After Henry Cavill Exits Series Allegedly Over Issues With Canon, Netflix’s ‘The Witcher’ Showrunner Lauren Hissrich Claims Upcoming Third Season “Is The Closest Thing That We’ve Done As A One-To-One Adaptation Of The Books”
Still hoping to save face with fans of Netflix’s The Witcher following the exit of star Henry Cavill – a decision allegedly based on the actor’s dissatisfaction with the series’ treatment of Andrej Sapkowski’s original stories – showrunner Lauren Hissrich has claimed that the series’ upcoming third season will be “the closest thing that we’ve done as a one-to-one adaptation of the books.”
Hissrich, who previously boasted that she was “the strong independent woman you’re looking to blame” for the The Witcher’s source-material-breaking second season, made her claim during a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly.
Speaking specifically to Cavill’s sudden but unsurprising exit, Hissrich told the outlet, “Henry has given so much to the show and so we want to honor that appropriately” before lamenting how The Witcher’s third season would be his last, particularly because “What is so interesting is that season 3, to me, is the closest thing that we’ve done as a one-to-one adaptation of the books.”
“Obviously, we can’t do every page, but Time of Contempt gave us so many big action events, plot points, defining character moments, huge reveals of a big bad,” she added. “There’s so much to do that we were able to stick really, really closely with the books.”
Speaking further to how they wanted to honor Cavill’s time in the role, Hissrich explained, “Geralt’s big turn is about giving up neutrality and doing anything that he has to do to get to Ciri. And to me, it’s the most heroic sendoff that we could have, even though it wasn’t written to be that.”
“Geralt has a new mission in mind when we come back to him in season 4,” said the showrunner. “He’s a slightly different Geralt than we expected. Now, by the way, that’s an understatement.”
Pressed by EW as to whether or not The Witcher production team had considered keeping Cavill on either as a producer or in a different role, Hissrich admitted, “We haven’t even thought about that at this point.”
“We have plans to keep this going in various permutations,” she continued, making reference to such The Witcher spin-offs as the Blood Origin and the upcoming anime production Nightmare of the Wolf. “I love the mothership, I’m going to stick to it, but obviously we have Blood Origin coming out.”
“I hope that this doesn’t end for a while,” the showrunner ultimately concluded. “So I think the possibilities are endless, and we’ll see what happens.”
Unfortunately for Hissrich, the current direction of the franchise may put a limitation on just how many screen projects she’ll get to play with in The Witcher universe.
Not only has the series lost a large swath of its fanbase who were only along for the ride because of Cavill, but the aforementioned prequel series Blood Origin is currently finding no favor among mainstream media critics.
As of writing, the film currently holds a 37% ‘Rotten’ rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with only 7 of its currently published 19 reviews giving it a positive recommendation.
The third season of The Witcher is currently on track to hit Netflix sometime in Summer 2023.
Meanwhile, The Witcher: Blood Origin will premiere on Christmas Day.
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