The Witcher: Oof, nearly 300k fans sign petition to keep Cavill, fire the writers

I don’t know about you, but I’m yet to encounter a single Witcher fan who’s actually happy about Henry Cavill being replaced by Liam Hemsworth in the Netflix show. Ever since the star’s departure was announced, viewers have been up in arms begging for him to stay, with one big petition continuing to gain traction.

This particular petition is a bold one - started on Change.org, its goal is simple: “NETFLIX: You MUST keep Henry Cavill as The Witcher and replace the writers instead”. Since it was created, it’s gained hundreds of thousands of signatures, and at the time of writing, is fast approaching 300K.

Before we get into it, take a look at the trailer for The Witcher: Blood Origin - a new miniseries releasing on 25 December.

It’s genuinely impossible for me to give an exact number of how many signatures it’s on, as it’s going up constantly. At the time of writing though, it’s at over 281K, and with the speed at which new people are continuing to sign, it doesn’t seem like it’ll take long to break the next big target.

Whether or not the petition will actually amount to anything is another matter. The people working on the show seem confident that the change is a good thing. Showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich recently said that she’s “so excited for viewers”, adding that: “I think that it's just a new chapter for us. And I think new chapters bring new energy and that people will find things to love. So yeah, personally, I'm really excited.”

Although fans still haven’t been shown what Hemsworth’s version of Geralt looks like, last month, one talented content creator made a deepfake of the actor to illustrate what the character might look like, and yeah - the show's definitely not going to be the same without Cavill, no matter how talented his replacement is.