The following contains spoilers for The Witcher Season 3, Volume 2, streaming now on Netflix.
The Witcher executive producer Tomek Baginski recently justified the Netflix fantasy series' controversial changes to Andrzej Sapkowski's original books.
Baginski defended the show's alterations to the canon established in Sapkowski's Witcher novels and short stories in an interview with the Polish newspaper Wyborcza. "When a series is made for a huge mass of viewers, with different experiences, from different parts of the world, and a large part of them are Americans, these simplifications not only make sense, they are necessary," he said. "It's painful for us, and for me too, but the higher level of nuance and complexity will have a smaller range, it won't reach people. Sometimes it may go too far, but we have to make these decisions and accept them."
Baginski has proven himself willing to tackle tough questions following the release of The Witcher Season 3, Volume 2 in July 2023. This includes fielding queries around the departure of star Henry Cavill, who wrapped up his stint as series protagonist Geralt of Rivia with the final episode of Volume 2. Baginski talked up Cavill's replacement, Liam Hemsworth, in a recent interview, insisting that the Aussie actor will look the part in Season 4. "I've already seen [Hemsworth] in Witcher makeup," the executive producer said. "And in the Witcher look. And he looks awesome."
The Witcher Director on Henry Cavill's Final Scene
Exactly how The Witcher Season 4 will handle the transition from Cavill to Hemsworth remains under wraps for now. That said, director Bola Ogun recently explained that Cavill's final scene in The Witcher Season 3, Volume 2 was intended to play as a "soft goodbye" to the show's original leading man. "The way that it was written and the way they designed it -- because so much is changing already, so much is going down in the season, it almost felt like it was a nice chapter closing on its own," Ogun opined.
Cavill's last-ever scene was nearly a markedly more definitive ending than what fans ultimately saw, though. According to showrunner Lauren S. Hissrich, Netflix executives offered The Witcher's creative team the option to bring the show to a close after Cavill stepped down as Geralt, however, they declined the offer as they felt there were "too many stories left to tell." Hissrich also revealed that she and her fellow executive producers rejected Netflix's suggestion to shift the show's focus from Geralt to another Witcher, as this would've meant going "fully away from the books."
Source: Wyborcza, via Redanian Intelligence