The Witcher Fans Petition Netflix Following Henry Cavill News
Over the weekend, Netflix announced that following Season 3 Henry Cavill was stepping away from the role of Geralt of Rivia, the protagonist of The Witcher. Starting with Season 4, the character will be played by Liam Hemsworth. As you would expect, fans were shocked by the news when it was initially announced and since then this shock has evolved into anger and disappointment. To this end, fans have created a petition on Change.org to bring Cavill back and instead fire the writers of the show. The petition has achieved nearly 20,000 signatures in just three days.
As you may know, Henry Cavill is loved by fans of the show not only because he does an excellent job portraying the monster hunter, but because he's passionate about the source material. While fans have had nothing but nice things to say about Cavill as Geralt, one of the running criticisms of the show has been its writing, which many believe is inconsistent and not always as faithful to the source material as it could be.
"Henry isn't leaving The Witcher because of Superman, Netflix executives have once again made a grave decision against delivering for their fans," reads the petion. The reason why The Witcher is such a popular show is the fans' love of the source material of books and games, that are hated by and have actively been mocked by the writers and showrunner. Henry Cavill is one of those big fans, he knows all of it inside out and wanted to stay true to Sapkowski's world, which is why Netflix wants to replace him.
The petition continues: "Let us show them in pure numbers (and thus lost money, because that's all they really care about) that none of us Witcher fans will stand with them and will abandon the show (and potentially our subscriptions) after The Witcher season 3 is concluded. We already had to suffer through the disaster that was the end of Game of Thrones – NETFLIX don't repeat the exact same mistake of holding onto writers and showrunners that believe themselves to be superior to the actual creator of the stories that made them successful."
Of course, there's no chance this petition will bring back Cavill and it's unlikely to influence the writer's room of the show, but it does perhaps preview life for the show without Geralt, which may not be very long-lived.