The third season of The Witcher is out now on Netflix, and at least if you ask us, it’s the best yet.
It’s also the last season where Henry Cavill will play the title role of Geralt of Rivia. Starting in season 4, he will be replaced by Liam Hemsworth.
Why is Cavill leaving? The short answer is that we don’t know. Neither Cavill himself, showrunner Lauren Hissrich, or anyone else who has worked on the show has said anything explicit. But there are plenty of theories swirling around out there…
Why did Henry Cavill left Witcher?
At first, some people thought that Cavill was leaving The Witcher so he could focus on being a movie star. This was back when it was thought (including by Cavill) that he would be returning to the big screen as Superman. But if that was the plan, it all fell apart, because we now know that Superman will next by played by David Corenswet.
A more popular theory is that Cavill voluntarily left The Witcher because he was frustrated with how Hissrich and her writing team were adapting The Witcher books by Andrzej Sapkowski. Cavill was a Witcher superfan before landing the role, and there was evidence of some tension between him and Hissrich during shooting, like when he objected to Hirrich writing some meta comedy about the death of Geralt’s horse Roach.
“Henry was so unhappy with the line,” Hissrich recalled. “Finally I said, ‘You know what, you come up with something. I trust you, you know this material so well, you know the book so well, you don’t even have to pitch it to me.’ And he came back the next day with a beautiful speech that’s at the end of Sword of Destiny when Geralt is facing death and it’s such a pitch perfect moment.”
Did Henry Cavill quit The Witcher, or was he fired?
Cavill also gave Hissrich a lot of notes about Geralt’s behavior. This all seemed pretty amicable, but it’s possible that resentments grew over time. Former Witcher Beau DeMayo seemed kind of resentful when he said that some of the other writers “actively disliked” The Witcher books and video games, claiming they were “even actively mocking the source material” and that it was “a recipe for disaster and bad morale.”
Then there’s Alik Sakharov, who was supposed to direct several episodes of the first season of The Witcher but pulled out because his vision didn’t match that of the producers. “You see, in my perception, Eastern-European literature has a completely different pace,” Sakharov told Redanian Intelligence. “It is no coincidence that Andrzej Sapkowski has so many storylines and characters. The producers set the task of setting the adaptation at an action pace and filling it with colorful special effects. That was their vision. My vision was very different and I tried to convey it to them, giving my arguments. Unfortunately, I was not considered convincing enough, so I decided to leave the project.”
The interviewer pointed out that when he previously spoke to Cavill, the actor singled out Sakharov as “one of the few directors who has the right approach to actors.” In turn, Sakharov said that Cavill is “the best thing in The Witcher…he absolutely nailed the role.”
Does all this mean that Cavill left because he was upset with the direction of the show, which has often broken from the source material in some pretty major ways? At the end of the day, we don’t know. Although if that is the case, it’s ironic that he’d do it after season 3, which is the most faithful the show has been to the books so far.
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