Henry Cavill bids farewell to The Witcher co-stars, who worked to ensure characters not "oversimplified"

Henry Cavill has praised his co-stars on The Witcher, complimenting their work bringing characters to life that could otherwise have been "oversimplified".

Cavill was speaking at Netflix's Global Fan Event, Tudum over the weekend. There, the actor was joined on stage by fellow Witcher stars Freya Allan, Anya Chalotra, and Joey Batey to discuss the show's upcoming third season, which will apparently feature "a very shocking death". Also, those of us who have not read the books are going to be "blown away" by season three's "big bad".

But, of course, what most people wanted to hear about was Cavill's departure from the show, something he announced towards the end of last year.

Cavill addressed his departure by moving the spotlight onto his co-stars.

"It was such a pleasure and an honour to be working with you guys," he said to his fellow actors on-stage. "You guys bring so much nuance and detail to these characters, which are often at risk of being oversimplified, and what you guys have done with the characters has involved work, care, and effort.

"And believe me, working with you guys was the biggest pleasure. So, [I] just want to say I'm gonna miss you. I'm gonna miss you very much."

While Cavill has not spoken further about his decision to step back from the role of Geralt, many have surmised he was not happy with the direction the show was going, with the production team drifting too far from the literary source material.

In the past, the actor has openly expressed his desire to make his version of Geralt as true to the books as possible, while his co-star Freya Allan, who plays Ciri, has referred to him as a "Witcher bible".

In an interview with Fortress of Solitude ahead of the show's second season, Allan explained: "We'll be doing a scene and [Cavill will] be like 'I think we should use this line from page 253 of Blood of Elves,' and I'm like how does this dude know all this stuff?"

Cavill and his fellow actors did not elaborate further on the actor's impending departure, and instead went on to introduce an exclusive clip from The Witcher's third season, which you can see in the video above.

As for The Witcher's future, Geralt of Rivia will next be played by Liam Hemsworth, most famous for starring as Gale Hawthorne in The Hunger Games movie series.

Meanwhile, Netflix has been doing what it can to reassure fans that, while this will clearly be a change for the series, this recasting will also bring a "different energy" to the show. The company has additionally promised Cavill will have a "heroic sendoff" at the close of season three, in anticipation of Hemsworth's debut.

"Geralt's big turn is about giving up neutrality and doing anything that he has to do to get to Ciri. And to me, it's the most heroic sendoff that we could have, even though it wasn't written to be that," showrunner Lauren Hissrich reflected last year when discussing The Witcher's third season. "Geralt has a new mission in mind when we come back to him in season four. He's a slightly different Geralt than we expected."

Acknowledging the irony of her words, Hissrich closed by stating: "by the way, that's an understatement."