Once upon a time, The Witcher seemed like it was going to be Netflix’s answer to Game of Thrones, a well-cast, well-formed adaptation of the books (and sometimes games) with a powerhouse trio playing Geralt, Yennefer and Ciri. Henry Cavill’s Geralt anchored the show, but now in season 4, after his departure, review scores have crashed, and interest in the show has visibly waned.
I’ll get to the scores in a minute, but the most shocking thing to me is that at release here, a show the size of The Witcher did not debut at #1 on Netflix’s Top 10 list, nor even #2, coming in at #3 behind romantic comedy Nobody Wants This, which debuted over a week ago, and the reality series Selling Sunset, back for season 9. That is bad.
What’s going on here? A number of things:
- Season 4 isn’t great. Critics have rated it lower than all other Witcher seasons with a 56% on Rotten Tomatoes, down from the 68%, 95% and 79% of seasons 1-3, respectively.
- Then we have the “review bombing” of audience scores, where season 4 has a dismal 18%, but a whole lot of that is a very real representation of how much previous fans of the series now hate the recasting of Cavill as Geralt, now played by Liam Hemsworth. Though to be fair, season 3, which still did have Cavill, got a 20% audience score, mostly from fans upset about departures from the source material.
- The gap between seasons was too long. It’s been two years and four months since season 3 premiered, pushing its luck even among generally long gaps between seasons of shows in the streaming era. If you were already questioning whether the show was going to be any good after a recast and not-great previous seasons, you may not bother showing up at all. And this is a significant factor in The Witcher’s low placement on the list here.
A year ago, The Witcher was already renewed for season 5, which will finish the saga with Hemsworth’s Geralt. Netflix is pot-committed now, as if you’ve gone this deep, you can’t really just end at 80%, even if quality and interest are fading.
This show is just such a mess of missed opportunities. Cavill was perfectly cast as Geralt, but he could not save the series by himself. Book departures certainly didn’t help, but even if you haven’t read the books, it’s just…not a terribly good fantasy series. It’s miles away from those early seasons of Game of Thrones, and the best you can say is “well, at least it’s better than the Amazon Lord of the Rings show.” Sometimes, anyway.
I’d say this spells disaster for the show, but again, season 5 is coming, barring any sort of emergency brake pulled by Netflix. I won’t rule it out, but Netflix essentially has to see this through now.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
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