“We’ve been working together on this for seven years, and by the time post-production wraps on season five, I’ll have been working on The Witcher for nine years”, showrunner Lauren Hissrich Schmidt told Zavvi. “I expected it to feel very sad, but instead, it feels very celebratory, even if going into the final season, you’ll be feeling a sense of unrelenting desperation with the characters...”
Long before we arrive there, the fourth season acts as something of a reset for the series, not just through Liam Hemsworth replacing Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia, but through a storyline that sees the three leads separated for most of the season. Geralt and Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) are both on separate missions on disparate sides of the continent to try and rescue Ciri (Freya Allan) following the events of season three, with both forging new alliances and leading new teams in the rescue.
Geralt’s “Rebirth”
It’s a plot that forces Geralt into an even more reluctant position of authority than usual, which Schmidt thinks is the perfect complement to Hemsworth’s arrival – the character transforming alongside the actor playing him.
“We always knew that Geralt was going to have a rebirth this season, and we knew this story would lend itself nicely to shedding a new light on him. The book we’re adapting this time is literally titled Baptism of Fire, so we always knew that we’d be going through that fire and letting him get born again.
“It was perfect timing for Liam to join the cast and delve into this role because he gets to show this breadth of vulnerability and an emotional side; he really starts to open up to the people around him in a way we've never seen before. We got to take Liam's skills and add them to this story that was already in process in a way which felt organic.”
Geralt is joined by best friend Jaskier (Joey Batey) on the quest, and although the characters couldn’t be less alike, their chemistry remains key to the show’s heart. In a show which has often tackled the theme of found family – and in this season, that’s true more than ever – it was crucial to maintain that lived-in brotherly dynamic.
“We clicked within the first hour of rehearsals and spent most of that time trying to make each other laugh”, Batey told Zavvi. “Throughout the shoots, we were leaning on each other – we developed a telepathy where we’d be able to notice if we were having a bad day, or if something was wrong, or even if we just found something funny we didn’t want to broadcast with the rest of the group!
“We immediately hit it off, but more importantly, Liam brought nothing but dedication and commitment. He had a real quiet leadership on set, which meant that everyone had no choice but to immediately fall in love with him.”
A Musical Episode?
Jaskier has had many memorable songs throughout the series, but a flashback scene at this season’s midpoint gives him a full-blown musical origin story. Batey’s character has been put through the ringer so much that it’s a surprise to hear that this was the most challenging thing he’s ever had to shoot.
“It was gruelling; I didn’t get to enjoy it as much as I would have liked because I was already injured, and I was spending three-or four-days shooting this seven-minute sequence. Lauren loves putting me through the ringer, she’s done it every day on set since 2018, and on one of the first filming days this time she came up to me singing “I’ve got a surprise for you...” - hearing that, my heart sank, what could she possibly want now?”
Schmidt laughs that this “torture with love” was necessary to create one of Jaskier’s best scenes in the series to date.
“I can’t wait for Joey to see it completed, there’s such joy in it, you don’t see any of the torture he’s talking about! He was pelted with rain for days and was shooting this outside of our normal schedule – he'd be filming dramatic scenes with other characters before going back to singing and dancing, it was an intense shoot for him.
“When we first started, I think Jaskier was pigeonholed as the comic relief to Geralt, but as we’ve gone along, we’ve found so much more to uncover with these richer, human stories. It’s just meant putting Joey through a lot more s**t!”
Ciri and the Rats
Elsewhere in the Witcher universe, Ciri has shaken off her princess status and gone into hiding with the Rats, the criminal gang she joined at the end of the previous season. Showrunner Schmidt has said that this gives the teen royal a relatively “normal” coming-of-age storyline, although Allan disagrees with that assessment.
She told Zavvi: “I could never call Ciri normal, but I do understand it in a sense; the Rats don’t know who she is, or that she’s a princess, so she’s not got the same expectations she usually would. Within this group, she’s taken on a new name, and has finally got a chance to be whoever she wants to be, finding out who she is without the expectation of other people trying to take something from her.
“In a sense, she is finally experiencing true freedom, if only for a moment, able to let loose even if it’s just for a short while.”
Ciri’s true identity does naturally become a point of contention within the group, but not before she’s already taken on a crucial role. If the other plotlines this season put the concept of found family under a positive light, this one is far more critical of those relationships, questioning just how close a bond can be built when it’s purely out of necessity.
Allan explained: “With the Rats, we wanted to make sure that each member was completely individual; we were never playing these roles as part of a group, but as individuals who have banded together. There’s war in the continent, and usually when you see this in fantasy movies, it results in unlikely groups of people coming together to fight – but it’s never questioned that they’re not perfectly matched, just because there’s a comfort in seeing characters sharing that commonality of what they’re going through.”
Yennefer and the Lodge
Yennefer’s quest to find Ciri sees her form a new group, The Lodge, comprised of female mages from across the continent. It’s a moment of growth for the sorceress, finally becoming the leader she’s always dreamed of – only it’s happening immediately after the tragedy of losing her mother in season 3, when her dreams of power have diminished.
Chalotra told Zavvi: “She’s always wanted to be a leader, which has made her even more isolated than she would have been. Now she’s arrived at the stage where she doesn’t want or need that, she’s had to naturally take on that position out of necessity; she has no choice but to offer what she knows and cares about, in the hope of inspiring others to fight alongside her.
“The thing I love about this season is seeing those unlikely connections develop. Everybody’s in an uncomfortable position of having to give themselves to a new group in a way they never have in the past, possibly never even wanted to, in a way that’s necessary for their ultimate goals – it's important for Yennefer to be inspired by new minds if she wants to find her daughter and make the continent safe for her.”
As for how this leads into the already-shot season five? Well, there won’t be any spoilers here, but rest assured, Allan hopes you’ll be left “devastated” heading into that final run.
“We’re still in the emotional cleansing stage, we’ve had so little time to process since we wrapped”, she concluded. “And I’ve been fine, up until the most random moments when it hits me that this is really over, and I feel like bursting into tears...”
The Witcher Season 4 is now streaming on Netflix.
