Picture: Netflix
The fourth season of The Witcher was released on Netflix on October 30, 2025, alongside The Rats: A Witcher Tale, a spinoff/special episode that was quietly dropped alongside it without a single official announcement. Now that’s done, we’re ready to look ahead to what’s next —and next up is the end.
The fifth and final season of The Witcher was announced alongside the fourth season in 2024, after the show was rumored to end with Season 5 for about 2 years prior.
Showrunner Lauren Hissrich commented in a press release back then:
“It is with huge pride that we begin shooting our penultimate season of The Witcher with a stellar cast, including some exciting new additions, led by Liam Hemsworth as Geralt of Rivia.
We’re thrilled to be able to bring Andrzej Sapkowski’s books to an epic and satisfying conclusion. It wouldn’t be our show if we didn’t push our family of characters to their absolute limit — stay tuned to see how the story ends.”
Here’s what’s important to know about the fifth and final season of Netflix’s The Witcher.
What happens in The Witcher Season 5?
After the events of The Witcher Season 3 that separated them, our Witcher family of Geralt, Ciri, and Yennefer is on a quest to reunite, and that’s what they spend Season 4 on. By the end of the fourth season, they still haven’t reunited, and Geralt and Yennefer still haven’t found Ciri. That mission continues and concludes with Season 5 when they finally reunite in approximately the second half of the final season, without spoiling too much.
After being officially knighted by the Queen of Lyria and Rivia as Geralt of Rivia, our witcher and his Hansa flee Queen Meve’s ranks and continue their quest, angered by this desertion, the Queen sends her men after the Hansa, and a violent confrontation happens. This all was captured on camera thanks to Redanian Intelligence.
Yennefer‘s ending in The Witcher Season 4 might be purposefully alarming, but don’t fret, our sorceress is perfectly fine. In the beginning of Season 5 she finds herself on the Skellige Isles, that many will be familiar with from CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 3. Some filming photos and some castings confirm her presence there. That brings Yennefer back to her book storyline after spending the vast majority of Season 4 in a completely original arc that has nothing to do with the books.
Ciri ends Season 4 on a brutal note with the bounty hunter Leo Bonhart slaughtering The Rats and taking her prisoner. That’s where the final season picks up for Ciri. She’s brought to Bonhart’s crime boss cousin and forced to fight in a fighting pit. Eventually, in an episode or two, she’ll escape, and her story will continue.
How will The Witcher end?
Showrunner Lauren Hissrich has long promised that The Witcher will have the same ending as the books several years ago:
“I don’t feel the need to go beyond the existing books. They are great source material, Andrzej Sapkowski has written all of them, there is a naturalending to them and I feel like as long as we stick that landing, which is the ending of the books, then we’ll be good.”
More recently, after wrapping Season 5, Hissrich commented on this topic again:
“ We have the ending. And there were certain things – I mean, the books go a little crazy. And I say that with the most deference because I love them. We lean so hardcore into fantasy at the end in wonderful ways that Sapkowski introduced us to. So we knew the stories that we needed to end with.”
What sort of changes will the show make to the ending, and how it will get there despite having some characters and storylines heavily altered, we’ll have to wait and see next year.
Who is among the new cast in The Witcher Season 5?
New cast grid for The Witcher season 5
The Witcher hasn’t officially announced any new actors for Season 5, but thanks to Redanian Intelligence, we know a few names. Emily-Jo Young (Sexy Beast) joins as the fan-favorite character of Shani. Game of Thrones actress Kate Dickie joins as Priestess Sigrdrifa, who will be interacting with Yennefer on Skellige. Liv Andrusier (Les Miserables) joins as Condwiramurs Tilly, a character that’s part of the storyline set a hundred years after the events of the show.
Other new cast members include Naomi Battrick (His Dark Materials) as Meena Coehoorn, Jamie Michie (Baby Reindeer) as Dromgool, Andy Apollo (The Diplomat) as Reynart de Bois-Fresnes, Chike Chan as Milva’s father, and others.
They’ll be joining Geralt (Liam Hemsworth), Ciri (Freya Allan), and Yennefer (Anya Chalotra), who will once again lead proceedings.
What’s the production status of The Witcher Season 5?
Development
Filming Scheduled
Filming Ongoing
Post-Production
Both final seasons of The Witcher were planned to be written and shot back-to-back. The fourth season was filmed from April to October 2024, while the fifth and final season of Netflix’s The Witcher was filmed from March to September 2025, after a few months’ break.
Both final seasons kept mainly to the UK, with only the fifth season filming in South Africa for several weeks in March 2025, including additional photography for The Rats: A Witcher Tale.
As of the time of publishing, the final season is in post-production.
What’s the Netflix release date for The Witcher Season 5?
Netflix hasn’t officially announced the release date for The Witcher Season 5, but given the Season 4 release timeline, which wrapped in October 2024, we can reasonably expect the final season to drop sometime in Fall 2025. Perhaps the same time next year, or fingers crossed, even sooner?
Are you looking forward to the fifth and final season of The Witcher? Let us know in the comments down below.
