Netflix Nearly Ended The Witcher Upon Henry Cavill’s Departure

Television

Ever since the poorly received season 2 of The Witcher and the disastrous prequel Witcher: Blood Origin, showrunner Lauren Hissrich has made claim after claim that season 3 will be the most accurate to the book so far. However, the show’s star, Henry Cavill, a famous fan of the novels, departed the series, most likely because those claims of accuracy are entirely false. Now, Hissrich is claiming that Netflix gave her the option to end the series with Cavill’s departure, but she decided to continue it because it wouldn’t be faithful to the books to end it early, and the fans would prefer a new Geralt rather than have the series end.

In an interview with Total Film magazine, Hissrich said:

“It was time for him (Cavill) in his life to move on. I think we’ve all been mourning this in our own way. We had the choice to have Geralt exit and to end the show. [But] that’s not something that we were willing to do. There’s just too many stories left to tell. If we replaced Geralt with another Witcher, we would be going fully away from the books, and I don’t think that’s what anyone wanted either. . . 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 things involved. But at the end of the day we love what we’re doing and we’re gonna keep going.”

This story of hers is just another in a long line of attempts to convince the audience that she cares about the books and the integrity of her adaptation. If Netflix did indeed give her the option to end the show with Cavill’s departure, her reason for continuation is more likely job security and profit rather than care for the fans or the source material. However, that is for each fan to decide for themselves.