Netflix's The Witcher team 'had the choice to end the show' after Henry Cavill's departure
But "just too many stories left to tell".
As Netflix's live-action The Witcher adaptation prepares for its return on 29th June, showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich has shared a little more on Henry Cavill's decision to hang up his shoulder-length Geralt wig after season 3, admitting the team 'had the choice to end the show' after Cavill's departure, but felt there were "just too many stories left to tell".
Netflix revealed The Witcher's third season would be Cavill's last in October 2022, much to the disappointment of fans - Cavill has, afterall, been one of the few genuinely bright spots in a deeply uneven adaptation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the show's popularity, Netflix confirmed that instead of winding the series down it had instead recast the lead role, with Liam Hemsworth stepping into Geralt of Rivia's shoes for season 4 onward.
Now, however, in an interview with Total Film (thanks Games Radar), showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich has confirmed the team was given the option to wrap the series up with Cavill's departure, but instead opted to press on. "I mean, we had the choice to have Geralt exit and to end the show," Hissirch explained, "[but] that's not something that we were willing to do. There's just too many stories left to tell."
A third option, simply to wave goodbye to Geralt and refocus the story on a new character, wasn't palatable to the team either, according to Hissirch. "If we replaced Geralt with another Witcher," she explained, "we would be going fully away from the books, and I don’t think that’s what anyone wanted either."
As for Hemsworth impending turn as Geralt, Hissirch added, "We’re all excited about Liam coming in... He's got enormous shoes to fill, but also has a lot of energy and a lot of excitement for it. It's obviously a brand-new chapter for us. And there's a lot of feelings involved. But at the end of the day, we love what we're doing. So we're gonna keep going."
The upcoming third season of Netflix's live-action The Witcher adaptation - described by Hissirch as "the point at which our family finally gets a chance to be together for the first time and actually start imagining a future together - will air in two chunks of episodes. The first arrives on 29th June and the second will follow on 27th July.
After which our next opportunity to see Cavill on the small screen might well be in Amazon's upcoming Warhammer 40k adaptation, whenever that eventually shows up.