In The Witcher Season 3, Who Is The Woman Without A Voice, And What Happened To Her Face?

This post contains spoilers for season 3, part 1 of "The Witcher."

There are all kinds of monsters in the world of the Netflix fantasy series "The Witcher," and not all of them are terrifying beasts with wings and claws. In the first half of season 3, audiences are re-introduced to a very unusual villain in the form of a beautiful mute woman named Lydia van Bredevoort (Aisha Fabienne Ross) who speaks via telepathy. In season 2, she helped the wicked mage Rience (Chris Fulton) escape from prison so they could hunt down Princess Cirella (Freya Allan) together for Lydia's secret and terrifying employer. Bound only by their hunt for Ciri, the two don't like one another much and love to rub salt in each other's metaphorical wounds, trading barbs more than actual information about their quest. With allies like those, who needs enemies?

A whole heck of a lot of things happened in the back half of season 2, and we jump right back into the thick of things in season 3, so here's a quick primer on Lydia van Bredevoort, a very different kind of monster hiding beneath a magical mask. 

Lots of people have been after Ciri, but Rience is one of the scariest. He's a dangerous mage with strong fire powers, and he tortures Jaskier (Joey Batey) for information on Ciri before Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) comes to his rescue. The woman he answers to is Lydia, and she's even scarier. In season 2, she used a blood ritual to try and find Ciri using some of her blood, and the magic went wrong, horribly disfiguring Lydia. She is "the woman without a voice" because she has no lower jaw and uses powerful magic to hide her flaws, speaking only through telepathy. She's also the woman without a face, according to Rience, as we see him touch the illusion and some of her burned, warped true face is revealed. 

In the books that "The Witcher" is based on, written by Andrzej Sapkowski, Rience and Lydia are working for Vilgefortz (Mahesh Jadu), the leader of the Brotherhood. In the Netflix series their connection isn't quite as clear, but Vilgefortz is clearly even more two-faced than Lydia. The Brotherhood is a den of vipers, and he's the top snake. If he's hiring known criminals like Rience and Lydia to be his searching tendrils throughout the kingdoms, then he's even more dangerous than anyone possibly could have guessed. Everyone wants to find and control Ciri for their own reasons, but Vilgefortz and his cronies are probably the biggest threats going into the back half of season 3. 

"The Witcher" season 3, part 1 is now streaming on Netflix.