How will The Witcher introduce Liam Hemsworth as Geralt in season 4?

Season 3 of The Witcher is out now on Netflix, and it’s the last season of the show featuring Henry Cavill in the role of Geralt of Rivia. Cavill’s performance as Geralt was one of the most universally praised aspects of the Netflix series. Whatever other qualms people had, it was clear that the show’s lead understood this character.

Starting in season 4, Geralt will be played by Liam Hemsworth. The Witcher producer Tomek Baginski has teased that the show will use “meta ideas which are deeply embedded in the books” to introduce Hemsworth. That introduction will be “very lore accurate.”

What exactly does that mean? How will they justify Geralt suddenly having a different face, if they try and justify it at all? Before season 3 dropped, I theorized that Geralt’s appearance might change while he was healing in Brokilon following his brutal duel with Vilgefortz. But now that we’ve seen Geralt reemerge from Brokilon still played by Cavill, we can lay that theory to rest.

We do have some other theories about how The Witcher might handle Geralt’s recast, though. Since Baginski referenced The Witcher’s lore, that’s where we’re going to start. There will be SPOILERS for all three seasons of The Witcher as well as the novel which forms the basis for season 4, Baptism of Fire.

The Witcher could get a narrator starting in season 4

In order to talk about how The Witcher might introduce Hemsworth in a “meta” way, we need to discuss some of the meta elements about Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher book series. By the end of the novels, it becomes clear that The Witcher is a multiverse story, and that mythic figures like King Arthur exist in alternate worlds.

Before you get too alarmed, The Witcher’s multiverse isn’t like the Marvel multiverse, where we meet multiple versions of the same character. There is only one Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher, so don’t expect the series to pull a fast one and say Hemsworth is another version of Geralt from a different world.

However, in Baptism of Fire, Sapkowski begins introducing the idea that there is a storyteller in another world who’s telling the story of Geralt, Ciri and Yennefer to a group of kids. That group includes a young Nimue, a character from the Arthurian legend. The idea that Geralt’s story is a myth in a different world is a thread that becomes crucial by the time of the final Witcher novel, The Lady of the Lake, so it’s extremely likely that the show will include this framing story. The Witcher writers even considered incorporating a version of it into the first season.

If The Witcher does bring in a narrator, it could be a perfect way to introduce the idea of a different Geralt. If the narrator suddenly decides Geralt should look different in the story they’re telling, then he’ll look different. Maybe his changed appearance will be a metaphor for his changed outlook now that he’s abandoned his commitment to neutrality. There are lots of ways that the show could use a break in the fourth wall to justify why a different dude is suddenly wearing Geralt’s signature white wig.

The knighting of Geralt of Rivia

There are other places in the story where the show can give a meta nod to viewers about the actor switch. Late in Baptism of Fire, Geralt and his traveling companions find themselves caught in the middle of a battle between the forces of Nilfgaard and Rivia. Though Geralt doesn’t want to get involved, as usual he finds himself with no choice.

Throughout The Witcher, Geralt always refers to himself as Geralt of Rivia. But in reality, he’s not actually from Rivia at all; he adopted this moniker because his mentor Vesemir advised him that it would be wise to have a surname. In the books, we learn that he chose this name mostly for aesthetic and practical reasons.

However, during the battle between Nilfgaard and Rivia, called the Battle of the Bridge, Geralt’s valorous deeds lead to him actually being knighted as Geralt of Rivia by Queen Meve, the ruler of Rivia and Lyria. It’s a key moment in Baptism of Fire and we’re expecting to see it in the show.

To me, this sounds like a good place for the show to wink at the audience about Hemsworth having replaced Cavill. Cavill’s Geralt started the show with his surname already there, but Hemsworth’s Geralt will earn it. He’ll become Geralt of Rivia as we watch.

When will we see Liam Hemsworth in The Witcher season 4?

Ultimately, we won’t know how The Witcher will introduce Hemsworth’s version of Geralt until we see it for ourselves, which probably won’t be for quite a while. Production on The Witcher season 4 has reportedly been delayed until 2024 due to the ongoing actors and writers strike. If the show doesn’t start filming until next year, chances are good we won’t see Hemsworth make his debut until 2025.

Fortunately, that gives us plenty of time to revisit the show’s first three seasons and enjoy Cavill’s performance as Geralt of Rivia while we wait.

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