The Witcher Showrunner on Season 4: Why Those Major Deaths Had to Happen

Season 4 of Netflix's The Witcher is in the books, and yep, the body count was higher than a few folks expected. Fans have been picking apart those deaths, and showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich hopped into an Instagram comment thread to explain why four big characters exited when they did. Some of it is story. Some of it is real-world logistics. And she was surprisingly candid about both.

Yes, sometimes characters die because actors are busy

Hissrich, who also worked on The Umbrella Academy, said two of the season's mage casualties came down to scheduling. Specifically, Keira Metz (played by Safiyya Ingar) and Margarita Laux-Antille (Rochelle Rose).

So many factors go into this, so I will cover as many bases as I can! The first aspect is actor availability. Not every actor is available to us exclusively, so sometimes, they are already committed to another project when we need them. It is actually a wonder anything gets made! Sometimes, we end up killing [or writing off] a character simply because they are tied up in something else.

It is not the most romantic answer, but it is the truth. TV gets made on calendars as much as scripts.

When it is not scheduling, it is about what the death actually does to the story

On the other two exits, Hissrich pointed to narrative impact over shock-for-shock's-sake. She singled out Vesemir (Peter Mullan) as an example of a death that is not in the books, but was used to jolt character arcs. And she emphasized that a death matters most when it slams into a character we are following closely. If someone Yennefer barely knows gets killed, it does not push her forward. If someone in her inner circle is taken off the board, it changes everything.

That is exactly how Hissrich framed Margarita's death too: a direct hit to Yennefer and the Lodge, which spikes Yennefer's rage and her need to make Vilgefortz pay. If you felt the temperature rise after that, that was the point.

The four big exits, and why they happened

• Keira Metz (Safiyya Ingar) - A casualty of the schedule. Hissrich says actor availability can force the writers to kill or write off characters, and Keira fell into that bucket this season.
• Margarita Laux-Antille (Rochelle Rose) - Also impacted by actor availability, with an added story upside: her loss hits Yennefer and the Lodge hard and supercharges Yennefer's vendetta against Vilgefortz.
• Vesemir (Peter Mullan) - Not a death that happens in the books, according to Hissrich, but chosen here for its ripple effect. The idea was not to shock the audience, but to shock the characters and alter their paths.
• Istredd (Royce Pierreson) - In the same vein, his death is there to create consequences for the leads and keep the narrative engine moving, especially around Yennefer.

Bottom line: some exits were unavoidable because people had other jobs, and the rest were designed to actually change the characters we are watching, not just to rack up a kill count.

What is next

Season 5 is the endgame for The Witcher on Netflix. It is happening, but there is no release date yet. When there is, you will hear the collective scream of the Continent across your timeline.