The Witcher season 4 executive producer suggests an explanation for Geralt recasting is in the books

There are plenty of rumors about why Henry Cavill decided to step away from the Netflix series The Witcher after playing the character of Geralt of Rivia for three seasons, but there has never been an in-depth explanation. Whatever the reason may be, Liam Hemsworth will be taking over the role of Geralt in The Witcher season 4 – and during a recent interview executive producer Tomek Baginski suggested that an explanation for Geralt’s new appearance can be found in the source material, the series of novels written by Andrzej Sapkowski.

Inspired by the works of Sapkowski, The Witcher is an epic tale of fate and family — the story of the intertwined destinies of three individuals in the vast world of The Continent, where humans, elves, witchers, gnomes, and monsters battle to survive and thrive, and where good and evil is not easily identified.

Speaking to Wyborcza, Baginski said (with thanks to Redanian Intelligence for the transcription), “Many book readers forget what Andrzej Sapkowski did in the fifth volume of the saga. For me, this is one of the most important things in the whole story. I’m not talking about specific events, but the narrative framework that was introduced in this book. Suddenly, at the beginning of the book, we learn that everything we’ve read so far might not have been true. And this cannot be compared with, for example, the currently popular concept of the multiverse, where out of nowhere there are many different realities.“

Redanian Intelligence goes on to explain that Baginski is referring to a big revelation in the fifth and final novel of the saga, Lady of the Lake, where there are a few passages set a hundred years after Geralt, Ciri, and Yennefer’s story is concluded. By then, the story of the witcher, the princess, and the sorceress has become a legend. And, like many legends, the story spread across the land with many different interpretations. So it seems like the explanation is that one telling of the legend imagined a Geralt that looks like Henry Cavill, and now we’ll be seeing a telling where he looks like Liam Hemsworth. But the appearances of Princess Cirilla of Cintra and Yennefer of Vengerberg won’t be changing, because Cavill’s co-stars Freya Allan and Anya Chalotra will be returning to work alongside Hemsworth.

What do you think of this explanation for why Geralt will suddenly be looking like Liam Hemsworth in The Witcher season 4?