Right now, the team behind The Witcher is hard at work filming the show's fourth season, and the stakes are high both on camera and off. This is the first season of the show where lead monster hunter Geralt of Rivia will be played by Liam Hemsworth, after Henry Cavill stepped down from the role following season 3. For most of the show's run, Cavill established himself not only as an actor who was giving his all to the part, but as a voice for the fans in the production, since he was a well-documented lover of The Witcher world even before being cast. That's led to quite a lot of speculation about what we can expect from Hemsworth's Geralt, and a Witcher show moving on without Cavill.
As far as the actual story of season 4, the stakes will be even higher. Following the terrible Thanedd coup, Geralt's protégé Ciri (Freya Allan) accidentally teleported halfway across the Continent and fell in with a group of morally dubious teenage thieves called the Rats. The empire of Nilfgaard is still on the hunt for her; so is Geralt, who recovered from his injuries and set out with Jaskier (Joey Batey) and the archer Milva (Meng'er Xhang) to find Ciri before the Nilfgaardians can track her down.
That lines up with the start of Baptism of Fire, the third full-length novel in author Andrzej Sapkowski's Witcher Saga. That's a pivotal book in the series, where the focus begins to shift away from Geralt as Ciri comes more into her own as a young warrior. But Geralt still has plenty of battles ahead, and according to new report from scoop site Redanian Intelligence, the show is currently filming one of the biggest: the Battle of the Bridge. We're going to discuss it a bit below, but first a spoiler warning, since we'll be discussing a few details of the battle.
The Witcher is reportedly filming the Battle of the Bridge
The Battle of the Bridge occurs near the end of Baptism of Fire, and sees Geralt and his traveling party, known as his hansa, trapped between two armies that are clashing on a bridge. Geralt needs to cross the bridge, which puts him squarely in the middle of the mess. That's pretty much par for the course for the witcher, who always somehow manages to wind up mixed up in world-altering events despite his insistence he'd rather not.
As of mid-September, The Witcher is filming in Snowdonia, Wales. Now, RI has even more specifics: the crew and cast for the show have set up shop by a lake called Llyn Padarn, where they've built a temporary harbor in order to prepare some of the props that will be needed for the coming scenes. That includes a raft, which is a key part of the Battle of the Bridge set piece. According to some of the locals that RI has spoken to, The Witcher production will soon move from the lakeshore to Pen y Llyn Bridge. The local around Llyn Padarn have been pretty actively documenting the production process; you can see their pictures over on Redanian Intelligence, and I highly encourage you to take a look if this is of interest!
There are two seasons left to go in The Witcher, and roughly three books left in The Witcher Saga for the show to cover. I've long been assuming that some events may be condensed or combined, but the Battle of the Bridge is a key moment in Geralt's journey, so it's very exciting to see that the production is starting to film it. As RI notes, it's likely that much of the battle will be filmed at Longcross Film Studios near London on soundstages, which makes sense. The production can't just go around shooting volleys of arrows in a populated countryside and holding up traffic to have armies clash on the field. Given that we're already seeing pictures leaking out of the production — even Liam Hemsworth himself has been spotted at Llyn Padarn in costume — it's easy to understand how some of the more sensitive scenes from the battle might be better kept under wraps if they weren't filmed in the open.
As for who will be at the Battle of the Bridge, we won't go spoiling all the details — you can always read Baptism of Fire if you want to know! But suffice to say that Geralt's entire hansa will be involved in one way or another, as well as two armies who are vying for control of the crucial crossing over the Yaruga river. This is easily one of my most anticipated scenes for The Witcher season 4, so I'm very curious to see what the series does with it.
Filming on The Witcher season 4 is expected to wrap sometime in October, which means we'll probably be watching it in 2025. We'll also be watching The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep anime spinoff movie in 2025 as well. It's going to be a big year on the Continent!
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