Liam Hemsworth as Geralt of Rivia in Netflix’s ‘The Witcher’ Season 4
Credit: Netflix
There’s a moment during the Season 4 finale of Netflix’s epic fantasy series, The Witcher, that makes the entire season worth watching. I’ll discuss the brutal scene below the spoiler warning. For now, suffice to say that for all its fumbles (and there are plenty) I did enjoy this season of the fantasy adaptation. In fact, despite a downgrade in the casting for our protagonist, this was overall the best season since the first.
Partly, this is because Season 4 allows itself to have fun. Both the second and third seasons were convoluted and dour affairs, with muddled storylines and conflict between the protagonists that felt far too forced. Season 4 hews closer to the source material while also taking a slightly more playful approach to the storytelling. We’ll start there, before moving into more critical waters.
Spoilers ahead.
‘The Witcher’ Season 4 Added Some Great New Characters
Leo Bonhart
Credit: Netflix
The burning question on every fan’s mind going into Season 4 was how Liam Hemsworth’s version of Geralt of Rivia would differ from Henry Cavill. I’ll get to that in a minute, though I’ll say here that Hemsworth grew on me over the course of the season.
But we’re starting with what worked, and probably the best part of Season 4 is the addition of several excellent new characters, including one villain you love to hate (or hate that you love?). I’m speaking, of course, about the sadistic bounty hunter, Leo Bonhart, played by the excellent Sharlto Copley. Bonhart is a highly skilled, extremely deadly fighter who hunts Witchers for fun. Copley is glorious in every scene, clearly having the time of his life.
Bonhart is hired by another newcomer: Nilfgaardian spymaster, Stefan Skellen, played with understated cunning by James Purefoy (who was in the excellent first season of Netflix’s Altered Carbon). Skellen is working for and against Emperor Emhyr var Emreis (Bart Edwards), tasking Bonhart with tracking down the emperor’s daughter – and would-be bride – Ciri (Freya Allan) but ordering him to kill Ciri in the process in a deeper plot to unseat Emhyr and end his reign.
Regis (Laurence Fishburne)
Credit: Netflix
Ciri has been traveling with the Rats, a group of thieves who we will discuss further below, and when Bonhart catches up to them, she’s been separated from the group. She arrives to witness him killing them one-by-one in gloriously brutal fashion. I think one thing almost everyone can agree on is that this final fight scene was not only splendidly choreographed, but also deeply satisfying. The season’s most annoying characters all killed off in one brutal scene. It was the best fight scene in this show since Geralt earned the Butcher of Blaviken title.
Also new to the season is mysterious barber-surgeon, Regis, played with a winking gravitas by Laurence Fishburne. Fishburne is excellent in every scene, especially as he reveals his true nature as a vampire sworn off blood. He plays it straight but manages to be quite funny much of the time.
These three new additions to the cast genuinely elevate this season, though actors of this caliber stand in stark contrast to many of the other cast-members who are . . . well, we’ll get to that soon enough.
Geralt’s ‘Hanza’ Was A Breath Of Fresh Air
Geralt and his companions
Credit: Netflix
I really enjoyed Geralt’s band of traveling company, or “hanza”, which gives at least one of the three major plotlines in Season 4 a sense of an adventuring party on an epic quest. The hanza consists of unlikely allies who meet on the road. Geralt and the bard Jaskier (Joey Batey) met the elven archer, Milva (Meng’er Zhang), at the end of Season 3. They end up encountering the dwarf, Zoltan (Danny Woodburn) and his gnomish companion, Percival (Linden Porco) as well as the dwarf, Yarpen (Jeremy Crawford) on the ir journey. Regis joins the group and plies them with Mandrake juice to make sure he can trust them.
When Geralt realizes Regis’s true nature, he says it’s time for them to part ways, but Regis returns to save Geralt and Jaskier from the conniving and vengeful Sigismund Dijkstra (Graham McTavish) and the cowardly King Radovid (Hugh Skinner) whose awkward romantic relationship with Jaskier thankfully comes to a bitter end this season.
The hanza storyline is consistently fun and entertaining, with adventures through haunted swamps, encounters with witch-burning fanatics and Nilfgaardian troops, culminating in the massive Battle for the Bridge after which Geralt is knighted by Queen Meve of Rivia (Rebecca Hanssen), and given the title Geralt of Rivia officially, fulfilling his dream of becoming a knight but also binding his allegiance to Meve in the process. Missteps aside, this was some of the most fun this show has had since it began, and I genuinely enjoyed most of the hanza bits – including the flashback episode with the controversial musical scene.
I liked that scene a lot (but I’m a sucker for musicals) and it worked because it was Jaskier’s story about how his book of songs was stolen by Valdo (Nathan Laryea) who we met in Season 3 and whose troupe played that horrible song over and over again in the worst episode of the show ever made. The other flashbacks included an animated flashback for Regis (which reminded me of the animated flashback in Quentin Tarantino’s action movie Kill Bill) and a hilariously brief flashback for Percival. I like the whimsy and creativity in this episode, though I’m well aware that it won’t be for everyone.
Eventually, Cahir (Eamon Farren) joins the hanza, having finally abandoned the emperor in order to help save Ciri. We get more of his backstory as well in the flashback episode. Cahir’s is one of the best character arcs in the entire show.
All told, the hansa plot plays a bit like Fellowship Of The Rings and I found it very engaging from start to finish, though I won’t lie: I wish Cavill had been here for this. It would have been nice to see our hardened Witcher from the first three seasons growing closer to these new (and old) companions.
Yennefer And The Lodge Of Sorceresses Vs Vilgefortz
Yennefer and Phillipa
Credit: Netflix
I’ve always liked Anya Chalotra as Yennefer of vengerberg. She may not be the Yen of the games or the books exactly, but she works. The show did her quite dirty in Season 2, however, though this was a problem with the writing, not the actress. I like her in Season 4 as well, though I don’t think her chemistry with Hemsworth works nearly as well. Then again, they really only have one scene together – a sex scene following the revelation that Geralt’s mentor and father figure, Vesemir (now played by Peter Mullan) has been killed by Vilgefortz (Mahesh Jadu).
This is all very frustrating. I actually liked Mullan as Vesemir, but killing him off in this manner (which is not what happens in the books) felt very strange and unnecessary, and Geralt seemed to hardly care when he learned the news. So much of Yen’s storyline is a mixed bag. There are some genuinely fun magic battle scenes when Vilgefortz and his seemingly endless supply of dark mages invades Montecalvo through portals he now controls. Montecalvo is the home of Philippa Eilhart (Cassie Clare) who is now weirdly friendly with Yen (though perhaps this is all a ruse given Philippa is a scheming, selfish, power-hungry woman).
But the Montecalvo subplot makes little sense. Vilgefortz has no reason to attack Yennefer and the other sorceresses. The Brotherhood has been destroyed and its survivors pose no real threat to him. He wastes his entire army of mages on the battle. Meanwhile, the battle itself – while fun spectacle – is nonsensical. A group of novices can withstand the most powerful mage in the world for this long? I doubt it. And why doesn’t Vilgefortz or any of his people use portals to pop up behind their foes, a trick that ends up being used against them in the end?
The water-well bit was also quite silly. First, that Philippa doesn’t use magic to turn the wheel; second, that water from a well would so quickly extinguish the dark mages’ fire spells.
The Witcher
Credit: Netflix
The Battle for the Bridge had similar problems. I am annoyed to no end by fight scenes that involve heavily armored knights getting taken down by swords and fists. You can’t stab a sword through plate armor. You won’t punch a helmed knight in the face and knock them out. To take down a knight in plate armor, you’ll likely need to use a blunt weapon or some combination of grappling and bashing in order to get him down and then stab him through a chink or his visor. When knights are always running around in full plate, it makes it look fake. Plate armor is incredibly heavy. Don’t have plate armor as costumes if you’re not going to treat it like plate armor. Just have soldiers in chain hauberks or leather.
There’s also a scene at the bridge where Milva miscarries and Jaskier follows Geralt, Cahir, and Zoltan up to help with the fight against the Nilfgaardians. Cahir immediately takes charge of the situation and gives a rousing speech. Then Jaskier gives a little speech of his own . . . before clambering directly back down to Milva and Regis. Why? Why have him go up at all? It’s so perplexing and awkward, and it robs Geralt and Cahir of having an actual moment of camaraderie after a season of mistrust.
There are many odd choices like this throughout the season. A ferryman warns the hansa of baboon attacks on the river. He means guerilla attacks, and the joke is a play on “gorilla” and “baboon” but it seems unlikely that backwater ferrymen would know what baboons are, or gorillas, let alone use the spanish word “guerilla.”
Earlier in the season, the sorceress Keira Metz (Safiyya Ingar) is killed by a member of an angry mob in one of the weirdest scenes in all four seasons of The Witcher. The mob has gathered to angrily protest the surviving mages and Yen shows up and basically walks through the throng with no problem. Nobody attacks her and she makes no effort to defend herself. She spots Vilgefortz (though it isn’t actually him) and instead of going through the gate to Keira, she hurries after him. Despite not being in any real danger, Keira decides that Yen needs her help and opens the gate, using magic to ward back the peasants. But then one just sort of steps up and stabs her to death. How? And why? Why kill of a character like this? At least give her a fighting chance, have her take down a couple dozen of her assailants before they rip her to shreds.
Yen finds one of Vilgefortz’s magical minions and I guess just takes her prisoner offscreen? It’s so strange. I will admit, however, that scenes like this took place mostly at the beginning of the season. It improved a great deal after the first couple episodes – though I’m not sure why we needed mages fighting with swords and I have no idea where that troll on the bridge came from!
Oh, and Geralt’s line from the trailer – “Let’s f**cking move!” – is his “speech” on the bridge, contrary to showrunner Lauren Schmidt-Hissrich’s claim that it makes sense in context, sounds just as bad in the episode. The writing all season is very uneven, with some great dialogue especially from characters like Bonhart and Regis and Skellen, and plenty of wooden, awkward, cringey dialogue elsewhere. Which brings us to . . .
Mrs. Ciri And The Rats Of Dim
Ciri met up with the Rats at the end of Season 3 and now joins their company. The group of thieves is comprised of Mistle (Christelle Elwin), Kayleigh (Fabian McCallum), Iskra (Aggy K. Adams), Giselher (Ben Radcliffe), Reef (Juliette Alexandra) and Asse (Connor Crawford). They are perhaps the most obnoxious group of characters in the entire four seasons of The Witcher.
In fact, they also have their own movie – The Rats: A Witcher Tale – which Netflix quietly released alongside Season 4. The movie has a new Witcher played by action star Dolph Lundgren and features some scenes with Leo Bonhart as well, but you have to spend even more time with the Rats if you watch it, and I’m not sure that’s worth your time.
The Rats are awful. Their story is boring and the characters all unlikable. I was impatient for each of Ciri’s scenes to end. She’s completely wasted in this entire subplot. There are some odd changes from the source material as well. In the books, Ciri is sexually assaulted and saved by Mistle, who then proceeds to take her for herself (and Ciri is only 15 in the books). Their relationship is complicated but portrayed as very manipulative and more than a little gross, with Mistle clearly taking advantage of the younger girl. In the show, it’s totally consensual (though I found it still pretty gross to rescue Ciri from a near-rape only to start making moves right after).
Thankfully, Leo Bonhart comes to the rescue and puts us – and the Rats – out of our misery. When they find a bounty is out on all their heads, and an even larger one out on Ciri (who goes by Falka now) they track down the bounty hunter themselves, vastly underestimating his lethal capabilities.
He makes short work of the Rats, slicing them to pieces, blowing them up, lopping off their heads. It’s some genuinely shocking violence, but oddly satisfying. Bonhart is a great villain, but it’s hard not to love the guy for putting an end to this miserable storyline. He doesn’t kill Ciri, however, taking her prisoner at the end of the finale. What he intends to do with her remains to be seen, but he was clearly impressed enough with her fighting prowess to let her live – and probably to discover who she really is. The choice will no doubt throw Skellen’s plans into disarray.
The Terrible Intro And Erasure Of Henry Cavill
At last, we come to the beginning. The season opens with an old man, the storyteller Striborg (Clive Russell) telling a group of children about Geralt’s adventures. He’s told by one of the girls that he’s telling the story all wrong. This is Nimue, who returns all grown up later in the season played by Sha Dessi. Two things about this setup.
First, I just find the whole “let me tell you a story about the characters in this story” kind of goofy. It works in a movie like The Princess Bride because it’s a grandpa telling his grandson an actual fairy tale. Here, it just feels forced. But that’s a small quibble as far as they go.
Far worse is the erasure of Henry Cavill from the earlier seasons. The beginning of Season 4 starts off with many of the scenes from earlier in the show with Hemsworth now in those moments and Cavill gone entirely. It reminds me a bit of James Gunn replacing the Justice League with the Justice Gang in the recap at the beginning of Peacemaker Season 2, but that was funny and this rubs me the wrong way. In the actual recap for the previous seasons of The Witcher, they don’t even show Cavill’s face.
Is it malicious or just an attempt to smooth the transition? It’s hard to say, though if you go to the credits on Netflix’s homepage for the show, you see Cavill has been put at the very, very end of the cast list:
The Witcher cast
Screenshot: Erik Kain
This really set the tone for me in Episode 1, and I was feeling pretty unhappy with the show for the first few episodes. It wasn’t until about Episode 4 that I found myself actually enjoying this season. The second half is much, much better than the first. The season feels more coherent and more fun than Season 2 and 3. The new characters (other than the Rats, of course) are great. But then we must turn to the Witcher himself, to Sir Geralt of Rivia, and his new face.
Liam Hemsworth As Geralt Of Rivia
The Witcher
Credit: Netflix
The truth is, by the end of Season 4 I had accepted Hemsworth as Geralt – but he is simply not as good as Cavill in this role. I found his manner of speech odd and at times hard to understand. This is worse in the beginning, though perhaps it’s just a matter of getting used to it that made it less noticeable by the end.
Geralt is also so different in Season 4, that it can feel quite jarring. He’s more emotional, less curt, softer in a way. He’s a nice guy, at least half the time. It’s just a very different version of Geralt. I won’t say it’s bad, but it feels off. Maybe it wouldn’t have if Hemsworth had been in the role from the start.
Hemsworth mostly does fine other than some hard-to-distinguish words and a somewhat inconsistent accent. But he had impossible shoes to fill and I will give him credit for trying his best. Some of it is not his fault, of course. Some of it is the uneven writing.
Still, by the end I found myself not really noticing the change all that much. By the time the hanza was fully formed and Geralt and Cahir’s tension was thawing and we’d gotten to know Zoltan and the others better, I wasn’t really paying attention to New Geralt anymore. I still wish this had been Cavill, but overall the transition worked better than I thought it would be, and my concerns in the first few episodes melted away by the end.
The season as a whole was, like every other season of The Witcher, a mixed bag. Better than the second or third season, but not as good as the first. Perhaps more fun than the first, however, at least in the Geralt portions. The addition of some compelling villains – Bonhart, Vilgefortz out in the open, Emhyr and his genuinely gross plot to marry his daughter and produce an heir, and whatever monster he has found to hunt down Geralt – certainly gives the show more momentum.
All told, while I’m not fully onboard with The Witcher at this point, it’s certainly not as bad as other big fantasy series out there like Amazon’s dreadful Rings Of Power. I suppose it’s a bit like The Wheel Of Time’s third season, which was a huge step forward for that series just in time to get cancelled so that Rings Of Power could continue. And it’s nowhere near as bad as Disney’s Willow show.
After how bad Season 3 was, I was fully expecting to hate Season 4, but I didn’t. In fact, I encouraged my colleague, Paul Tassi, to keep watching when he told me he was giving up. If nothing else, Bonhart killing the Rats in such spectacular fashion was worth the price of entry all by itself.
But the really sad thing is, the good stuff this season just made me realize how much potential this show had. It could have been great, had they simply stuck to the source material (or written new stories like the games did, but stayed true to the characters and world), had they had a more coherent vision for what they wanted The Witcher to be from the beginning, had they taken more care in casting and writing . . . this could have been so amazing. That’s how Season 3 of Wheel of Time made me feel as well. What might have been! What should have been.
In the immortal words of Geralt of Rivia, the White Wolf, “Hmmm.”