In truth, the Wild Hunt aren’t the undead come to claim the souls of the living. It’s all a means to terrify any onlookers while they make their raids on the world of humans. Most of their qualities are the result of psychological warfare: Their skeletal armor is made to look like it was lifted from corpses, their spectral appearance to inflate their numbers and hide those in their rank who are flesh and blood. These riders are not mere specters, nor are they aimless.

So why do the Wild Hunt do that? Image: Netflix It’s a pretty gross and horrifying image, all told. People from Skellige claim the Wraiths of Mörhogg raid their shores aboard a ship called the Naglfar, a longship made from the nails and toe-nails of dead men, which lead to their practice of cutting the nails of the dead to deprive the wraiths of building materials. Like their counterparts, the Wild Hunt are known for kidnapping unsuspecting souls to join the ranks of their ghastly cavalcade. While there are many accounts that line up, the most commonly accepted version was solidified by Jacob Grimm (of Brothers Grimm fame) in his book Teutonic Mythology, who claimed he based them on Germanic tales. Sometimes they’re the undead, sometimes they’re faeries. In Scandinavia the riders were lead by Odin, while for some Christians they were lead by the devil. The idea of the Wild Hunt actually predates the Witcher books, having a real world mythological counterpart in Northern European folklore motif, which dates back centuries with a variety of interpretations. At the outset of season 2, sightings of these terrifying riders have fittingly sparked murmurings among humans of an apocalypse coming to their world. Their first mention in the Netflix series came just before Nilfgaard invaded Cintra, from a king who claimed to have seen the Wraiths. Called the Wraiths of Mörhogg by the islanders of Skellige, and known to their own as the Red Riders, the Wild Hunt is a convoy of spectral riders that gallop across the sky and are regarded as an omen signaling approaching times of war, something The Witcher show seems to observed. The Wild Hunt is first mentioned in the second of Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher books, The Sword of Destiny, and is the focus of the third video game. While not touched on with a ton of depth in season 2, they’re an ominous force that’s integral to understanding the machinations of the season and the grander Witcher universe heading into The Witcher season 3. The Wild Hunt only get a quick, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it mention in the pilot of The Witcher, but they’re certainly a more prominent presence in the new season - particularly in the finale where they put the fear of god into everyone.

Witcher 3 wild hunt wiki