In a stunning turn of events that’s reverberating through the halls of Hollywood fantasy, Netflix has severed ties with Liam Hemsworth, the embattled actor set to star in the final seasons of The Witcher as the iconic Geralt of Rivia. The decision, confirmed Wednesday night by multiple sources close to the production, comes amid a torrent of negative fan backlash that has plagued Hemsworth since his 2022 casting announcement. What began as murmurs of discontent has escalated into a full-throated roar, threatening to derail the streaming giant’s ambitious adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski’s beloved book series.
The catalyst? A new wave of vitriol unleashed by the October 30 premiere of The Witcher Season 4, Hemsworth’s debut in the boots of the white-wigged witcher. Trailers and previews featuring the Australian star, known for his appearances in
The Hunger Games and Extraction —it sparked immediate backlash. Fans, still mourning Henry Cavill’s abrupt departure in 2022 after three seasons, flooded social media with memes, petitions, and outright boycotts. “It’s like watching a high school drama kid dress up as Cavill,” lamented one viral post from X, racking up thousands of retweets. Another joked, “When mom says we have too much Henry in the house,” underscoring the strange valley of Hemsworth’s performance: visually passable, but lacking the grave gravitas that made Cavill’s Geralt a haunting legend.
The backlash didn’t start yesterday. From the moment Netflix announced Hemsworth as Cavill’s replacement, the internet erupted. Cavill, a die-hard fan of the books and games who once lobbied for the role with handcrafted prop swords, had become synonymous with Geralt. His departure, officially attributed to scheduling conflicts but rumored to be due to creative clashes with showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, left a void that fans felt was impossible to fill. Polls on Reddit’s r/witcher subreddit showed that 66% of respondents felt Hemsworth was “not right for Geralt,” a sentiment hardened after years of leaked set pieces and scant footage. Hemsworth himself admitted in an Entertainment Weekly interview in September that the hate kept him offline for most of 2024: “It started to become a distraction. I jumped off social media and the internet… I just don’t want any of that to affect how I tell the story.”
But stories, it seems, come at a price. Experts reveal that Netflix’s internal reckoning reached a fever pitch after the release of season 4. Viewership figures, once a juggernaut that propelled The Witcher to the top of global charts with over 20 million hours in its premiere week, plummeted compared to the split release of season 3. That’s not just a drop; it’s financial bloodshed. The series, with a budget of $500 million across five seasons, has been a mixed bag for the streamer: critically divisive for its loose adherence to the source material, but commercially viable thanks to Cavill’s star power. The Hemsworth era? A different beast altogether. Early metrics show a 35% drop in engagement in the US, and international markets like Poland and the UK are faring even worse, where Sapkowski’s homeland considers the adaptation a cultural failure.
Quietly, Netflix convened an emergency executive meeting last week at its Los Angeles headquarters. The agenda: Hemsworth’s image, now a lightning rod for the show’s problems. “They lost more than $20 million in projected advertising revenue and subscriptions tied to the ad cycle,” a production source, speaking on condition of anonymity, confided to this reporter. “It wasn’t just the numbers; it was the narrative. Every thought, every TikTok rant, presented Liam as the villain in Geralt’s story. The ‘Geralt brand’—that brooding, studious monster hunter beloved by fans—is bleeding goodwill.”
The internal memo, leaked to Variety, was blunt: reassess the talent lineup to save the franchise’s legacy. Netflix, ever the data-driven giant, crunched the backlash through sentiment analysis tools, revealing a toxic feedback loop. Positive buzz surrounding co-stars like Anya Chalotra (Yennefer) and Freya Allan (Ciri) was drowned out by the hate for Hemsworth. Even sympathetic voices, like Allan’s comment to Collider in 2024—”I feel for him; it’s not an ideal situation”—couldn’t stem the tide. Showrunner Hissrich, who once championed Hemsworth’s “quiet strength” as a suitable measure of Geralt’s loyalty, now faces her own scrutiny. Critics argue that her vision, steeped in modern themes of destiny and diversity, alienated purists long before the reboot, but Hemsworth became the scapegoat.
So what’s next for the White Wolf? Netflix is considering a quick turnaround for the fifth season, the planned finale. Rumors point to a shortlist of replacements: rising stars like Aaron Taylor-Johnson, whose intense energy in
Kraven the Hunter echoes Cavill’s advantage, or even a curveball like Tom Hardy, fresh off Venom acclaim. “They’re considering anyone who can ‘save the Geralt brand,’” the source added. “It’s about injecting fresh energy without a complete reboot; that would cost another fortune and risk killing the IP altogether.” Production on the latter half is indefinitely halted, with reshoots planned to remove Hemsworth’s scenes if a deal is quickly struck.
Hemsworth, for his part, remains stoic. In a brief statement through his representatives, he expressed “disappointment but gratitude for the opportunity,” hinting at upcoming projects such as the thriller * Fool’s Paradise *.
However, the pain is palpable; this isn’t just a missed gig: it’s a public beating that echoes the dangers of fan-driven casting wars. Star Wars ‘ Kelly Marie Tran’s harassment
The last of us , Pedro Pascal, doubts, Hollywood has learned the hard way: loyalty is not bought; it is earned in the arena.
For Netflix, the stakes are existential. The Witcher was destined to be their
Game of Thrones —a sprawling epic poised to anchor the post- Stranger Things fantasy genre —is more of a cautionary tale about hubris: ignore your audience at your own peril. As one executive reportedly joked in that closed-door meeting, “We built a monster, and now it’s hunting us.” With the corpse of season 4 still fresh on the ratings charts, the streamer is scrambling to resurrect Geralt before the Continent crumbles. Will a fresh face reignite the magic, or has the witcher’s curse claimed another victim? Only the data (and the fans) will tell.
