Spilt Apart, Working to Find Their Way

It’s been a while since we last checked in with The Witcher. That’s not the fault of me or anyone else who works on this site (which, admittedly, is mostly me), but solely because streaming television usually takes two years or more between seasons. You can have a grand adventure one year and then have to wait close to three to find out what happens next to the characters. This isn’t just a problem with The Witcher, or NetflixOriginally started as a disc-by-mail service, Netflix has grown to be one of the largest media companies in the world (and one of the most valued internet companies as well). With a constant slate of new internet streaming-based programming that updates all the time, Netflix has redefined what it means to watch TV and films (as well as how to do it). shows in general (as Netflix is where The Witcher airs, if “airs” is even the right word to use anymore in this age of streaming television).

No, the rise of “prestige” television on streaming services has created this weird zone where seasons are shorter and they take much longer to come out, leaving audiences in this space where they have to decide if they even care about a series anymore after multiple years have passed and memories about what you even liked about a series have faded. And it gets even worse if a show doesn’t even give you a proper conclusion, leaving you not only annoyed at the prospect of having to wait two years for your next fix, but also because they couldn’t even bother to tie up the story even a little bit before the next long break. Yes, we’re still talking about The Witcher. We’ll get to that.

Of course, The Witcher has yet another compounding issue on it before the fact that it took over two years to give us season four. There’s also the fact that the series lost its lead actor. As you likely know, Henry Cavill left the show at the end of season three to pursue other projects, and reportedly this was due to creative differences he had with the production team. Rumors swirled, and it’s hard to find a straight answer on this, but apparently he wasn’t happy with how much the show had deviated from the novels they’re based on, and that problem got worse and worse as time went by to the point that he wanted out of his contract so he could go paint miniatures and not star in the DC Extended UniverseStarted as DC Comics' answer to the MCU, the early films in the franchise stumbled out of the gates, often mired in grim-dark storytelling and the rushed need to get this franchise started. Eventually, though, the films began to even out, becoming better as they went along. Still, this franchise has a long way to go before it's true completion for Marvel's universe. anymore. And hey, good for him.

The fact of the matter is that he wasn’t entirely wrong. The Witcher drastically deviated from the source material (as per fans of the books) with season two onwards and the show hasn’t really been the same (or as good) since. Into that then steps Liam Hemsworth (who I have jokingly called “the lesser Hemsworth”, but it is all in good fun), who has the unenviable task of not only having to replace Cavill but also try to save (or at least keep afloat) this dying series. And dying it is because The Witcher isn’t, in any way, the watercooler fantasy series it once was. People don’t talk about it with baited breath like they used to. There was a time where episode recaps were standard and you’d get constant articles about how the series was doing and what it got right and wrong. Season four came out, though, and the best coverage you could get was a season recap and a little nod saying, “yeah, Hemsworth wasn’t bad.”

They’re right. Hemsworth isn’t bad in this series. He naturally fits into the void left by Cavill and is able to do all the things Cavill did with the same aptitude: look big, say “fuck”, grunt gruffly. Seeing Hemsworth in this role, occasionally smiling but mostly looking cold and stern, you actually realize there isn’t a lot that Cavill did to flesh out the character. It’s that or the show around its titular character has become so bland, so tired, and so stupid that Hemsworth's relatively dialed down performance feels like a highlight by comparison. All of that is to say that season four of The Witcher really, really sucks.

The issue with this season of The Witcher is that it lacks direction. When last season ended, the three main characters were split up from each other. Geralt of Rivia (Cavill then, Hemsworth now) was stuck in a druid camp, healing from a nasty leg wound. Ciri (Freya Allan) had vanished in a puff of magic, appearing halfway across the world (after a very strange journey in what might have been her own mind palace), only to then be adopted by a bunch of street rats aptly named the “Rats”. And Yennefer of Vengerberg (Anya Chalotra) had just fought, and nearly been killed by the evil sorcerer Vilgefortz of Roggeveen (Mahesh Jadu), who was working to eliminate all the sorcerers not aligned with him and his plans for world domination.

So what happened this season? Well, Geralt slowly made his way across the countryside, still healing from his nasty leg wound while, also, still not finding Ciri. Meanwhile Ciri stuck around with the Rats for a while before, well, not actually making any progress in her life, her adventures, or getting back to Geralt and Yennefer. And as for Yennefer, she was dealing with Vilgefortz, who was working to kill off all the sorcerers in the world not aligned with him and his plans for world domination. Functionally the series made no forward progress whatsoever before, obnoxiously, ending on another cliffhanger that will make us wait at least two years to get any kind of resolution at all. If then, even.

I think this all has to do, once again, with the ambitions of the series. When it started (and I know I’ve said this before), The Witcher came out with a bang. Its first season was fantastic, a fun and dark fantasy adventure series that was episodic in nature while, in the background, playing out some serialized threads that, frankly, you didn’t even notice were there until the last episode surprisingly brought everything together. It was well produced, fast paced, and always gave us some kind of conclusion each episode as it dealt with its recurring monster-of-the-week storytelling. I loved that season.

The trick with season one was that it, in no way, wanted to be anything other than The Witcher. Most specifically, despite every critic calling it “the next Game of Thrones”, the show elided that definition. In my review of the series I compared it to a completely different show, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, because it features a powerful hero going around and fixing people’s problems while a plucky sidekick cracked jokes and made everything light and fun. But from season two on it feels like the production team bought into the idea that The Witcher is the next Game of Thrones (which, we already have the next Game of Thrones and it’s called House of the Dragon) and from that point forward the series lost its way.

As it’s gone on the series had gotten more and more mired in serialized storytelling, forcing what could have been a story set during the second season – Geralt and Ciri use her powers and destiny to end the war plaguing the continent – into a four season arc (plus spin-offs and other media). The Witcher was never designed to support that, not from its source books nor from the bones built in the first season. The series pivoted hard because the production team wanted to, or Netflix wanted them too, or who knows what, and it’s been worse and worse ever since.

Season four is staggeringly bad by comparison. While the acting is fine, nothing else about this series works anymore. The production values feel cheap, the stories are padded, and there’s barely any momentum at all. It takes all season for Geralt to finally find the strength in him to be a Witcher again, and only just barely. It takes all season for Yennefer to finally track down Vilgefortz and, well, not defeat him yet. It takes all season for Ciri to barely do anything or go anywhere. These characters are struggling to stay relevant in their own stories as the series plods along making us wait endlessly for any interesting thing to happen.

The best episode of the season is the sixth, "Twilight of the Wolf" (which comes after the absolutely unbearable, momentum killing story, “The Joy of Cooking”, which finally takes the time to introduce us to Geralt’s increasing band of random people that are now walking with him, only for most of them to decide to leave an episode or so later). In this sixth episode, Vilgefortz attacks where Yenneger and the other mages are holed up. It’s a solid battle, one that clearly was directed and coordinated to strike back at all the criticism of the last major battle the series did all the way back in season three, episode six, "Everybody Has a Plan 'til They Get Punched in the Face". That battle sucked, this one is actually pretty fun to watch, and it ends in a decent way, with the mages successful and Vilgefortz… well, I won’t spoil that, just in case you do feel like watching this season (although I don’t know why you would).

Regardless, though, nothing comes of it. The series clearly spent all its budget for the season on that one, very effects heavy, episode and then can’t do much else so it wastes two more episodes of time not doing anything with any of the characters before just… ending. No wrap up for any storylines, no real thought about what comes next. Just a cliffhanger, cut to black, now you get to wait two more years before we bother wrapping this all up. It’s infuriating.

This series has technically been going for six years now, and it’s gotten worse and worse at just about everything it does. The characters are flatter, the settings cheaper, the storytelling worse, all in the hopes that it can stay relevant and remain, “the next Game of Thrones.” Not only has that ship sailed, but that wasn’t what this series was meant to be anyway. When it focuses on a single story in an episode and tells us that it can be great, but the producers have grand ambitions that this series just can’t match. You can’t make the next big thing on a tiny budget, and you can’t keep people interested if you don’t know how to tell a good story.

The Witcher’s fourth season is a lesson in wasted potential. This is a series that started off great, with all the right elements combined with solid source material and a fantastic setting. But all of that has been squandered to try and be something more than it should have been. Fans of the books, and of the first season, weren’t asking for more than a cool series about a grumpy dude that killed things. That was all we needed and it would have been perfect. Instead we got… this, and at this point this just isn’t good enough.

The only good thing about this series is that it’s ending. Reportedly it’ll wrap up with season five and then we’ll all be done. If that’s the case, thank goodness. I can just about push through at that point and finish the series. But if they then say “oh, just joking, it’ll be two more to get the complete story,” I’m out. The show is bad and I don’t need to be around for three more seasons (or more) to see how much worse it can get. Four, frankly, was too much already.