How Exactly Liam Hemsworth Will Replace Cavill's Witcher in Season 4, Finally Explained

Changes in the cast can be jarring for the audience. They may result in cognitive dissonance, as our brains are accustomed to associating a particular character with a specific actor. Suddenly seeing someone else in the role can be disorienting. In other words, our associations can't adjust quickly enough to roll with the change.

Given this, it's understandable why fans of The Witcher were upset when, in October 2022, it was announced that Henry Cavill would not be reprising his role as the titular character for the 4th and 5th seasons that Netflix approved.

Instead, the character Geralt of Rivia would be portrayed by Liam Hemsworth, an Australian who bears little resemblance to the popular British actor. Naturally, this led many fans to wonder if the switch was even viable. The producers of this hit Netflix fantasy drama have now shed light on how they plan to pull it off.

Tomasz Baginski, an executive producer of The Witcher, recently discussed the show with the Polish outlet Wyborcza, addressing the notable change in the main actor. Contrary to what many fans anticipated, The Witcher won't venture into the multiverse trope common in today's superhero productions. While the show's universe does contain multiple realms or 'spheres' that occasionally intersect, it doesn't delve into alternate realities as the multiverse concept proposes.

Instead, the showrunners have chosen a traditional storytelling mechanism often used in modernist literature — they will challenge the authenticity of their prior narratives, much like Andrzej Sapkowski, the author of the books on which The Witcher is based, does in his fifth instalment.

'Many book readers forget what Andrzej Sapkowski did in the fifth volume of the saga. For me, this is one of the most important things in the whole story. I'm not talking about specific events but the narrative framework that was introduced in this book. Suddenly, at the beginning of the book, we learn that everything we've read so far might not have been true,' Tomasz told Wyborcza (via Redanian Intelligence).

That means that the three aired seasons might simply be someone's — perhaps Jaskier's — recounting of events, and Henry Cavill was not what Gerlat actually looks like but represented the way Jaskier described him in his tall tales, whereas the real-life Gerlat looks like Liam Hemsworth. While this approach is intriguingly thought-provoking, we'll have to wait and see how it unfolds when the fourth season of The Witcher debuts.

Source: Redanian Intelligence.