By Filming is underway for Netflix’s The Witcher Season 4, with about a quarter of the season’s eight episodes already completed. Henry Cavill has passed Geralt’s silver and steel swords to Liam Hemsworth, and costars Anya Chalotra and Freya Allan have returned, but Season 4 will also introduce several exciting new characters. Leading the roster of new cast members is Laurence Fishburne, whose extensive Hollywood career includes many iconic franchises such as Matrix, Ant-Man, and Hannibal.
Fishburne is set to portray one of the most iconic and beloved supporting characters in the novels and The Witcher III: The Wild Hunt‘s acclaimed Blood and Wine expansion, barber, surgeon, vampire: Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy, better known as Regis. We’ve been anxiously waiting for a glimpse at Fishburne on the set of The Witcher, wearing his Regis costume – and now we have it.
First photo of Laurence Fishburne as Regis filming at a refugee camp
Our first look at Laurence Fishburne’s Regis comes courtesy of photographer UnboxPHD. We see Fishburne in a wig and his Regis costume, red boots as well as his sideburns. A previous onlooker told us that Meng’er Zhang’s Milva was seen with a big bald man last week, but evidently it wasn’t Regis.
Though their photos have not been taken here, we have reason to believe that Fishburne’s Regis is not alone, and is in fact joined by a rag-tag group of determined warriors led by Liam Hemsworth‘s witcher Geralt. We are of course talking about a group that will eventually bear the name “The Hansa”, or “Geralt’s Hansa”.
How do we know they are involved? Well, their horses were parked on set, including new cast member Pinocchio, the latest in a line of recastings for the show’s most important character: Roach.
These pictures were taken at Waverley Abbey, a beautiful ruin not far from London. As we previously reported, The Witcher‘s crew has been hard at work building a large encampment near the ruins. We can now tell that this encampment is a refugee camp, filled with people who’ve fled the war between Nilfgaard and the Northern Kingdoms. This war erupted at the end of The Witcher‘s third season, and we will be in the thick of it throughout Season 4.
Now if you’re wondering what Geralt’s Hansa are doing in a refugee camp, we can only speculate. Fortunately, with some insights from Andrzej Sapkowski’s novel Baptism of Fire, which serves as the source material of Geralt’s story in Season 4, we can make an educated guess.
During the Hansa’s travels early in the novel, in Chapter 4, they come across a large refugee camp where a woman is being accused of witchcraft by a priest. With the threat of burning the woman at the stake, Geralt’s Hansa come to the rescue in an iconic Regis scene which reveals his true nature and also quotes the title of the novel.
Fittingly, our first look at Regis may have been photographed during the filming of what is arguably his most iconic scene.
Take a look at the rest of the photos in the gallery below:
Besides Geralt and Regis (and Roach), who else is part of the Hansa? Two characters have formally joined this group at the end of Season 3: Geralt’s best friend and accomplished bard Jaskier portrayed by Joey Batey, and Meng’her Zhang‘s formidable archer Milva.
Besides Fishburne’s Regis, at least one more character will join the Hansa in Season 4, and his identity may surprise you if you have not read the books: Eamon Farren‘s Nilfgaardian General Cahir. Eventually, The Witcher is expected to cast the Hansa’s final member, a fierce young lady called Angouleme, but if she’s included in Season 4, it will likely be in a later episode.
In the books, the Hansa was joined by a company of dwarves, one gnome, and a talking parrot. Leading the company was dwarven warrior Zoltan Chivay who will be portrayed by Danny Woodburn in Season 4. The most notable member of Zoltan’s company, the gnome Percival Schuttenbach, has also been cast and will be portrayed by Linden Porco. Given their involvement in the refugee camp sequence in the books, it’s likely they were also on set for filming.
According to Waverley Abbey’s English Heritage page, the ruins will be closed to visitors until July 12. Though we do not know if The Witcher‘s crew will remain there for this entire period, filming in Waverley Abbey is set to continue at least for a few more days. Hopefully, this means we can get a good look at some of these other characters.
The Witcher Season 4 is in production for a 2025 release. Andrzej Sapkowski’s new Witcher book has a planned Winter 2024/2025 release with The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep anime set for a late 2024 release as well.
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