It was announced in October that Henry Cavill would also be stepping down from The Witcher, with Liam Hemsworth replacing him in the role of Geralt. In a statement, Cavill said: “My journey as Geralt of Rivia has been filled with both monsters and adventures. In my stead, the fantastic Mr. Liam Hemsworth will be taking up the mantle of the White Wolf. As with the greatest of literary characters, I pass the torch with reverence for the time spent embodying Geralt and enthusiasm to see Liam’s take on this most fascinating and nuanced of men.” Although Henry Cavill will be missed, Hemsworth won’t be taking over the role until the fourth season, which means that we still have The Witcher season 3 with Cavill to look forward to.
While speaking with Entertainment Weekly, The Witcher creator and showrunner Lauren Hissrich said that season 3 of the Netflix series will serve as “the most heroic sendoff” for Henry Cavill’s Geralt. “Henry has given so much to the show and so we want to honor that appropriately,” Hissrich said. “Geralt’s big turn is about giving up neutrality and doing anything that he has to do to get to Ciri. And to me, it’s the most heroic sendoff that we could have, even though it wasn’t written to be that. Geralt has a new mission in mind when we come back to him in season 4. He’s a slightly different Geralt than we expected. Now, by the way, that’s an understatement.” The Witcher season 3 takes inspiration from the fourth book in Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher novels, Time of Contempt, and Hissrich teased that this season is the closest they’ve come to a straight adaptation of the books.
What is so interesting is that season 3, to me, is the closest thing that we’ve done as a one-to-one adaptation of the books. Obviously, we can’t do every page, but Time of Contempt gave us so many big action events, plot points, defining character moments, huge reveals of a big bad. There’s so much to do that we were able to stick really, really closely with the books.
Geralt isn’t the only role that Henry Cavill has exited in recent months. After appearing in the mid-credits sequence in Black Adam, Henry Cavill announced that he would be returning as Superman. However, James Gunn and Peter Safra had different plans for the new DC Universe, and it was revealed that Cavill wouldn’t be playing Superman after all.
The Witcher season 3 won’t debut on Netflix until next summer, but we do have The Witcher: Blood Origin just over the horizon. The four-episode prequel series will launch on December 25th, and you can check out a review from our own Alex Maidy right here.