The Witcher's Geralt Recasting Might Just Be Solved with One Simple Trick
The Witcher TV series is beset by various problems, and one of them is Henry Cavill, starring as Geralt of Rivia, leaving it.
Cavill hadn't disclosed his reason for doing so, but most likely that happened due to disagreements with the showrunners and dislike of the series' direction.
Starting from Season 4, he's going to be replaced by Liam Hemsworth, and given that the two actors look quite differently, never mind finer points of their performance, that's obviously a major blow.
Recasting your main character is often a deathblow to your series, with fans of the old actor leaving, and the rest of the audience having their immersion broken.
However, The Witcher might survive it, as long as showrunners do not simply ignore the actor switch within the series. There are several simple tricks available to them, and any one might suffice.
First, The Witcher takes place in a fantasy universe. Moreover, a fantasy universe where multiple brands of magic capable of changing a person's form, either temporarily or permanently, canonically exist.
So, Geralt suddenly having a different face can be simply incorporated into the plot.
While Geralt usually flaunts his unusual appearance, instead of concealing it, given his dangerous lifestyle, it is rather easy to imagine him going to some shady magic user for a spell to alter his looks.
And then that spell getting stuck or leaving residual changes, due to some unfortunate mishap.
Or, second, the show can try to make a joke out of Geralt's sudden change. The Witcher already featured enough of self-aware comedy which is common in the modern media (though one can argue that in case of The Witcher it actually fits, since even the original books were prone to leaning on the fourth wall).
This is especially obvious with Jaskier, who at times thrown in-jokes, as if he knew that the audience is watching him.
So, the showrunners can make Jaskier make joke about Geralt's appearance change, just to address an elephant in the room.
Whether they can make such a joke actually work is a different question. If the joke ends up unfunny, that might only aggravate the bitter feelings over the contentious issue.