhaps the creators may even find a way to make the hat work.
The Witcher is available now on Netflix.
Source: AMA with Lauren Hissrich
Post a Comment