The fourth season of Netflix's monster-hunting fantasy show The Witcher is slated to begin filming sometime in March, but work is speeding ahead on the follow-up. Reliable Witcher fansite Redanian Intelligence reports that the show's fifth season is currently being written, ahead of its season 4 filming date.
This doesn't come as too huge of a surprise, but it's still great to hear whispers about The Witcher's future. Before the writers and actors strikes last year, word on the street was that The Witcher was going to film its fourth and fifth seasons back to back, with season 5 most likely marking the end of the series. For my money, that estimate feels just about right. There are three more books left in the main Witcher Saga by Andrzej Sapkowski. Events skip around in the timeline a bit in those books, and there's quite a bit of wandering the land, so it would make a lot of sense for the show to condense those three books into two seasons of television.
Following the end of the strikes, writing resumed on The Witcher season 4. The bulk of that work is seemingly over, with RI reporting that following the holidays the writing team behind the show is now at work penning the scripts for season 5.
This means it's still totally possible that The Witcher will film seasons 4 and 5 back to back. In May of last year, before the strikes hit, casting director Sophie Holland said that, “We’re just about to start filming on season four with Liam Hemsworth and there will be a short gap then we go straight into season five.“ Obviously that all got pushed back because of the Hollywood labor movement. But if season 4 films for most of 2024 while season 5 scripts are being simultaneously written, then season 5 going into production in late 2024 or early 2025 seems possible, even including the brief production pause that was part of the original plan.
News from The Continent! Laurence Fishburne will be joining The Witcher family as Regis, a world-wise Barber-surgeon with a mysterious past. pic.twitter.com/0xzYe2G7On
— The Witcher (@witchernetflix) January 12, 2024
The Witcher season 4 will introduce a lot of new elements
As for The Witcher season 4, it will be is a fairly critical juncture. When last we saw Geralt, he had just suffered a brutal defeat at the hands of Vilgefortz of Roggeveen, a powerful sorcerer who had been working in the shadows to manipulate events on the Continent. That duel is a huge turning point for the series. When we return for season 4, Ciri will be with the band of thieves known as the Rats, Geralt will be wandering the land in search of her, and Yennefer will be building up the Lodge of Sorceresses following the calamitous attack on the Isle of Thanedd.
There are a lot of reasons to be curious about The Witcher season 4. The biggest, of course, is the recast of Geralt from Henry Cavill to Liam Hemsworth. Then there's the inclusion of new characters, such as the "barber-surgeon" Regis, who will be played by The Matrix veteran Laurence Fishburne.
And then there is the introduction of "meta" multiverse elements into The Witcher. The deeper we get into the story, the more we're going to explore the idea that the Continent is just one world among many. Just this week we got wind of a leaked audition tape that confirmed that Nimue will appear in season 4. We won't into all the spoilery details, but suffice it to say that Nimue's name might look familiar to fans of the Arthurian legend.
In the meantime, we'll have plenty of other Witcher stuff to tide us over. The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep animated film is slated to hit Netflix sometime this year; it stars Doug Cockle, the voice of Geralt in The Witcher video games, as the titular monster hunter. Another spinoff about the Rats has also wrapped filming; we haven't heard anything about a release date, but it's not out of the question that we'll see it this year, too. A new Witcher book is also coming out in winter 2024/2025 from author Andrzej Sapkowski. And then of course there's the highly-anticipated fourth Witcher video game from CD Projekt Red, which is currently in production. It's a busy time on the Continent!
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