The Witcher's recast from Henry Cavill to Liam Hemsworth has been the topic of many discussions: is Henry even replaceable? Can Liam do it? How will they pull it off in the show? Producer Tomek Baginski has now shared some light on his plans for the new Geralt – and they are kind of disappointing.
There have been lots and lots of theories going on regarding how the switch from Henry Cavill to Liam Hemsworth will be pulled off in season 4 of Netflix's The Witcher. Will it be a multiverse thing, sending Hemsworth's Witcher in from another world? Will they just do it without explanation? Is it even going to be the same White Wolf we know and love?
In a recent interview, producer Tomek Baginski seems to have once again changed his mind about how he's planning on introducing Liam Hemsworth as Geralt of Rivia. At first, it seemed like he wanted to do it MCU-style, thinking it would be book-accurate, but now the direction seems to be a completely different one.
The Switch From Cavill To Hemsworth Might Be Really Disappointing
Cavill's departure was obviously a tough pill to swallow, but the show must go on and having Liam Hemsworth pick up the torch is not his fault. He's having a hard time as it is, having big shoes to fill in Henry's absence in addition to deal with already disappointed fans.
The execution of the switcheroo is the key to getting into the fans' good graces again, that's just common sense, so it's been a huge topic of discussion how they are going to pull it off. Baginski has teased some possibilities, mainly hinting at some multiverse where a younger, more Hemsworthy-y Geralt is from, bottom line being that the recast would be lore-accurate.
While the multiverse would not be book-accurate at all (true, there are multiple worlds, but they are all different, it's really not that hard), there are lots of other possibilities to explain Geralt's new face: a spell that went sideways, new mutations, you get the idea.
Tomek Baginski's interpretation of the books might vary from everyone else's, though: according to him, with the fifth installment of the books by Andrzej Sapkowski, the story turned from fantasy into "a philosophical discourse on the nature of reality."
That's not the only time Baginski has talked about the "core ideas" he sees in The Witcher. He told The Express that while the show won't have the time to deeply explore some of those ideas, but "one of the big topics in The Witcher world is that every story can be told from many, many POVs – and sometimes, those POCs and those versions of the stories are very, very different from what we though was the truth."
Baginski is pretty set on book five's "meta ideas" – and one of those is that legends like those about Geralt of Rivia have been told over and over again over decades, being warped into some different version of what actually happened.
There's also the thing that some years down the line, there's not a single portrait of Ciri to be found and in the future, nobody knows for sure what she looked like.
If that's the road Baginski is going for and the whole explanation for Geralt's new face is "well, some people say he looked like this, others say he looked like that. We don't know," then the disappointment hits a whole new level: losing Cavill without even coming up with a good explanation? Geralt deserves better. An intro scene for season 4, narrating how "some of the story was lost to time" or whatever, might be the worst case.
As for now, it's all speculation, though: and the theories have been running wild for a while with each and every new hint Baginski gave in various interviews. He seems to enjoy keeping us on our toes and teasing fans relentlessly, doesn't he? Let's just hope for the best.
"Wind's howling" could never be as annoying as some others: