Fans of “The Witcher” received some pretty devastating news this weekend: the series’ 4th season will continue without Henry Cavill. A decision that invites many questions and that could have been taken a long time ago…
Netflix has indeed confirmed that season 4 of The Witcher will feature Liam Hemsworth as Geralt of Rivia. After 2 seasons (with a 3rd to come), Henry Cavill is ready to move on.
“My journey as Geralt of Rivia has been filled with monsters and adventures, and alas, I will lay down my medallion and swords for season 4“, he wrote in a post on Instagram.
“In my place, the fantastic Mr. Liam Hemsworth will take on the role of the white wolf. As with literary greats, I pass the torch with reverence for the time spent playing Geralt and with excitement to see Liam’s interpretation of this most fascinating and nuanced man. Liam, my good sir, this character has such wonderful depth, have fun diving into it and seeing what you can find.”
The news disappointed a lot of fans and drew a lot of criticism. So why did Henry Cavill decide to hang up his swords?
Most believe this shocking departure has something to do with Henry Cavill signing on to return as Superman in the DC Universe for several projects over the next few years. Granted, playing the Man of Steel would leave little time for monster hunting. However, as reported by the Gaming Bible site, others have pointed out that the actor may have already told us the reason for his exit years ago…
As you probably know, Henry Cavill is a huge fan of The Witcher – both the video games and the original novels by Andrzej Sapkowski. Several examples of interviews are now circulating on social media suggesting he wasn’t too happy with how the source material was handled in the Netflix series.
On The Witcher subreddit and on Twitter, fans have indeed unearthed old interviews with showrunner Lauren S. Hissrich and Henry Cavill that seem to say a lot. As you can see in the tweets below, the latter constantly repeats often wanting to stay true to the original works while also working to serve the showrunner’s vision.
Henry Cavill previously claimed he was fully committed to The Witcher’s 7-season plan…as long as the show could continue to tell great stories that honored Sapkowski’s work!
Given some of the fairly substantial story changes made in Season 2 and recent rumors that The Witcher writers “didn’t like” the original work, it could well be that the actor decided it was time to honor his principles and just move on.
Anyway, we will be able to see him one last time in the skin of Geralt during season 3 which should be released in 2023. In the meantime, the first 2 seasons of The Witcher are available on Netflix.