Major spoilers follow for The Witcher season 3.
Netflix has revealed a first clip of Liam Hemsworth as Geralt in The Witcher season 4 – and, for the most part, fans think he’s a fitting replacement for Henry Cavill.
The first-look footage, which was released yesterday (May 22), only shows Hemsworth as the titular character for a few seconds. However, with the camera lingering on Hemsworth before the screen cuts to black, we get a good look at how similar his iteration is (aesthetically, anyway) to Cavill’s.
The debuting of Hemsworth’s Geralt comes a week after images, which show Hemsworth as the titular character, leaked online. The photos, which you can view on ResetEra (they originally appeared on The Witcher fansite Redanian Intelligence), appear to show Hemsworth reshooting scenes from The Witcher season 3. Reading between the lines, this suggests Geralt might be plagued by flashbacks of his life-threatening defeat to Vilgefortz in the show’s previous season.
It’s been over 18 months since Hemsworth was announced as Cavill’s successor. In October 2022, Netflix renewed The Witcher for a fourth season, but confirmed that Cavill wouldn’t return as the fantasy show’s protagonist, much to the chagrin of The Witcher‘s fanbase. Two months later, showrunner Lauren S. Hissrich exclusively told TechRadar that she “fully understood” why fans were concerned about Cavill’s departure. Since then, Hissrich and Cavill have declined to comment on why the latter walked away from one of the best Netflix shows, though there have been rumors that Cavill didn’t see eye to eye with the creative team’s vision for the rest of the hit series.
Hemsworth isn’t the only newcomer among The Witcher season 4’s cast. The series got a magical cast upgrade with the addition of Laurence Fishburne in January, with The Matrix and John Wick star set to portray fan-favorite character Regis. Three months later, Sharlto Copley, James Purefoy, and Danny Woodburn were added to the show’s sizable ranks as bounty hunter Leo Bonhart, Nilfgaardian spy Skellen, and fan-favorite dwarven individual Zoltan respectively.
Filming is underway on The Witcher season 4 as of mid-April, while Netflix has confirmed that a fifth and final season will wrap up the series in the near future. The show’s last two installments will cover the final three novels in Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher book series, too.
Considering how popular Cavill’s hiring and subsequent portrayal of Geralt was in The Witcher‘s first three seasons, you could be forgiven for thinking that Hemsworth is on a hiding to nothing by succeeding Cavill in one of his most famous roles.
And yet, judging by the vast majority of online comments since Hemsworth’s Geralt was unveiled, it seems fans are taken by his new version of the character.
Indeed, a quick glance at threads on ResetEra and various Witcher-based Reddit pages shows that fans are largely happy with what they’ve seen. Heck, some have even suggested that they prefer Hemsworth’s Geralt – again, based on his look – to that of Cavill’s, who was considered to be a bit too muscular by small sections of The Witcher‘s global fanbase.
Of course, there are others who claim that it doesn’t matter who’s playing Geralt in the show’s final two seasons – comments that are based on the perceived drop in quality that The Witcher has suffered on the world’s best streaming service. Indeed, while the series’ critical rating has fluctuated from season to season on Rotten Tomatoes, its audience score has fallen significantly with each new eight-part entry – 89% for season 1, 55% for season 2, and an abject 19% for season 3.
I largely agree with those audience verdicts, too. In my review of The Witcher season 2, I suggested it “deliver[ed] a more ambitious, action-packed and emotionally resonant second season”, whereas The Witcher season 3 part 1 “proves the hit Netflix show is losing its magical touch”. We’ll see if Hemsworth’s arrival can steer the series back on track when its fourth season is eventually released. In the meantime, read my The Witcher season 3 ending explainer to see what it sets up about said fourth season.
