When it was announced that Henry Cavill would be succeeded by Liam Hemsworth as Geralt of Rivia in seasons 4 and 5 of the show, I think most people thought that the actors would simply swap out and the series would just continue on like nothing ever happened, which is how recastings usually work. Previously, producers have compared the change to how we get new James Bonds or Peter Parkers on film, albeit that comparison doesn’t quite make sense, given that the rest of the cast all changes out as well for new “eras” of those stories.
But there was a third point of comparison made, Doctor Who. And while I didn’t really get that at the time either, it appears that the plan for the Cavill-Hemsworth switch is not just to swap them out, but to actually write the change into the story. Executive producer Tomek Baginski strongly indicated that this is going to pull something from the books that will explain the change to Geralt’s face from one season to the next.
“We have a very, very good plan to introduce our new Geralt and our new vision for Geralt with Liam… Not going deeply into those ideas because this will be a huge spoiler, [but] it’s also very, very close to the meta ideas which are deeply embedded in the books, especially in book five.”
“It’s very lore-accurate,” Baginski says. “It’s very close to what was set out in the books, and I think this change will be quite flawless.” We’ll be eager to see how the transition between Cavill and Hemsworth plays out. And we’re sure fans are already hard at work poring over the lore to see what might come to pass.”
Fans “poring over the lore” have come up with one main theory, but others have been shooting that down already. The idea is that (spoilers follow), after getting total destroyed by Vilegfortz, Geralt will be badly disfigured, and when he’s healed by the drayds of Brokilon, that will change his face to Liam Hemsworth’s.
However, insider reports say that this isn’t going to happen. That he will emerge from his recovery as Cavill and that he will by on the road to re-find Ciri after the ensuing events of the end of the season. Geralt will be heading to Nilfgaard, and this Brokilon idea, according to reports, is not what’s going to happen.
Regardless of what happens, it strikes me as pretty stupid to do any sort of Doctor Who-type “regeneration” storyline to actually attempt to explain the recasting within the story itself. Doctor Who can get away with that with its wild storylines and goofy tone. This recasting is already a move that Witcher fans hate and I have a feeling the show attempting to explain Cavill’s departure away by writing it into the story is going to be something they hate even more, and it will not be “flawless” as the producers have said.
Mark my words, this is not going to go well. We’ll see in a year or two, I suppose.
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