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We don’t talk about The Witcher on Netflix as much as we used to—the air’s gone out of it a little bit, I think, although I hold out hope that Liam Hemsworth’s debut in the title role will rejuvenate it—but this is interesting enough to be notable: According to Witcher fan site Redanian Intelligence, actor Jack Myers has been cast in the role of Nilfgaardian count Roderick de Wett.
“Who the hell is Roderick de Wett?” I hear you ask, and fair enough—he’s not exactly a major player on The Witcher scene. But he is apparently the first game-exclusive character to appear in the Netflix series, which is based on Andrzej Sapkowski’s novels and short stories, and not CD Projekt‘s game series. There’s a possible connection with the books—de Wett shares a name with Nilfgaardian prince Joachim de Wett, suggesting a possible familial connection—but Rod himself was entirely an in-game figure.
I say “was” because, without going too deep into spoilers, his tale began and very definitively ended in the original Witcher RPG after he decided to come at the king and missed badly. I really don’t recall much about him beyond a vague sense that he was a through-and-through jerk and that I didn’t feel bad about busting his head open.
His Gwent card description reassures me that I am not wrong in that sensation: “Count de Wett is exceptionally loathsome and arrogant, but at least he enjoys a little dice poker on the side.”
Of course, the likelihood is that de Wett on Netflix will be different from his in-game character. The timeline is complicated but The Order of the Flaming Rose, of which de Wett was a member, wasn’t established until after the events being chronicled in the Netflix series, and so his path to the pointy part of Geralt’s sword remains untaken at that point. I imagine he’ll probably still be a scumbag, but likely of the more general “Nilfgaardian nobility” sort, rather than the “Geralt wants to kill this guy specifically” sort.
As high-profile casting goes, this really isn’t up there with, say, Laurence Fishburne or even Danny Woodburn. But it is a nice callback to the videogames, which I think sometimes don’t get the acknowledgement they deserve for bringing The Witcher to mainstream attention. It’s a deeper cut than I would’ve liked, but it’s also kind of fun as a “if you know, you know” kind of thing.
As for when we’ll see de Wett in action, that remains a mystery. The Witcher season 4 is expected to debut sometime in 2025, but we’re still waiting for a solid date.
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Kurt Indovina
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