The Witcher showrunner reveals how Season 4 finale will have consequences for the final season

The Witcher Season 4, despite being subject to a lot of criticism, has provided a decent continuation point for the fifth and final season of the fantasy series. While the season did not end on a victorious note for most of the main characters, it did set up a continuous flow for their growth in the final season.

In a recent conversation with Variety, showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich reveals that the decision not to end on a higher note for the characters was a conscious decision made. This was done owing to the fact that the last two seasons were being created back-to-back, so they are serving as one big season, which has been split into two smaller ones.

Therefore, for our main characters, the comparatively lower points we see them on in The Witcher Season 4 finale will have much larger consequences in the final season.

Keep reading to know more about how the season 4 finale will affect The Witcher Season 5.

The Witcher showrunner on how Season 4 will impact the final season

By the end of The Witcher Season 4, which is in many ways a breakdown before the rebuild, Yennefer, Ciri, and Geralt are all in critical moments of their lives. This stands in contrast with the usual season finales, where the major characters have somewhat victorious or just higher moments by the end.

This, it turns out, was a conscious decision from the creatives behind the show, who were aiming to throw these characters into the darkest pits imaginable. All of this so that they can be redeemed in the final season of The Witcher, as explained by Hissrich:

"We made a really conscious decision to not end this season on the characters’ higher moments. When we’re doing Seasons 4 and 5 back to back, in some ways it feels like one big season that we split. It really is one long journey back toward each other. We thought it would be interesting, as we’re chugging toward the end, to put all of our characters in the darkest places imaginable because we know that some redemption is going to come."

At the end of the season, Yennefer finds herself tossed into the middle of a sea and a raging storm after going through a portal to hunt Vilgefortz. Geralt has been officially crowned as a knight, making him the Geralt of Rivia (now officially), but it leaves him wondering, was his dream now just a chain binding him to servitude? Because the knighthood now prevents him from leaving Rivia and getting back on his journey to find Ciri. To top it all off, Emhyr gives a monster Geralt's brooch to hunt him down and kill him once and for all.

Ciri, on the other hand, has the most tragic fate of them all, as she finds the bounty hunter Leo Bonhart having killed all of The Rats one by one. He even forces her to watch as he beheads each of them and then takes her into captivity. Hissrich explains that Ciri has been struggling throughout The Witcher with the idea that death follows everywhere she goes, cementing her decision to leave her family behind.

Her tragic fate in The Witcher Season 4's finale is her deepest, darkest fears realized in a physical form, so the fifth season will force her to deal with them without pushing them away:

"This is going to be Ciri letting go and touching those deepest, darkest places within herself that she’s always pushed away. She’s said several times across the series that she worries that there’s something wrong with her. She worries that death follows her, that she is a monster inside. Once she deals with the heartbreak and loss of the Rats, we get to see her start to access that for a while.

Therefore, the final season will be, in more ways than one, a metamorphosis, especially for Ciri. Her experiences at the end of the season have brought to life her inner rage and the loss of her innocence, but she will be forced to harness it in the final season. Hissrich concludes with an elegant explanation, surmising:

"It’s her baptism of fire that needs to happen before she can be redeemed."

The Witcher Season 5 was written back-to-back with Season 4 and, according to reports, has already wrapped up filming, so the final season can be expected as soon as late 2026. The final season is set to adapt The Tower of the Swallow and parts of The Lady of the Lake.

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