The Witcher season 3 shuts down after Henry Cavill gets COVID

The first season of The Witcher, Netflix’s adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski’s fantasy books, was a hit when it landed on Netflix in 2019. The second was slow in coming, in large part because it went into production just as the coronavirus pandemic was starting to sweep across the world, causing all kinds of production delays. Fans were hoping for a quicker turnaround between seasons 2 and 3, but COVID isn’t done with this show quite yet.

Reliable Witcher fansite Redanian Intelligence reports that production on The Witcher season 3 halted this past Monday, July 25. The show was entering its final month of production and preparing to film a big battle sequence inspired by a key scene from the book Time of Contempt: the Thanedd coup. Why the halt? Leading man Henry Cavill contracted COVID.

I assume Cavill is vaccinated and he’s a pretty healthy guy besides, so he should be fine. Still, stopping and starting on a big battle sequence can be a pain for any production. The Witcher season 3 doesn’t have a release date yet, but anybody hoping it would come out this year will probably be disappointed.

What ever happened to The Witcher: Blood Origin?

There is an alternative. Netflix has been prepping a Witcher prequel series called Blood Origin for a while now; they even released a teaser trailer, above. Perhaps that can come out this year to help bridge the gap.

And that still may happen, although Netflix has been suspiciously quiet about Blood Origin lately. For instance, it didn’t have any presence at San Diego Comic-Con this past weekend, which is odd for a show that was far enough along seven months ago to release a teaser trailer.

There’s no release date for Blood Origin, either. I dunno what’s going on with that one. In the meantime, get well, Henry Cavill.

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