Fans of Netflix’s The Witcher were already looking forward to Season 3. Season 2 arrived on the streaming service just about a year ago, and the new season is still several months away, but it’s become even more anticipated duer to the fact that we now know that while the show will continue, the next season of The Witcher will be the final for star Henry Cavill. But the showrunner promises Cavill will get a “heroic sendoff.”
Fans of The Witcher got good news and bad news recently when it was revealed that while the show will get a fourth season, when that season arrives it will include Liam Hemsworth in the lead as Geralt of Rivia, as Henry Cavill would be leaving following the forthcoming Season 3. Showrunner Lauren Hissrich tells EW that, while the next season wasn’t specifically designed to give Cavill a sendoff, Geralt’s arc will ultimately do exactly that. She explained…
Geralt's big turn is about giving up neutrality and doing anything that he has to do to get to Ciri. And to me, it's the most heroic sendoff that we could have, even though it wasn't written to be that. Geralt has a new mission in mind when we come back to him in season 4. He's a slightly different Geralt than we expected. Now, by the way, that's an understatement.
In the very first episode of The Witcher, Henry Cavill’s Geralt tries to not get involved in a conflict between a wizard and a cursed princess. His attempt to remain neutral ultimately ends up in a lot of dead people, killed at Geralt’s own hand, and branded with the nickname “Butcher.”
The entire show has been about Geralt learning that he needs to care, specifically about Ciri, but also to just generally taken an active role in kmaking his world better. It seems that, while Season 3 of The Witcher won’t be the end of Geralt’s story, it will see the conclusion of the specific character arc for the Witcher. If Henry Cavill is leaving the show, this does seem like a good place to do so.
Nobody has spoken directly about the reasons for Henry Cavill’s departure from The Witcher. It came as a surprise considering how much Cavill spoke about loving the source material, and how much he originally lobbied to play Geralt. There have been some reports that not everybody making the Netflix series loves the source material as much as Cavill, and, if true, that may have led to some conflict with Cavill, who reportedly just didn’t care for the direction the show was going.
While Henry Cavill getting a proper sendoff from The Witcher may not be what fans were looking for, at least not yet, under the circumstances it’s the best fans could hope for. The Witcher Season 3 doesn’t have an official release date yet but is expected to drop on Netflix in the summer of 2023.
