Henry Cavill's "Send-Off" In The Witcher Season 3 To Be "Heroic"

2022 has been quite the challenging year for fans of the Netflix fantasy series, The Witcher, following recasting news that broke hearts worldwide. As current lead Henry Cavill returns as Geralt of Rivia for the third (and his final) season in 2023, The Hunger Games star Liam Hemsworth will pick up the steel and silver swords.

Despite the massive casting change come Season 4, a recent interview with the showrunner has provided insight on how they'll handle the incoming character change. Likewise, they've detailed how they intend to give Cavill "the most heroic send-off" before Hemsworth takes on the role in Season 4.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, The Witcher showrunner Lauren Hissrich explained how the upcoming third season wasn't initially intended as a farewell for Cavill. Hissrich stated, "Henry has given so much to the show, and so we want to honor that appropriately.

She later added the third season will see a "big turn" for the Witcher regarding "giving up neutrality," noting that Geralt would do everything possible to get to Ciri, which she calls to be "the most heroic send-off." Despite the third season not being written in the way that sees Cavill exit the show, Season 4 will see the Witcher embark on a new mission, and he'll be a lot "different than we expected."

As the third season will be based on author Andrzej Sapkowski's fourth book in the novel series, Time of Contempt, they've done the best they could do in the wake of Cavill's exit while delivering a close adaptation of the book in question. "What is so interesting is that Season 3, to me, is the closest thing that we've done as a one-to-one adaptation of the books."

"Obviously, we can't do every page, but Time of Contempt gave us so many big action events, plot points, defining character moments, huge reveals of a big bad. There's so much to do that we were able to stick really, really closely with the books."

"As with the greatest of literary characters, I pass the torch with reverence for the time spent embodying Geralt and enthusiasm to see Liam's take on this most fascinating and nuanced of men," Cavill mentioned in his statement in October 2022. However, those plans were dashed when he revealed on Instagram that DC would be moving forward with the character without Cavill portraying him.

Cavill announced his departure from the series after three seasons as the popular Witcher, Geralt of Rivia, in October 2022. This coincided with Hemsworth's confirmation to be stepping up to the role before Cavill announced he would return as the Man of Steel, Superman.

Things are looking up for the British actor as he was recently honored in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as CD Projekt RED included the Witcher armor he wore in the Netflix series, and his dog, Kal, can be seen after completing one of the new side quests. Lastly, he announced on Instagram that he will be working on adapting the Warhammer 40k game series for Amazon Prime Video, which he'll star and produce, and has mentioned that his priority is "to find our Filmmaker/Creator/Writer."