Liam Hemsworth is Geralt now. It was a whole three years ago that Netflix announced Hemsworth would be taking over for Henry Cavill in the lead role of its Witcher series. Since then we've been waiting to see where his performance would land on a scale from total trainwreck to "okay, I guess," which really felt like the best we could hope for from a major recast four seasons deep. Credit to Hemsworth, his performance is indeed: Fine. As if by design, the season's writing stuffs Geralt behind the rest of his adventuring party where he can't commit the sin of being memorable, even for being great, however unlikely that would have been.
The Witcher season 4 begins with a set of flashbacks recapping the series so far, sliding Hemsworth into retellings of old scenes as if he'd been there all along. It's a weird first gambit—Netflix attempting to swap the dead goldfish on us even though we've known this was coming for years. It was initially a bit uncanny as I kept trying to peer through the white wig, yellow eyes, grizzled stubble, and superhero silhouette to remember that yeah, that sure is a similar but different buff Hollywood guy.
