Why witchers should be breeding monsters

Caution: This post contains spoilers for The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf.

The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf offers shocking revelations about the monsters that roam the Continent and the witchers who kill them for money. The new Netflix animated film, a prequel to the events of the hit fantasy show, book series, and videogame, Nightmare of the Wolf casts a dark cloud over the witcher guild by revealing that these mercenary monster slayers are breeding the very beasts they kill in order to keep their business alive.

While series protagonist Geralt was always a conflicted hero at best, this new bit of backstory raises questions about whether witchers — mutated humans trained from childhood to kill monsters — should be considered friends of humanity at all. (It also helps explain why most humans regard witchers with a mix of intense distrust and dislike.) But while releasing new monsters into the world for cash is a pretty morally bankrupt thing to do, a close read of the books suggests the guild's actions might have an upside. Monsters are the Continent's apex predators, and reintroducing them to the wild might undo some of the ecological damage caused by their declining populations.

In the world of The Witcher, monster is a catch-all term encompassing a host of non-humanoid species that hunt and kill people: kikimoras, manticores, wyverns, basilisks, and strigas to name but a few. (Witchers do not consider humanoids like elves, dwarves, or gnomes to be monsters, nor are dragons considered monsters due to their intelligence.) By the events of the books and the TV show, witchers have been systematically extirpating monsters for several centuries, and many of these man-killers are on the verge of extinction.