News The Witcher The Witcher Season 4 Showrunner Reveals the Reasons Behind Those Surprising Deaths Several characters died in the show who don’t die in the books. By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on November 18, 2025 Credit: Susie Allnut/Netflix Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Susie Allnut/Netflix Warning: this post contains spoilers for season four of The Witcher. It’s no surprise that a lot of people died in season four of The Witcher. A lot of people die in Andrzej Sapkowski’s novels, after all. But some of the deaths in Netflix’s latest episodes were of characters that very much didn’t die in the books, much to fans’ surprise.  Perhaps the biggest unexpected death was of Vesemir, Geralt’s Witcher mentor and father figure. This season saw Peter Mullan playing the character, taking over the role from Kim Bodnia. Showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich recently shared in an Instagram comment (via Redanian Intelligence) the decision for Vesemir’s death, as well as the decision for other deaths, specifically Lodge members Keira Metz (played by Safiyya Ingar) and Margarita Laux-Antille (played by Rochelle Rose). (Istredd, played by Royce Pierrson, was also killed off, presumably for similar reasons.) “The first aspect is actor availability,” she wrote. “Not every actor is available to us exclusively, so sometimes, they’re already committed to another project when we need them. Schedules in TV are the biggest Tetris game EVER — you’re looking at the schedules of all of your actors, your director, location availability, when sets can be ready, etc. It’s actually a wonder anything gets made! Sometimes, we end up killing (or writing off) a character simply because they’re tied up in something else.” Image: Netflix Schmidt Hissrich went on to specifically talk about adding two new Lodge members who don’t show up in the books, and who effectively replaced Keira and Margarita. “For the Lodge, every character is from the books except two: Ximer and Alaina. Ximer was easy: we wanted to show sorceresses from other parts of the Continent, with different magical skills, which we’d never done. In Alaina, we wanted to give Yen a mirror to when she was a novice, so she could recognize some parts of herself but also so she could see how much she’s grown.” Vesemir’s death, however, seems to be more driven by story than logistics, which is not surprising given they went to the effort to recast the role. “I’ve talked a lot about character death that doesn’t occur in the books, as it relates to Vesemir this season. It’s not about the *audience* shock value — it’s about shock value to the *character.* How a death changes a character’s path or motivation — which we know from real life is quite a force.”  She added, circling back to the Lodge deaths, “If we killed characters that Yen has never directly interacted with, for instance, it doesn’t have the same value. It doesn’t push Yen forward in the same way. Killing Margarita is an epic loss for Yen and the Lodge — it changes how Yen behaves for the rest of the episode (and series), it changes the level of vitriol and anger she has. Just how badly she needs Vilgefortz to pay for his crimes — to die.” We’ll see how that all plays out whenever season five makes its way to Netflix sometime in the near(?) future. [end-mark] The post <i>The Witcher</i> Season 4 Showrunner Reveals the Reasons Behind Those Surprising Deaths appeared first on Reactor.