Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/Netflix
As The Witcher’s third season draws to a close, and we bid farewell to Henry Cavill’s Geralt of Rivia, many viewers have asked how the show will survive without its star. Through three seasons, Cavill’s evident passion for The Witcher has kept Netflix’s dark fantasy afloat, which made his decision to leave the show after Season 3 troubling for fans. Much of the proceeding discourse has centered on his replacement, Liam Hemsworth. But forgotten in that discussion is that the fate of the show should perhaps rest not on Geralt at all, but on the same shoulders as the Continent: Freya Allan’s Cirilla of Cintra.
The Witcher isn’t exactly a subtle show, least of all in its desperation to appear clever. From the frustrating time-hopping of the show’s first season to Season 3’s needlessly convoluted midseason finale, “The Art of the Illusion,” attempts to brute force narrative sleight-of-hand into The Witcher have invariably fallen flat. Bringing Freya Allan into the lead, however, would represent a rare smart move for the series—one that makes sense not just from a narrative perspective, but also to honor the show’s source material. We’ve had hints that The Witcher is heading in this direction, with Allan leading portions of Season 2 and Time of Contempt, the second novel in author Andrzej Sapkowiski’s Witcher series, being so pivotal to Season 3. Even series producer Tomek Baginski has acknowledged Ciri’s increased importance, telling Yahoo! News in the lead up to season 3 that Time of Contempt is “the book where Ciri—let’s be blunt about this—becomes the main character of the saga.”
The sense that Season 3 would see Allan step up to lead in preparation for Cavill’s exit hasn’t quite come to pass, however. The season maintained a rare fidelity to the structure of Time of Contempt, barring a few odd changes. But too often, the show pushed Ciri and Geralt into the background in favor of the lengthy political machinations of Nilffgaard and Redania. While this plot was found in the book, it hasn’t translated well to screen. Meanwhile, the show has also wasted time trying to recapture the magic of Season 1’s earworm “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher,” hitting us with so many songs in lieu of story progression.