If you’ve already finished The Witcher Season 2, you probably have a lot of questions about the cliffhanger ending and what’s next for the series and its characters. Luckily you don’t have to wait long to get some answers. Netflix Geeked’s official aftershow, The Witcher: Unlocked, was released on YouTube and Facebook on Dec. 20, and you’ll want to watch the 60-minute special to catch some deleted scenes from Season 2 and juicy details on how the show was made.

Actor Felicia Day, who’s a huge fan of The Witcher, interviewed the show’s stars and showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, who dished about a wide range of topics. These are the top 10 things we learned from watching. Of course, major spoilers follow!

1. Hissrich considered introducing a new witcher just to kill him. The showrunner wanted to kill someone in the witcher citadel of Kaer Morhen to show how dangerous it was to bring Ciri and her unexplained power there. The first version of the script for the episode “Kaer Morhen” introduced a witcher not featured in the books or video games alongside Coen, Eskel and Lambert. Hissrich thought that it would be too obvious for viewers who were familiar with the source material that the character they had no attachment to would be the one to die. In the end, she decided to kill Eskel, using the meaningful death to push Geralt to try to figure out Ciri’s power as quickly as possible in order to protect both her and his witcher brothers.

2. The writers’ room was divided on how to share Emhyr’s identity. The books reveal that Emhyr var Emreis, emperor of Nilfgaard, is also Ciri’s father, Duny. The writers weren’t sure whether or not to let the audience in on a secret that the characters don’t know yet because it might feel like the characters were being left behind. They decided to lean into the suspense, leaving it a mystery when the characters will also figure things out. The writers felt revealing more about Emhyr’s character was key to understanding Nilfgaard, so they needed to bring him into play. They considered ways to conceal his identity, such as recasting him or aging him so much that he’d be unrecognizable, but decided they didn’t want to put so much work into deceiving the audience. They actually hinted at the reveal when Ciri was trapped in an illusion by Voleth Meir. When Ciri decides to return to the real world, she watches most of the people she has loved and lost disintegrate. Duny is the only one in the scene who’s still alive, and he’s the only one who doesn’t turn to ash. Hissrich said you can expect to learn a lot more about Emhyr and his plans in Season 3. 

3. Hissrich said the book Blood of Elves was “terrifying” to adapt. Blood of Elves is the first novel in Andrej Sapkowski’s The Witcher series, and it serves as the primary source material for Season 2. But the book has more character development and less action than the short story collections featured prominently in Season 1. To give fans the action they expect from The Witcher, Hissrich and her writers came up with the ancient monster Voleth Meir, a new season-long villain who could bring Ciri, Yennefer and Geralt together.

4. Voleth Meir, aka the Deathless Mother, is based on the mythology of Baba Yaga. The character doesn’t appear in Sapkowski’s books, but Hissrich said she “chose Baba Yaga because it’s a monster that every culture has a version of.” Baba Yaga typically appears as a ferocious old woman who lives in a hut that stands on chicken legs. Hissrich said she loves that Sapkowski pulls the lore for his books from all over the world, inspired by his work as a traveling salesperson. “We always think about that when we’re creating new monsters,” Hissrich said. 

5. Hissrich’s favorite The Witcher book is Sapkowski’s second novel, Time of Contempt, and she’s very excited to adapt it. The strange spectral riders of the Wild Hunt, who are an omen of war and a portent of doom who claim that Ciri belongs to them, aren’t introduced until Time of Contempt, though they play a huge role in the video game The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt. Hissrich began teasing them in the show’s pilot to make sure that viewers would be appropriately scared of them by the time they show up at the end of Season 2. The connection between Ciri and the Wild Hunt will be further revealed next season, along with more details about Ciri’s bloodline.

6. Henry Cavill and Joey Batey both play the tactical miniatures game Warhammer 40,000. Cavill has been playing Warhammer 40,000 since he was 10. He’s currently playing Custodes, an army of genetically engineered warriors, while Batey is playing Necrons, which are robotic skeletons. The two joked that they would like more off-time when shooting to paint their miniatures, which Cavill said is really satisfying.

7. Freya Allen helped design Ciri’s costume in Season 2. She said she had a clear vision of what she wanted Ciri’s Witcher look to be, requesting something with a tomboy feel that seemed like it had been made from scraps of clothing. The corset is meant to add femininity to the look, an aspect of Ciri’s personality she only really embraces once the sorceress Triss Merigold comes to Kaer Morhen to help Ciri understand her magical powers. Day predicted the costume will be popular with cosplayers. Henry Cavill also helped design his character’s Season 2 attire.

8. Cavill pushed for the campfire scene with Ciri and Geralt at the end of the Season 2 premiere, “A Grain of Truth.” Originally, most of the scene was ad-libbed, though the final cut stuck to the script. Cavill praised the genuine feeling of the moment, which showed the paternal relationship Geralt has with Ciri, and how he can make her feel safe even after the terror she experienced earlier in the episode. Allen said it’s one of her favorite scenes with Geralt.

9. A deleted scene reveals Vilgefortz’s backstory. The warrior wizard who fought at Sodden Hill explains his backstory to Geralt in the Time of Contempt novel. The aftershow includes a Season 2 deleted scene between Vilgefortz and Stregobor, Vilgefortz’s political rival within the Brotherhood of Sorcerers, that provides many of the same details. Vilgefortz was born to a prostitute and abandoned in a sewer. He was raised by druids who helped shape his approach to magic before he joined the Brotherhood. He never attended a magical academy, which Stegobor thinks should disqualify him from leading the Brotherhood. Vilgefortz believes his unusual past gives him fresh perspective.

10. Istredd’s role in the show was expanded to use him as a way to explore the history of the Continent. The sorcerer Istredd is introduced in the short story “A Shard of Ice” in Sapkowski’s second short story collection, Sword of Destiny, as a lover of Yennefer and a rival to Geralt. But Hissrich said she was impressed with actor Royce Pierreson’s performance and saw the character and his love of history as a way to further explain mysteries the writers needed the audience to understand. Istredd helps provide insights into the nature of the monoliths across the Continent and the Conjunction of the Spheres, an event, which happened more than 1,000 years before the events of the show, that brought humans and monsters to the show’s world. Hissrich said that much of the mythology Istredd helped explain in Season 2 will be further developed in the prequel The Witcher: Blood Origin.

Want to learn even more about The Witcher? Check out our explainers on how long witchers live and how dragons fit into the show’s world. Happy hunting.