Will season 3 make or break The Witcher?

The Witcher has gone through some upheaval lately. Last year we learned that Henry Cavill, who plays Geralt of Rivia in the Netflix series, will be stepping down after the show’s upcoming third season. Geralt will be played by Liam Hemsworth starting in season 4.

While The Witcher hasn’t had a flawless run, Cavill’s performance as the taciturn monster hunter was almost universally praised, so losing him could hurt. And the circumstances of his departure didn’t help. Not long before the news broke, a former writer on the show claimed that some people in the show’s writers room “actively disliked” The Witcher books and video games. Cavill, on the other hand, was known to be a fanboy of the source material, and had clashed with the production at times over matters of textual fidelity. Some fans took this and ran with it, concluding that these creative differences led to the actor leaving.

As of this writing, we still don’t know exactly what happened. But however you slice it, Cavill is out, Hemsworth is in, and The Witcher feels like it’s got a big old question mark looming over it. That goes double when you consider how poorly the prequel series Blood Origin went over with audiences. It’s easy to wonder whether this franchise has a future once Cavill isn’t a part of it.

Season 3 could give The Witcher its very own Red Wedding moment

Perhaps the series can earn some goodwill with the next installment of the mothership show. The Witcher season 3 stands to be a make-or-break season, not just because it’s the last time Cavill will be involved, but also because it will be adapting some huge events from Andrzej Sapkowski’s third full Witcher novel, Time of Contempt. (Some mild SPOILERS follow below.

A large chuck of The Time of Contempt centers around a massive gathering on the isle of Thanedd, where sorcerers and sorceresses are trained. Almost every major player in the series is present for the summit; we’re talking all the magic users, Geralt and Ciri and Yennefer, kings and queens and spies. What begins as a grand meeting of the minds quickly goes off the rails, devolving into a chaotic series of events that contains a bunch of important character moments, deaths, major injuries and reveals, including the setup for one of the series’ main villains.

By the end of it all, the power balance on the Continent is irrevocably shifted, as are the trajectories for the story’s main characters. That set piece on the Isle of Thanedd is one of the biggest turning points in the entire series; if there’s anywhere The Witcher could turn things around, it’s here.

But if the show botches these events, it could very easily kill whatever trust with longtime fans remains. The source material serves up what should be the equivalent of a slam dunk. Similarly to how the Red Wedding took Game of Thrones to a new level, season 3 of The Witcher could breathe new life into the franchise if it’s handled well.

But will it be handled well? That is the looming question. The Witcher has had a consistent problem with botching its source material, often treating it more like a hindrance than something to explore. That’s only become more clear as the show has gone on, with both season 2 and The Witcher: Blood Origin using only a smattering of things from Sapkowski’s novels. Instead, they seem more interested in creating entirely new stories, plotlines, and characters.

The Witcher showrunner Lauren S. Hissrich said in an interview last month that season 3 will be “the closest thing that we’ve done as a one-to-one adaptation of the books,” pointing out that since The Time of Contempt has so many big moments (where the previous book, Blood of Elves, was comparatively quiet), it’ll be much easier to use as a template. She also said that season 3 will bring us to the elven ruin of Shaerrawedd for a major set piece that didn’t turn up in season 2 even though it’s from Blood of Elves. So there’s a lot of book material that could crop up in season 3 of The Witcher…if the show goes that route.

The Witcher season 3: To get hype or not to get hype?

So what’s the verdict here? Should we be worried about The Witcher season 3 or excited?

It’s a hard question to answer. For me personally, I’ll just say that after two seasons and two spinoffs which have drifted farther and farther from the spirit and tone of the novels and games, I’m just too exhausted to care all that much anymore. I doubt I’m alone in that feeling. I’ll absolutely be watching The Witcher season 3, and sincerely hope it does good by the story.

But given its track record, and how it’s already changed a few major players involved in the epic events of The Time of Contempt (looking at you, Vilgefortz and Cahir), it feels like it’d be foolish to hope too hard. The Witcher is in a place where it has to prove that it still cares at all about the story and fandom that made this franchise on Netflix possible in the first place. I obviously don’t know Henry Cavill, but given his outspoken love of The Witcher series, it’s hard to imagine him stepping away from the show if season 3 had been a resounding success that was suddenly in-line with Sapkowski’s books.

Will season 3 make or break The Witcher? Or will it be just successful enough for the series to continue limping on? We’ll find out when season 3 hits Netflix this summer.

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