Recasting a main character in a television show is never easy, and that's especially true when said character is as much the face of the series as Henry Cavill was with The Witcher, Netflix's monster-hunting fantasy series based on the book series by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. The television show had many ups and downs across its first three seasons, but Cavill's turn as the mutated monster hunter Geralt of Rivia was perhaps its most universally praised aspect. When it was announced he was leaving the series after season 3, the backlash was intense.
When The Witcher finally returns for its fourth season, it'll be Liam Hemsworth wearing the armor of the White Wolf. This is a pivotal shift for the series, and fans are understandably curious and anxious to see how it plays out. Can Hemsworth truly fill Cavill's shoes? And how will the series navigate the transition on screen?
For most television shows, a recast would probably just go by without comment in the actual show itself. But The Witcher is in a unique position in that it's right at the point in the book series where things get weird. We're talking multiple worlds, meta-storylines, and some fourth wall -shattering twists and turns. We've been speculating for a while now that The Witcher season 4 will probably lean into meta elements to introduce Hemsworth. Now we have a seeming confirmation of it from the reliable Witcher scoop site Redanian Intelligence, which has unearthed details about Hemsworth's introduction as well as the casting for a key character for season 5 who's related to this storyline. Beware SPOILERS for The Witcher ahead.
The Witcher season 4 will explain Geralt's appearance change
During the third Witcher novel, Baptism of Fire, readers are introduced to a young woman from Arthurian legend named Nimue. She lives more than 100 years after Geralt of Rivia's adventures, and hears stories about the mythical witcher from a traveling storyteller named Stribog. Redanian Intelligence has confirmed that both Nimue and Stribog are cast for season 4, where they'll be played by Eve Ridley and Game of Thrones veteran Clive Russell respectively.
According to RI, the season will start off with Stribog arriving in Nimue's village where he'll trade some stories for food. The season opens with Stribog telling one such story about Geralt while the gathered children keep interrupting him with their own versions of the tale. While this is happening, viewers see a montage of Geralt, including his fateful showdown with Vilgefortz of Roggeveen from season 3. We already saw that Hemsworth re-filmed the clash with Vilgefortz on the beach; RI says there will also be different versions where he's wearing armor in that same scene.
Through this storyteller sequence, Stribog will eventually make the point to both the kids and viewers that what he's about to tell is the real story of Geralt of Rivia. And in this version, Geralt looks like Liam Hemsworth. I'm not sure how I feel about that, since it implies that Henry Cavill maybe wasn't the "real" Geralt of Rivia, but all of this weirdness is very much in line with the tone of the later books in the series. So while I'm not super confident, I am willing to reserve judgment until I see how The Witcher pulls it off.
As with any leak, we have to give the disclaimer to take all this with a grain of salt. But given RI's track record as well as how this lines up with the books, it seems pretty plausible. And there's another bit of evidence supporting the idea that The Witcher will lean into its more meta side in the coming seasons.
The Witcher has cast Condwiramurs Tilly for season 5
The other exciting bit of news RI has unearthed is that Liv Andrusier will play Condwiramurs Tilly in the fifth and final season of the show. Condwiramurs Tilly is a key character from the final Witcher Saga novel, The Lady of the Lake.
In The Lady of the Lake, we see Nimue as an adult, many years after she heard stories of Geralt of Rivia from Stribog. She lives on an island in the middle of a lake and invites Condwiramurs Tilly there to help her research the myths of Geralt and his protégé, Ciri. Tilly is an oneiromancer, a type of mage specializing in dreams, and she uses that gift to dream about some of the events of Geralt and Ciri's lives. If you've played The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Condwiramurs Tilly is the inspiration for the character Corinne Tilly, who helps Geralt navigate his dreams in the video game.
We still don't know who will play adult Nimue or her lover, the Fisher King, but if this news about Condwiramurs Tilly being cast pans out, it means the final season of The Witcher will include a very important and very strange part of Sapkowski's books. I'm curious to see how people respond to it, because it's fairly divisive among fans of the book series. I can already imagine a timeline where show fans complain that The Witcher has jumped the shark, not realizing that it is in fact right there in the source material.
Time will tell! The Witcher season 4 is supposed to debut sometime in 2025, though as of this writing we still don't have a release date from Netflix. On the book side of things, Andrzej Sapkowski's new Witcher prequel novel, Crossroads of Ravens, comes out on September 30.
To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and Twitter account, sign up for our exclusive newsletter and check out our YouTube channel.