November 2018 was when the very first season of The Witcher started filming with Henry Cavill in Budapest, Hungary. Almost seven years later, the fifth and final season has entered production and this is the final ride for the cast now led by Liam Hemsworth.
The Witcher Season 5 enters production in Cape Town
We’ve learned that The Witcher has finally started filming in a rather unexpected location: Cape Town, South Africa. Normally production starts back in England at their home HQ of Longcross Studios, but this time is different. The production codename this time around is “Complete Chaos”. Cape Town sets will be used until mid-March, then back to London.
As far as we know, The Witcher Season 5 is using the town and sets that were made for The Rats spinoff with Freya Allan’s Ciri being there as we speak. But why? That ties into the Rats spinoff as well.
In Netflix’s The Witcher continuity, Dominik Houvenaghel is a crime lord, who has a cousin called Leo Bonhart. The Rats spinoff was meant to be a heist, where the Rats were robbing a powerful crime lord and the town that Season 5 is filming in right now must be where Houvenaghel resides. The town in the show isn’t named, but in the books it’s Ebbing.
Moreover, Houvenaghel owns a fighting pit and after a bloody encounter with Bonhart, Ciri gets captured and is forced to fight in that pit. The encounter between Bonhart and The Rats is in Season 4 and Season 5 seems to be starting with Ciri in Houvenaghel’s fighting pit.
What about the Rats spinoff? Well, last we heard is that Netflix were considering to release it as a feature-length special episode after cutting it down from multiple episodes. It was a rather troubled production, we heard. It even received a title: The Rats: A Witcher’s Tale. Will they release it? We’ll see what happens.
As for the rest of The Witcher cast and crew, they will start filming a little later. Liam Hemsworth only arrived to England last week and will meet the others this week. Mimi Khayisa (Fringilla) previously said that she was starting end of March 2025.
This is it, the final round of The Witcher filming news, speculations, casting reveals until September where it all ends.
The Witcher Season 4 is in post-production for a 2025 release. Andrzej Sapkowski’s new Witcher book Crossroads of Ravens is available in Poland and will be released internationally in September 2025. CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 4 is now in full production.
