I'm not, and never have been, a fan of Henry Cavill. It's nothing against him, more just a lack of interest on my part; there's other actors who have just really impressed me. Am I still sad he's leaving Netflix's Witcher, though?
Yeah. Over the almost-year that I've been a Witcher fan, I saw how much he loves the story and I learned how hard he fought to get the role. I respected him for fighting as much as he could to keep the show faithful to the books (and I'm not saying a show adaptation has to be 100% 1:1 faithful to the books; Lord of the Rings, Good Omens, and The Sandman are all adaptations I love). I know he said that he'd stay as long as the show was respectful of the books.
And now he's leaving. That's why I'm disappointed. To have someone who fought so hard for a project, and fought for it to be good, walk away because at least some of the Powers That Be hated the source material they were adapting? That's harsh, if it's indeed true (I'm skeptical of the scheduling conflict claim).
I'm also concerned what this means about the quality of S3 and S4. How bad will they be that Henry decided to jump ship? (Again, of that's the real reason he left, which seems possible.)
But I'm still grateful for the show. I hadn't heard of The Witcher until after S2 dropped and it felt like almost every post on my Tumblr dashboard was about this show (and, often, about Geralt/Jaskier, tbh). Sometime in January 2022, I caved and decided to binge the first two seasons.
Knowing nothing about the source material, I liked it, even if S1 was a bit confusing and it did at times feel like a Generic Fantasy Show designed to be the next Game of Thrones.
At some point, I heard of the games and the books. I'm not really a gamer but I might try them eventually. I was curious about the books, though, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to read them because I'd heard they could be a bit misogynistic and there were racist fans who were upset over casting people of color.
Eventually, I gave the books a shot and I was hooked almost immediately. It was a struggle to put the books down once I started reading and I think I finished each one in about a weekend. It's not that I don't have issues with the books (so glad Jaskier respects women in the show!) but I loved the characters, how they're more than their appearances might suggest, found family, the themes in general, the deconstruction of fantasy tropes, and the humor. The books reignited my love of reading in a way that nothing had since I first read Good Omens, just before the first season aired.
Before I began reading the books, though, when I was browsing Tumblr re: The Witcher, I kept hearing about this band, The Amazing Devil. Slightly more accurately, I kept seeing parts of their lyrics as fic titles on AO3, usually credited but sometimes not (maybe taken for granted that readers would know). It got to the point that I could guess the title was from a TAD song without having heard them because there was something unique about their lyrics. I kept seeing the band be recommended, that it was just so good. I gave the band a try and fell in love.
So, even if the show spontaneously combusts and ends in a burning wreck, I'll still be grateful for it, because it introduced me to this universe and to The Amazing Devil. I'll still have the books, I might eventually play the games, and I'll listen to whatever TAD graces the world with. And I'll be even more grateful for adaptations that actually care about the source material (which broadly refers to Lord of the Rings and the Neil Gaiman Cinematic Universe).
