Picture: Netflix
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.
Filming for The Witcher Season 5 started in Cape Town, South Africa, on February 26, 2025. The production flew there to use some of the sets that were made for The Rats: A Witcher’s Tale spinoff. The spinoff and the beginning of Season 5 occur in the same in-universe town.
Normally, production starts back in England at their home HQ of Longcross Studios, but this time they chose to start with location shoots. The production codename this time around is “Complete Chaos”. Filming for The Witcher Season 5 in South Africa took place until March 21, 2025. Let’s recap what was filmed.
Lots of Ciri scenes for The Witcher Season 5 in South Africa
Freya Allan as Ciri in The Witcher Season 4
In short, at the beginning of Season 5, Freya Allan’s Ciri will be forced to fight in a fighting pit that belongs to a crime lord that The Rats also wanted to rob in their spinoff, hence the same town and reused sets. Let’s explain that further.
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.
In addition to that, other outdoor locations were used, including Cederberg’s rocks and caves, and locations around Stellenbosch. Lots of fake corpses were spotted in one of those locations, most involved Freya Allan’s Ciri.
She wasn’t the only one in South Africa, though. Anya Chalotra and Anna Shaffer, who play Yennefer and Triss respectively were also there for a week, the final week. It is being presumed that they’ll have their own subplot in Season 5. Neither Liam Hemsworth’s Geralt, nor his friends weren’t seen in South Africa.
This is only the first month of filming that’s done for The Witcher Season 5. Production for the whole season is expected to last until September 2025 for a 2026 release date. Until then, we’ll have more news, so watch this space.
Netflix has yet to publicly promote that filming has gotten underway on the final season. In fact, they’ve been fairly quiet on all things The Witcher post-Sirens of the Deep, which put in a poor performance in the Netflix top 10s following its launch in February of this year.
Season 4 of The Witcher is due out sometime in 2025.
Rating: TV-MA
