SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for “The Witcher” Season 4, now streaming on Netflix.
There’s a new witcher on the hunt in the Continent.
Liam Hemsworth steps into the monster-killing shoes of Geralt in Netflix’s “The Witcher” Season 4, taking over after original star Henry Cavill departed after Season 3. The story picks up in the aftermath of last season, with Geralt, Ciri (Freya Allan) and Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) all separated and searching for each other.
They’ve each assembled a new group of allies in their hunt: Geralt has his bard buddy Jaskier (Joey Batey), vampire Regis (Laurence Fishburne) and others on his search; Yennefer leads the sorceresses to find her adopted daughter, Ciri, and lover, Geralt; and Ciri has assumed a new identity as Falka, banded together with the Rats, a group of outlaws, and starts a relationship with a criminal named Mistle (Juliette Alexandra).
Geralt and Yennefer are determined to stop Emperor Emhyr var Emreis (Bart Edwards) from fulfilling an ancient prophecy — which involves marrying his own daughter, Ciri — and gaining enough power to rule the entire Continent. Luckily, they soon realize that the marriage is a sham and Emhyr is holding a fake Ciri hostage to wed. But there are many other threats out there, like the evil wizard Vilgefortz (Mahesh Jadu) who attacks Yennefer’s forces in the climactic Battle of Montecalvo. With the help of the other witchers, they defeat Vilgefortz, but Geralt’s mentor Vesemir (Peter Mullan) and sorcerer Istredd (Royce Pierreson) both die.
On Ciri’s side, the deranged bounty hunter Leo Bonhart (Sharlto Copely) is hot on her and the Rats’ trail. In the finale, he corners them and brutally beheads each of the Rats, taking Ciri as his prisoner. Also in the final moments of the show, Geralt is finally knighted after the Battle of the Bridge, and Emhyr sends out a mysterious monster to follow his scent and kill him.
Speaking with Variety, showrunner Lauren Schmidt-Hissrich discusses all those deaths, where Geralt and Ciri will find themselves in the upcoming fifth and final season and much more.
Let’s start with Ciri. She’s starts the season off with the Rats and grows close to Mistle, which is portrayed very differently in the books. Why did you want to introduce a love interest for her?
We definitely wanted to take a page from the books, and we played around with several darker and lighter versions. Where we wanted to land is something that felt like Ciri was actually turning over some of herself to this person, that there was a vulnerability that we’d never been able to see before. That’s why we started with it. For the past three seasons, Ciri has been a princess, the most powerful person on the Continent, someone’s daughter, someone’s granddaughter. What starts to happen when she lives life for herself? And the truth is, is it’s not really a storybook romance. It’s no “happy ever after” for her. But we did want to give her these moments of questioning. Is this love? Is this what it feels like to be in love? Because these are things that Ciri has never experienced. She’s never had the ability to have these normal human experiences, and it doesn’t end on a nice note. When she leaves Mistle, everything is thrown into question. She thought that she was able to build up this mask of this person that she wanted to be. The truth is that Mistle always saw through it. Is it love? Is it not love? I don’t know that I could answer that.
All of the Rats get gruesomely beheaded by Leo Bonhart. How is that going to stick with Ciri going into the final season?
We made a really conscious decision to not end this season on the characters’ higher moments. When we’re doing Seasons 4 and 5 back to back, in some ways it feels like one big season that we split. It really is one long journey back toward each other. We thought it would be interesting, as we’re chugging toward the end, to put all of our characters in the darkest places imaginable because we know that some redemption is going to come. This is going to be Ciri letting go and touching those deepest, darkest places within herself that she’s always pushed away. She’s said several times across the series that she worries that there’s something wrong with her. She worries that death follows her, that she is a monster inside. Once she deals with the heartbreak and loss of the Rats, we get to see her start to access that for a while. It’s her baptism of fire that needs to happen before she can be redeemed.
Speaking of sad deaths, we also get Vesemir back this season, but he goes down swinging in a fight against Vilgefortz. Why was this the right time to say goodbye to him?
People who are fans of the books know that the witchers do appear again in the books. We haven’t seen them since Season 2. So we wanted to make sure that we were reintroducing our audience to who these witchers were, their relationship with Geralt, the world, where they see themselves in that hierarchy and the fact that they have always tried to stay neutral in the past. That’s something we’ve seen Geralt go through, his desire to stay neutral and his realization at the end of Season 3 that he can’t. So we want his brothers-in-arms to go through a similar experience.
That was the first reason of bringing them in this season. Obviously, they’re not in this portion of the books. The bigger thing we needed in terms of deaths, audiences sometimes worry that we kill people just for shock value — and yes, I think Vesemir’s death is very shocking — but the more important thing is what it does to the people around him. When Geralt learns about it from Yennefer, we see him taken to a new place. He has lost his father now, and he is pushing to be a father to Ciri, a role that he never expected to step into. When you lose someone important in your world, it makes you reconsider your own priorities. This was the right engine for Geralt at the end of the season, as he’s actually experiencing some of his dreams coming true at the end of Season 4. The thing that he’s dreamt of the most, becoming a white knight, he’s able to get. Yet partially through the death of Vesemir, he knows that time is not on his side. If he is going to reunite his family, he has to give up that dream in order to pursue the dream of family. So it felt like the right time, not just for story and shock, but for Geralt and what he needed.
The death count seems this season seems pretty high. Will next season have around the same number of deaths?
Yes, the death count this season was huge, also think the death count of people who were really important to us. Anyone who’s familiar with this source material knows that it’s not a happy ending, and I do think that the body count just keeps on growing from here. It feels fitting. Obviously it’s going to be a goodbye to the series. We have to start to say some real goodbyes to these characters.
Susie Allnutt/Netflix
Geralt is finally knighted at the end of this season, officially becoming Geralt of Rivia. How will that help him or hinder him next season?
Since Season 1, Geralt has wanted to be a knight. We see him as a little boy and he’s slaying dragons with a wooden sword. We know that this is a deep-seated dream within him. Even when he became a witcher, we start to hear these lessons that Vesemir is trying to impart on him, which is that you don’t kill for revenge. You don’t kill to be a hero. You kill because you have to. One of the most meaningful things that we were able to express for Geralt this season is the flashback when he explains to Ciri that “Geralt of Rivia” isn’t an honorific. It’s not his real name. It’s one he gave himself to improve his contracts. That is one of the first things that he and Ciri bonded over, where she started to open up to him. For Geralt, it should feel like a moment of celebration and achieving what he always wanted. But for us, it’s more proof to show how the character has changed and how his goals have changed over the season. This man who wanted nothing and no one, who wanted to be a part of nothing larger than himself, suddenly gives up his greatest dream in order to pursue his daughter and the woman that he loves. That is the most poignant shift for him that we’ve seen.
You’ve spoken a lot already about Liam Hemsworth stepping into Geralt’s shoes this season. Was there anything that surprised you about his performance once you began shooting?
On day one, we were all nervous. We all had no idea what to expect. Liam has spoken extensively about putting on the black leathers, contacts and the wig and that process of not becoming yourself. What was most surprising to me when he stepped on set was how comfortable he was and how at ease he was. It was amazing. I know the physical work that he put in, but the mental work that he must have put in to step onto set, not be fidgeting or worried that he was mimicking something — it was incredible. That ease and comfort seeps across both seasons. You really see him comfortable in this character. Honestly, it’s the right time for Geralt, who’s experiencing these emotions he’s never experienced before. Liam got to bring an emotional side to Geralt that we had not seen. In some ways, it’s just perfect timing where the new actor came in to a place where this character was in a state of flux.
What I was surprised with is how easily he slipped into the rhythm that we had started to build in Season 1, which is saying things when things needed to be said, knowing when it was the perfect time to just sigh or grunt or say “fuck” and move on. It came so naturally to him. Despite the stories being super heavy, Geralt has a sense of humor and wit about him that feels very authentic, because that’s how people move through trauma. You get to see these beautiful moments of bonding, friendship and family amidst the darkness. It was a lovely surprise. It’s exactly what we wanted and hoped for.
Susie Allnutt/Netflix
I loved Regis’ animated backstory and Jaskier’s musical in the middle of the season. How did you decide to change up the format and present their origin stories like that?
We love to play with structure and form on the show. This was a different chance to do something. It started out of production needs. We had this backstory for Regis that we knew we wanted to tell. We also knew that we did not have the time and resources to tell it the way that it needed to be told. Our episodes are shot across, in general, about 18 days. This was unlike anything we’d done before. We needed to be here for Regis, there for Jaskier, here for Zoltan. We knew we couldn’t accomplish it, but what if we actually played with form and the genre of these moments? Regis was the first one that came to be. We could accomplish the breadth and depth of that flashback with animation. That took so much planning. Animation is a much, much slower, more methodical process. We actually started that animation long before we started shooting Season 4. Laurence got to come in for approvals on his character design. It’s actually modeled after one of his sons, so it is meant to look like Laurence would look as a young man. Jaskier’s came next. I have to say, pitching a musical to Netflix wasn’t a swinging yes out of the gate. It took some movement and pushing, but we’re so happy with it. There’s no better way to tell Jaskier’s story.
We meet Nimue (Sha Dessi) this season, who seems like she may cross paths with our main characters. Will we see more of her next season?
We loved setting up Nimue and Stribog the storyteller like a device. It’s a way of helping our audience adjust to seeing Liam’s face, to seeing this new Geralt. It’s a way to revisit moments from the past, to really get our characters together. It’s one of the huge reasons that we open the season like that. Otherwise, Ciri, Geralt and Yen are on three different paths. We never see them together. We knew that if we went back into the past, we could have these moments of the family united and remind our audience what they’re fighting for. It should feel a little bit like a device at the beginning. By the end of the season, Stribog says to her, “Maybe you have a bigger role in the story. Maybe you are the one who can change the story.” Absolutely in Season 5, we’re going to be stepping back in Nimue’s world a little bit more. We’re going to have an understanding of how stories are changed by the storyteller. But if you think about it, Nimue we say is 100 years in the future, so if she’s going to intersect in the story, it’s a little bit of a hint as to what some of Ciri’s powers might be as well.
Can you tease what kind of monster Emhyr is sending after Geralt in the final moments of this season?
One of the things that we had to cope with in Seasons 4 and 5 is that by this point in the books, Geralt really isn’t a monster hunter anymore. He’s not fighting monsters very often. He has reformulated his goal to solely get to his family. But, of course, we love the monsters, and we know Ciri is the titular witcher of the series and of the books. We know that monster hunting has to stay important to her and her world. So we invented a ton of monsters to putting out there. What we really love is this idea that a monster is specifically coming from Emhyr. Just as Geralt is trying to move forward in Season 5, there’s this piece of his past that keeps coming for him.
There was a two and a half year break between Season 3 and 4. Will there be as long of a wait to get to Season 5?
Hopefully shorter. Two and a half years is never ideal. Obviously, we had a writers strike in the middle of that, which really pushed Season 4 back. So fingers crossed. We are working so hard in post, we wrapped almost a month ago. We’re we’re pushing ahead and hope to be able to deliver it audiences a little bit sooner.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
