Frida Gustavsson plays sorceress Visenna on The Witcher; Creditts: Netflix Life

It has been a while since season 1 on The Witcher aired but exceptional shows like this know how to capture the attention of the audience for a long time to come. 

The series star Frida Gustavsson has been taking on amazing new projects like the Vikings: Valhalla. Vikings is a series by Netflix that has gone all out when it comes to period series. It has spent a lot of time, effort, and resources to get the costumes, design, and details of the series right. 

Starring in such a gigantic production might have been difficult for Gustavsson had she not starred in an equally stunning production: The Witcher. Frida Gustavsson played a monumental role in the series, a role that is still a major discussion topic for fans of the show.

Gustavsson stars as the Visenna, the mother of Geralt played by Henry Cavill in Episode 8, Much More, of Season 1 of The Witcher. Geralt comes across a group of creatures as he is trying to track down Ciri and is bitten by one of the creatures during the process. 

The bite leads to a fever that causes him to go hysterical. The fever also leads to a hallucination sort of experience taking him back to the time when he was abandoned in the woods by his mother. He was then taken by Vesamir, played by Kim Bodnia, to be made a Witcher. 

The episode then continues to show Geralt later talking with his mother about the time when she left him to be made a Witcher. Angry and furious he can not imagine why she would leave him to become one of the Witchers. He asks her how she could  subject him to such a fate and why she had abandoned him in those woods. 

But Visenna is adamant not to reply to his inquiries. She firmly replies that none of her explanations would make him feel satisfied regarding whatever happened in the past. She asks him to let go of it and move on. She says that she should find it in him to forget it and continue on with his life. 

But before Geralt can come out of the fever dream, Visenna says that the whole experience was just a dream. Though many might agree, several fans believe that it was not just a dream. 

As it is revealed in season one of The Witcher, the audience gets to know that Visenna is a sorceress. There is a short scene in Episode 8 where she can be seen to be a healer. Hence, her magical abilities make it possible that Visenna was really present during the confrontation and that it was not a dream. 

Yet, fans can not deny that in the particular scene, Geralt was bitten by a Ghoul. Hence, there is a chance that it was really just a fever dream. 

Fans have been vying for an answer and an official explanation of the scene for a long time now. The director of Episode 8, Marc Jobst, shared that the series has intentionally left the scene as an ambiguous element. 

Yet, the lady in question, Frida Gustavsson, recently had a talk with Collider as she discussed her latest role on the Vikings series, Vikings: Valhalla. During her interview, she also looked back on The Witcher and what she thinks the reality is of the scene with Geralt and his mother. 

She shared her approach to the scene when questioned if the whole scene plays out in the head of Geralt as a fever dream due to the bite or if she was actually really there with Geralt in person. 

She explained that while she approached the scene to enact the scene, she had to create her own reality so that she could portray it. The decision is made so that the scene makes more sense and that the "intentions" of the actor can be portrayed as "realistic" as required by the scene. 

So, in that scene, she was not playing it as a dream that Geralt was having. Instead, from her acting point of view, she had to portray it from the perspective of the mother who needed to have some peace for herself. 

Therefore, it was a way for Visenna to get her peace after all the "horrible things" that she had witnessed. The scene was both for the sake of Geralt and Visenna and that is how she approached acting in the dream. 

She said that she is not sure if she was actually present there from the point of view of the story. But for her own sake, she was there in flesh with Geralt. 

Frida says Visenna was with Geralt in person in Season 1 Episode 8; Credits: EWW News

The next season of The Witcher is expected to drop by December of 2023.