The Witcher season 4 may be slated to come out sometime this year, but Netflix is wasting no time getting cracking on the follow-up. The team behind the series is already hard at work on the show's fifth and final season, even as we await an official release date for season 4. And now, some of the first pictures from filming have leaked onto the world wide web. They reveal an interesting fight scene ahead in season 5, as well as giving us our best look yet at some of Geralt's Hansa — aka his group of close traveling companions with whom he'll traverse the Continent in these final two seasons.
It should go without saying, but these will contain SPOILERS for season 4 and 5 of The Witcher.
Above, we get our first look at Liam Hemsworth in costume as Geralt of Rivia on set for The Witcher season 5. All of these photos come courtesy of Redanian Intelligence, a reliable Witcher scoop site which always has its ear to the ground and its eyes peeled for news from around the Continent.
The Witcher is currently filming at Bourne Woods in Surrey, England. This is a public park, so even though it's a popular filming spot, it's also exceptionally difficult to protect against crafty civilians with cameras who are trying to get a peak at production. It's the same place where House of the Dragon filmed the Battle at Rook's Rest in season 2, which was also well-documented by enterprising leakers.
RI notes that it had a difficult time getting photos of Hemsworth, because he has three different body doubles for season 5. I'm taking this to mean Geralt will probably be doing an excessive amount of stuntwork, which sounds great to me!
We also got a great look at Geralt's friends, like Regis (played by Laurence Fishburne) and Milva (played by Meng'er Zhang):
Now, you may be asking who Geralt and his friends are fighting. These images show a battle amidst a field filled with beehives. The knights are sworn to Queen Meve, the Queen of Rivia. At the end of the third Witcher novel Baptism of Fire, Geralt helps Meve's forces defeat Nilfgaard at a key river crossing. Afterward, she dubs him a knight. Before this, he just used the moniker "Geralt of Rivia" because it sounded good, not because it necessarily was tied to his actual birthplace. But now he is "Geralt of Rivia" in truth, because he has been named a knight by the queen of that country.
Called the Battle of the Bridge, we're expecting this event to factor into the climax of season 4. In the beehive fight the pictures are showing, we see Meve's knights have tracked Geralt and his Hansa down after they've seemingly deserted her to go on searching for Ciri. Queen's don't like being told no, you know how these things go. That's when the fight breaks out.
The knight leading Queen Meve's forces is played by Gareth David-Lloyd. That's Solas in Dragon Age, if you're keeping track:
RI believes David-Lloyd plays Reynard Odo, "Meve's most trusted man," in The Witcher. We'll meet him in season 4, long before this battle near the beehives.
As for why Geralt and his friends are fighting in the middle of a bunch of beehives, the answer to that is simple: they're trying to track down druids who may know how to find Ciri, and are hoping the keepers of these hives might be able to point them in the right direction. RI even managed to snap a picture of a druid costume, though this picture was taken before the battle scene in question was filmed:
Lastly, we've got a distant video of the battle being joined:
There are a lot more pictures over at Redanian Intelligence, including some of Jaskier (Joey Batey) and Cahir (Eamon Farren). If you're intrigued by what you've seen, I'd highly recommend taking a gander.
The Witcher season 5 is currently filming. Season 4 is slated to drop sometime in 2025. It won't be long before we're back on the Continent, and Geralt of Rivia is back to slicing up monsters on the Path.
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