The third season of The Witcher has come and gone, and now begins the long wait for season 4. This was the last time we’ll see Henry Cavill don the white wig as Geralt of Rivia; when the show returns, it will be Liam Hemsworth hunting monsters in his stead.
How the series will handle the recast has been one of the largest lingering questions. Ever since it was first announced that Hemsworth would be taking over as Geralt, theories have swirled the internet. Would the show use Geralt’s time healing in Brokilon Forest to give him the fantasy equivalent of plastic surgery? Would it pull a multiverse on us and pop out a new Geralt from another world? Or would The Witcher lean into some of the most meta elements of the book series to explain why Geralt looks different in season 4?
While we still don’t know for certain, a slew of recent interviews from The Witcher producer Tomek Baginski seems to have ruled out at least one of these theories, while all but confirming what route the show will take.
How The Witcher will rely on the “legend” of Geralt to cover his recast
This latest comes from the reliable Witcher fansite Redanian Intelligence, which compiled a bunch of different interviews with Baginski along with excerpts from the final Witcher novel, The Lady of the Lake, to create a full picture of how the show might handle the recast. Their write-up is very much worth a read, but let’s hit on the highlights.
During a recent interview with Wyborcza, Baginski discussed the recast at length. It’s here that he seemingly ruled out the possibility of a multiverse with different Geralts:
"Many book readers forget what Andrzej Sapkowski did in the fifth volume of the saga. For me, this is one of the most important things in the whole story. I’m not talking about specific events, but the narrative framework that was introduced in this book. Suddenly, at the beginning of the book, we learn that everything we’ve read so far might not have been true. And this cannot be compared with, for example, the currently popular concept of the multiverse, where out of nowhere there are many different realities."
In The Lady of the Lake, we find out that more than a hundred years after Geralt, Ciri, and Yennefer lived, their story has become the stuff of legends. That novel shows us the final chapters for our heroes, as well as how characters in the future interpret their story based on various accounts and myths.
“There is only one reality in Sapkowski’s work, but because it is a story from the past, what we know has been filtered by various authors, historians, writers, etc,” explained Baginski. “Maybe it is Jaskier’s version or someone else’s. Maybe Ciri had a different eye color, was a different character, and these events looked different from the point of view of the elves.”
The interviewer then put Baginski on the spot about the recast and how the show would handle it. The producer had a great response: “I’ll say this: I remember the discussions even during the release of the books. 20 years ago, when the 5th book was released, people were very frustrated.”
Even today, The Lady of the Lake remains one of the most divisive Witcher books. But the fact remains that, based on the books, The Witcher TV show was always going to get meta and play with the idea of how the “legend” of Geralt of Rivia is perceived through the eyes of others. With the recast looming, it’s the perfect time to bring those elements to the forefront.
Baginski discussed this idea in great detail. Here’s his full response:
"Everything was turned upside down, and suddenly it turned out to be some postmodern play with form. It was supposed to be fantasy, but it turned into a philosophical discourse on the nature of reality. In this context, the world built by Andrzej Sapkowski seems to me one of the most flexible in all of fantasy.There are, for instance, quotes from encyclopedias or from contemporary songs at the beginning of each chapter. Suddenly, it turns out that we can jump forward and backward in this narrative, change the context of what happened, etc. I see what’s happening among the fans and how rigidly they interpret what The Witcher is. But the truth is, the ways of interpretation can vary widely.I believe that what has been planned for Season 4 is consistent with the books. But I might interpret it differently than someone who can’t get over the fact that Geralt’s face has changed. I really like the idea for the opening of Season 4, but whether the audience will like it, we’ll see."
And here’s a final quote, this one from an interview with The Express: “We probably don’t have time to go into philosophically the core ideas behind the saga and define the Witcher world, but one of the like big topics in The Witcher world is that every story can be told from many, many POVs – and sometimes those POVs and those versions of the stories are very, very different from what we thought was truth.”
The face of the witcher is in the eye of the beholder
One of the central passages from The Lady of the Lake that RI uses to support all of these Baginski quotes revolves around paintings of Ciri, which are discussed at length in the novel. By the time that historians are poring over Geralt and Ciri’s story, not a single portrait of Cirilla remains; the only ones that exist were made by people who never actually met her. This calls into question whether there are any images that accurately show what she looked like.
It would make sense for The Witcher to take a similar sort of approach with Geralt, and as Baginski has said repeatedly, this would make the transition very “lore-accurate” to the way Andrzej Sapkowski handles the story in the books.
Then there’s SeanchaÍ, the shapeshifting storyteller played by Minnie Driver in The Witcher: Blood Origin. Perhaps she can factor into this meta story somehow? Previously, showrunner Lauren Hissrich hinted that we might see SeanchaÍ return in season 4.
“When we meet her , she says that she travels through time and space, that it’s her job to make sure this story is not forgotten,” Hissrich told Kultura (via CBR). “All the time, even now that we’re starting to write scripts for Season 4 of The Witcher, we’re talking about how we can reintroduce this character. So I definitely agree with you and would love to meet her again. We’ll see Avallac’h and Eredin again, but I think she’s really fascinating.”
The Witcher has plenty of options for how to approach Geralt’s recast. This sort of “meta” play on Geralt’s identity is exactly the sort of thing we were expecting, based on The Witcher source material. It’s exciting to know that the television series will likely lean into those elements in season 4.
What do you make of all this? Would you rather The Witcher just recast Geralt without any sort of commentary at all, or are you all in for it to explore the “legend” of Geralt of Rivia? Let’s discuss in the comments.
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