We're currently between seasons of The Witcher, Netflix's fantasy show about professional monster Geralt of Rivia. Geralt was played by Henry Cavill in the first three seasons, but starting with the fourth, he'll be replaced by actor Liam Hemsworth. Everyone is very curious to see how that turns out.
We got a little clue when Netflix dropped some images of Hemsworth reading the scripts for season 4 alongside other members of the cast like Anya Chalotra (Yennefer) and Freya Allen (Ciri), but that's not the same thing as seeing him in costume, long white wig and all. How is the show going to justify the main character getting a new face? Or maybe it just won't say anything?
Redanian Intelligence, experts when it comes to all things The Witcher, think they have the answer, based on a close reading of that video and comments from producer Tomek Baginski. Let's get into the theory:
Beware SPOILERS for The Witcher season 4 below!
RI's theory revolves around a pair of new character: a young girl named Nimue, played by Serrana Su; and a wandering storyteller named Stribog, played by Game of Thrones veteran Clive Russell. You can spot both Su and Russell in the video above.
In The Witcher book series by Andrzej Sapkowski, Nimue and Stribog both first appear in Baptism of Fire, which is the next book that The Witcher show will be adapting for Netflix. Decades after the story of Geralt, Yennfer and Ciri is over, Stribog is telling Nimue and other children about what happened. As Nimue gets older, she looks further into this story and finds that there are several different versions. The truth has been distorted by time.
This storytelling scene will kick off the fourth season of The Witcher. RI thinks that Netflix will use this framing to explain why Geralt suddenly looks different. In one version of the story — the one we've been watching for three seasons — Geralt looks like Henry Cavill. But in a slightly different version, he looks like Liam Hemsworth. And that's the version we're going to get from here on out.
And thus we have a post-modern solution to the problem of recasting the central role. There's no guarantee that this is what's going to happen, but I trust RI's word on these matters. We'll find out for certain and true when The Witcher season 4 premieres on Netflix, probably sometime in 2025.
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