Whether you’re waiting on The Witcher season 3 volume 2 to bid Henry Cavill farewell, or have forsaken the show altogether due to the actor’s sudden departure, it’s a valid question how Netflix will handle the switcheroo between him and Liam Hemsworth, or try to explain it away in rational terms.
The producers are insisting that showrunner Lauren S. Hissrich and her writers’ room have come up with a really compelling answer that makes sense from the perspective of Andrzej Sapkowski’s lore. Of course, one might argue that canon and lore are a lost cause at this point, but on the off-chance that Liam manages to pull off the challenge of portraying an incredibly beloved incarnation of a very famous and gatekeeped protagonist, then we seriously need to start talking about the practical ways they could go about it.
For those of you who’ve read the books, you know that the upcoming confrontation between the Northern Kingdom loyalists and Vilgefortz’ traitors is going to be cataclysmic for the future of the Continent. Whatever happens to our Geralt will happen in those final three episodes, so if we were to really break down the situation, the voice of reason — as the White Wolf would say — underlines only two possibilities for our titular hero.
Another Geralt from the multiverse?
Nowadays, it feels like the multiverse is Hollywood’s last bastion of lazy writing, where you could explain almost everything by saying that there are infinite worlds out there and infinity’s true limits are the limits of your imagination.
But in the case of The Witcher, Andrzej Sapkowski’s original books from the ’90s actually incorporate the concept of the multiverse into the story in a huge way. It’s not without reason that Ciri is called the Lady of Time and Space. Our little Witcher has the ability to travel between worlds, which makes her the number one target on everybody’s, um, ambitions list, whether it be the Wild Hunt and its spectral riders — who want to use those powers to transform the banished elves of the Aen Elle to this world — or powerful rulers of the Northern Kingdom. And even Emhyr var Emreis, the Emperor of Nilfgaard, who happens to be her father.
At any rate, considering that Ciri does travel to other worlds in the course of the books, even a world that eerily resembles our own, how would that help with Liam Hemsworth’s Geralt? Well, if our own Geralt were to perish in the fight to come, Ciri might be so enraged and devastated as to tap into her magical powers – bringing another Geralt from an alternate dimension to their own and leaving him stranded there.
Some of the show’s producers have been repeatedly hinting at this possibility. In a recent interview with RadioTimes, executive producer Tomek Bagiński indirectly hinted at the multiverse theory, saying:
“I think they cobbled together a really nice opening which is really true to the books. 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. I will stop here!”
That’s not so much teasing as pretty much letting the cat out of the bag. But if that’s the route they’re taking, does it mean the new Geralt will have his own Ciri and will be trying to get back to her? Will he even know that he has a ward named Ciri? How will they connect? And what will motivate him to seek her out or continue to protect her?
Not very reasonable when you look at it in those terms, which brings us to the second theory: Transfiguration after the Thanedd Coup.
The healing a Druid offers
Warning: The following paragraphs include spoilers for The Witcher season 3 volume 2 and the fourth book, Time of Contempt, so unless you really, really want to know what will happen with Henry Cavill’s Geralt, we suggest that you wait for the remaining three episodes.
The final battle at Thanedd Island changes everything in The Witcher world. After learning about Vilgefortz’s plan, Geralt fights his way out of captivity and confronts the sorcerer. Meanwhile, with the battle raging on across Aretuza, Yennefer, Triss, and Ciri are all trying to make their own way out of the conflict.
Vilgefortz taunts Geralt again about his decision to remain neutral, and how his behavior goes in the face of that. Geralt — true to his usual stoic self — just wants to get this over with and reunite with Ciri. But things don’t go nearly as well as he’d hoped. Vilgefortz is a powerful adversary and he enchants his weapon to deflect all of Geralt’s blows.
The Witcher is repeatedly pushed back, until even he realizes that there’s no winning against Vilgefortz. The villain is relentless, however, and continues to hammer blow after blow onto Geralt’s resilient, mutated body. Time of Contempt ends on a terrifying note: The Witcher has finally met his match, and been utterly defeated by him.
Vilgefortz leaves Geralt broken and near death, and he only survives because Tissaia and Triss Merigold find and take him to the druids. The next time we see Geralt, he’s still recovering from his wounds in the Brokilon forest, but despite the druids’ best efforts, the character is somewhat disabled from here on out.
The fight between Geralt and Vilgefortz is pretty brutal in the books, so if the show remains faithful to the source material, Henry Cavill’s character is going to be left in a pretty awful shape. That’s where transfiguration comes into play. We know that transfiguration magic is a thing in The Witcher world — and openly practiced by the sorceresses in Aretuza — so what if the druids do the same to Geralt to preserve his body?
It could certainly explain why Geralt suddenly looks and sounds different, and it ties neatly into the plot. This will not necessarily help the fans to come to terms with Liam Hemsworth in the long run, but it may help the actor himself manage a smooth landing.
And from there, who knows what’s going to be in store for our characters?