With the next season of The Witcher set to premiere this week and mark the final run for actor Henry Cavill in the lead role of Geralt of Rivia, the show’s producers have given an interview with Yahoo! in which an attempt is made to assure fans the transition to Cavill’s replacement, Liam Hemsworth, won’t be jarring for fans and will in fact be “lore accurate.”
According to executive producers Steve Gaub and Tomek Baginski, the switch to Hemsworth as Geralt will be in step with author Andrzej Sapkowski’s original vision in the Witcher novels, promising that Cavill’s exit from the series will make sense to fans of the books that it’s based on.
“I don’t want to get too emotional, but it was a great journey to have Henry Cavill on this show and we will miss him,” says Baginski in the interview. “But, at the same time, we have a very, very good plan to introduce our new Geralt and our new vision for Geralt with Liam.”
“Not going deeply into those ideas because this will be a huge spoiler, but it’s also very, very close to the meta ideas which are deeply embedded in the books, especially in book five.”
As Yahoo explains in the piece, book five could actually be in reference to the third Witcher novel, which is a sequel to Time of Contempt – the book that the series premiering this week is based on – or the actual fifth book, The Lady of the Lake, depending on whether or not the call-out was inclusive of the Sapkowski’s initial short story collections.
“It’s a very strong season for Henry, a great final run for him as Geralt,” Gaub told the outlet. “I think the most important thing for us was to make sure he was very proud of those last scenes, invariably those last moments are the ones you leave an audience with, and those last couple episodes are very strong episodes for him.
“I think he left with his head held high and passing the reins as many franchises end up doing, passing a title character from one actor to another, and we’re going to be in great hands with Liam. We’re looking forward to the new explorations of Geralt with a new person behind it, a new actor and a new face.”
The Witcher Season 3 Volume 1 debuts on Netflix on June 29th.
