The Witcher season 3: all the news on Henry Cavill’s final days as Geralt

We’re approaching the end of an era for Netflix’s adaptation of The Witcher. When the final episodes of season 3 drop on July 27th, it will mark the conclusion of Henry Cavill’s run as Geralt of Rivia, with Liam Hemsworth taking over the role for subsequent seasons.

In a new trailer, Netflix shows what fans can expect in those last episodes — and it looks like a big, bloody war. At one point, Geralt’s sword shatters in battle, suggesting his new big bad enemy is a tough one, and the trailer ends with him saying, “There’s no coming back from this.” Now that’s ominous.

As The Witcher has grown beyond its first season and expanded with not only multiple seasons but prequels, too, the team behind its visual design has had to expand its ambitions as well. In particular, it’s had to think a lot about the history of the world and how it influenced the way things like fashion and architecture evolved on the Continent. That could be as simple as the material utilized to make swords in one time period or as large as a ruin in the main timeline that was once a beautiful structure in the past.

For Andrew Laws, a production and concept designer on the series, all of those details are vital for making The Witcher universe feel like a real, lived-in place. “A lot of the time, you don’t get to see all of [the details],” he explains. “But I think it has an effect on the eventual outcome of the final product.”

We’ve only had two seasons of The Witcher on Netflix, but the show has already had somewhat of an identity crisis. It started off with a bang, with a big, bloody debut that showed exactly why the books and games before it were so beloved. It was dark yet funny, full of action, sexual tension, and all kinds of cool monsters — plus an excellent Henry Cavill as the gruff and lovable Geralt of Rivia. Season 2, meanwhile, lost some of that personality as it attempted to tell a more grand — and typical — fantasy story while also deviating significantly from the books. Things got even more off-track with the prequel Blood Origin.

Now we have season 3, which is being split into two volumes and which will mark the end of Cavill’s run as Geralt (the show will continue with Liam Hemsworth in the lead role). The first volume doesn’t exactly get away from the epic story the show is trying to tell — there are still warring factions and magical forces and questions about the nature of the world itself — but it returns most of the focus where it belongs: on the main cast of Geralt, Ciri, and Yennefer. More importantly, the show is fun again, where the big narrative beats don’t get in the way of all the blood and jokes.

A trend seems to be brewing over at Netflix. After popularizing the binge-watch concept by releasing all episodes of a show at once, lately, the company has been experimenting with different ways of dropping series. The League of Legends spinoff Arcane, for instance, was turned into a three-week-long event, while Stranger Things 4 was split into two when it debuted last May.

Now we have The Witcher season 3: volume one will premiere this week, on June 29th, while the second will hit in July.

Despite the name, Summer Game Fest isn’t entirely about games — case in point, we got a brand-new trailer for The Witcher’s third season. The clip shows off just about everything the series is known for: bloody battles, terrifying monsters, fiery magic, and Geralt looking very awkward at a social affair. And, of course, he spends lots of time talking about how neutral he is.

Season 3 of The Witcher starts streaming on Netflix on June 29th — or at least, some of it does. Just like Stranger Things before it, the latest season of the fantasy show will be split into two parts. Volume one will debut in June, while the second volume will premiere in July.

Season 3 of The Witcher finally has a premiere date. Netflix announced that the fantasy series will return in June, though not all episodes will be available at once.

Similar to how Stranger Things 4 was split in two halves, The Witcher’s third season will be released in two batches: episodes 1-5 will start streaming on June 29th, while 6-8 will be available on July 27th. The third season was previously pegged for a summer 2023 timeframe. We also got a first look at the season via a brief minute-long teaser trailer.

When Netflix announced during last year’s Tudum that a third season of The Witcher was already on the way, there was some hope that maybe, just maybe Henry Cavill’s Geralt of Rivia would be back on our screens slaying demons in time for the upcoming holiday season. Unfortunately, that’s not going to be the case, and there’s going to be a bit of a wait, but not an especially long one.

While there was no new footage from The Witcher’s third season shown at this year’s Tudum presentation, Cavill and co-stars Anya Chalotra, and Freya Allan a made brief appearances to share some teaser art and to announce that the series will return in 2023.