The Witcher producer: Geralt is like Batman and James Bond, so it’s okay to recast him

The third season of The Witcher has come and gone, and despite us thinking that it was an improvement on what came before, the general mood online is that it stunk up the place something fierce.

One of the things people are upset about is that lead actor Henry Cavill is leaving the show after this season. Starting in season 4, his character Geralt of Rivia will be played by Liam Hemsworth. Throughout three seasons, Cavill’s performance as Geralt was the best thing about The Witcher, so I get why people feel aggrieved.

Why did Henry Cavill decide to leave the show? No one knows, although we have our theories. Still, no one with inside knowledge has spoken up about it. And it looks like that’s going to continue, if producer Tomek Bagiński’s interview in Polish outlet Wyborcza is any indication. “After shooting Season 3, I took my first vacation in four years and cut myself off. I found out about the case a few days before the official announcement,” he said. “I do not want to go into the reasons for this decision, because I learned about many things after the fact.”

The Witcher producer: “The Witcher has already reached the level of Batman, Superman and James Bond”

Bagiński himself has raised the ire of Witcher fans recently by talking about how he felt the need to simplify Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher books so it would be digestible for mainstream audiences. Fans took issue with that, since one of the biggest critiques of the show is that it doesn’t have enough nuance and texture, preferring spectacle over storytelling.

Bagiński’s comments felt pretty patronizing to me. You can read his full comments here, but I will very uncharitably boil them down as, “Americans are too dumb-dumb stupid to understand The Witcher, and all the kids want to do is watch TikTok so we have to make the show as flashy as possible to hold their fleeting interest.”

Now some new quotes from Bagiński are making the rounds. This time it’s him trying to explain why recasting Geralt partway through the series isn’t that bad, actually. “Henry was a fantastic Geralt, but in the history of pop culture we have many actors who played the same character, and the character itself changed,” Bagiński said. “I am most pleased that the series was created and became so popular. The Witcher has already reached the level of Batman, Superman and James Bond. Maybe we hoped to see him in a new version only in a few years, but it happened now. And that’s nothing new for iconic pop culture heroes.”

The Witcher producer Tomek Bagiński opens mouth, inserts foot

Giving Bagiński the benefit of the doubt, I get that as a producer it’s his job to put a positive spin on the series. Also, this is a Polish-language interview, so maybe there are some translation issues.

But still…does anyone really think that Geralt of Rivia is so iconic a character that audiences will accept it if he’s played by a variety of actors, the way they do with characters like Batman or James Bond? And even if he was that big, we’re not talking about two actors playing Geralt in different adaptations of the same story made years apart; we’re talking about switching actors three seasons into a five-season show. People don’t care if Christian Bale is replaced by Robert Pattinson for a brand new Batman series, but if Pattinson gets replaced by Harry Styles in The Batman 2, people will be upset.

So this is another foot-in-mouth moment from Bagiński. Beware of bunions. As for The Witcher season 4, it’s hard to say when we might see it, given that Hollywood has basically shut down during the actors and writers strikes. At one time it looks like we may get it in 2024, but now my money’s on 2025.

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h/t Collider