The Witcher Teased Its Way to Swap Geralts, and It Will Ruin Everything
The in-world approach the writers have chosen is seemingly going against the lore and threatens to turn S4's plot into a "this is how we switched this actor" explanation.
As we're all thoroughly heartbroken over the fact that Henry Cavill 's leaving The Witcher after S3, it's still happening, and the new Geralt of Rivia — Liam Hemsworth — has already put on the white wig of the legendary monster hunter. The thing is, this creates problems not only for the viewers but for the plot of the show as well.
We have all been expecting the showrunner to simply switch the actors and don't put an accent on that: it would've been awkward for a while but then, the audience would've gotten used to it. Apparently, a completely different approach to this issue was chosen, and there will be an in-world explanation for the new Witcher.
The show's executive producer Tomek Baginski addressed this issue in three separate interviews, and the picture we're getting so far doesn't install confidence.
"One of the big topics in The Witcher's world is that every story can be told from many, many POVs – and sometimes those POVs and those versions of the stories are very, very different from what we thought was the truth," Baginski told The Express.
This kind of implies the idea of a so-called "unreliable narrator" being employed. Potentially, this would involve us hearing a new version of the story from some narrating character who would clarify that Geralt did not, in fact, look like we used to think — or just start a story from a different point with Hemsworth as the new lead.
This could've worked but this isn't everything, unfortunately.
"This is a very little thing that I will tease – people who know the books really deeply also know that this is not a typical fantasy book. It's not just one world. It's not just one story happening in those books, in those stories. It's a huge, huge world which is very, very complex," Baginski added when talking to RadioTimes.
This statement is complemented by a different hint Tomek gave during his interview with Yahoo, and together, they form quite a questionable picture for the series' future.
"We have a very, very good plan to introduce our new Geralt and our new vision for Geralt with Liam. Not going deeply into those ideas because this will be a huge spoiler, [but] it's also very, very close to the meta ideas which are deeply embedded in the books, especially in book five. It's very lore accurate," the producer claimed.
This here phrasing in the context of the lead actor switching suggests something using something like Marvel's Multiverse to drag in a Geralt from an alternative universe, and if this is the way the show goes, this is going to be terrible.
The thing is, The Witcher doesn't work like the MC, and it doesn't have alternative universes; it has different and completely separated universes. This means that there's no second Geralt of Rivia somewhere out there, and there's no way that by messing with the non-existent multiverse, the show can drag the new actor in.
Despite Baginski's claims that the way they've chosen is "lore-accurate" and "flawless," so far, this doesn't seem too good. In fact, if The Witcher employs the idea of the multiverse to explain the actor switch, this would be disastrous. The fans of this franchise care deeply for the lore, and the show will lose even more viewers for that than it already has by making Henry Cavill quit the project.
Sources: Yahoo!News, RadioTimes, The Express