The Witcher Officially Erased Henry Cavill's Geralt From The Show's History

Published Oct 8, 2026, 7:15 PM EDT

Adrienne Tyler is a movies & TV features writer, with a focus on horror. She has written for Netflix, FanSided, & more. She was a regular guest on the Netfreaks podcast and was a YouTuber at some point. Guillermo del Toro said “hi” to her once.

Netflix’s The Witcher went through major changes in its fourth season, and it officially erased Henry Cavill’s Geralt from the show’s history. Under its Netflix Originals banner, the streaming platform has brought a variety of TV shows across different genres, with some of them already ranking among the best TV shows of all time. Netflix has mostly stood out in the fantasy genre, and one of its biggest shows, despite its flaws and controversies, is The Witcher.

The Witcher had a strong start when it debuted on Netflix in 2019, quickly becoming one of the platform’s biggest releases. However, creative decisions in season 2 led to the show’s decline, and it has done its best to fix those mistakes in its third and fourth seasons. While season 2’s controversies alienated some viewers, The Witcher has maintained its popularity, even after its biggest shake-up: Henry Cavill’s departure after season 3 and Liam Hemsworth’s casting as Geralt of Rivia.

Hemsworth’s casting sparked new interest in Netflix’s The Witcher, and season 4 was a great improvement over past seasons, with Hemsworth’s performance being well-received by viewers. The biggest question when Hemsworth was cast was how the show would address this change, and The Witcher found a brilliant way to do so, but, in the process, it ended up erasing Henry Cavill’s version of Geralt from the show’s history.

The Witcher Season 4 Reshot Some Of Henry Cavill's Scenes

Image via MovieStills DB

The Witcher season 3 saw the Thanedd Coup and the chaos unleashed by it, with the season ending with Ciri (Freya Allan) being transported to another location and later being saved by the Rats, who she joins. Meanwhile, Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) gathers the surviving sorceresses, and Geralt, after healing in Brokilon, sets out with Jaskier and Milva to find Ciri. Season 4 picks up right after this, but it opens with a surprise.

Season 4 opens with Hemsworth’s Geralt battling a kikimora, just like Cavill’s Geralt did in the show’s first episode. This is revealed to be shared by Stribog (Clive Russell), a storyteller, with a young Nimue (Sha Dessi) jumping in to add other parts of Geralt’s story, such as his romance with Yennefer and his bond with Ciri. For that, The Witcher shows flashbacks of Geralt and Yennefer together, one of their many fights, one of the many times they got back together, and his first meeting with Ciri in the woods, which was the final scene of season 1.

However, these scenes showed Hemsworth’s Geralt, even if some of them originally starred Cavill’s version, including his fight against Vilgefortz in season 3. This was The Witcher’s way of establishing Hemsworth as the new Geralt and integrating him into the past seasons, but, in the process, it essentially erased Cavill’s Geralt from the show’s history, which doesn’t really affect the show, but it might not have sat well with some viewers.

The Witcher Brilliantly Justified Its Geralt Recast In Season 4

The Witcher erasing Henry Cavill’s Geralt from past seasons in just a couple of minutes was a surprising move, but the context around it was a brilliant way to justify it. As mentioned above, one of the biggest questions when Geralt was recast was whether the show would address Geralt’s new physical appearance and, if so, how it would do so. The Witcher had many ways it could have addressed this change, the most theorized one being through the multiverse.

Fortunately, Netflix’s The Witcher found a much better and fitting way to address its Geralt recast, which is why it introduced Stribog and Nimue. Through them, The Witcher confirmed that the events of the show are tales told many years after they happened (if they happened at all, of course), so the physical appearance of the characters can change depending on who tells the story and which version of it they are telling.

Season 4, and most likely season 5 as well, is told by Stribog and Nimue, and so in their versions, Geralt has always looked like he does now. Surely, even though The Witcher reshot those scenes, Henry Cavill’s Geralt legacy remains, and Liam Hemsworth is now building his own in seasons 4 and 5.