Eh, I’m not sure how much I’m going to be able to get through without tearing my hair out. The Witcher Season 3 is only a few weeks away from its highly anticipated (or lamented depending on your POV) release, and I’m really questioning if this season will be too distorted from the source material to watch.
This show really could have been Netflix’s fantasy mega show if they didn’t hire the most incompetent, vengeful, and arrogant writers in the world.
The Witcher Season 3 is only 20 or so days away from its release on Netflix, and the fanfare about a show that was once touted as the “successor to Game of Thrones” has been…muddled to say the least as the nauseating source material deviances and the behind-the-scenes drama has really hampered the fan excitement around the show. And, in my opinion, I doubt this season is going to be the striking success Netflix needs to continue its existence.
Sadly, The Witcher is a dying franchise that is on its deathbed. There, I said it.
Forgive me all Netflix Witcher superfans, but the numbers and enthusiasm around this franchise don’t lie as the past two pieces of content, The Witcher Season 2 and The Witcher: Blood Origin, have been absolutely ravaged by negative reviews, hatred from the loyal book fans, despised by The Witcher game fans, and apathetically viewed by the casuals.
The Witcher Season 2 was given a lukewarm 69/100 critical review on Metacritic and an absolutely appalling 39/100 by the audience/fans, while The Witcher: Blood Origin got a terrible 45/100 critical review on Metacritic and an utterly shocking, mindbogglingly bad 11/100 review by the audience.
That is BAD, BAD, BAD, BAD publicity.
Yet, it’s not like those two shows didn’t deserve the criticism as The Witcher Season 2 saw Ciri turned into a witcher-murdering demon (not book-canon) through the Gaunter O’Dimm/Baba Yaga demon (not book-canon), Yennefer tried to murder Ciri despite being her adoptive-mother (not book-canon), Kaer Morhen got utterly ransacked by a group of random, non-lore friendly monsters (obviously not book-canon), Geralt went on a wild goose chase for some stupid monolith (again, not book-canon), Dandelion became an elven rights activist (not book-canon), and Triss and Vesemir tried to turn Ciri into a Witcher (not book-canon).
Essentially, the whole show wiped their asses with the pages of Witcher author Andrzej Sapkowski’s books and then pretended they were “inspired by” the novels. “Inspired by” really should just be replaced with “bad fanfiction”, but you get the point.
As for The Witcher: Blood Origin, that was an utter travesty of a T.V. show. Plain and simple.
(Netflix-The Witcher Season 3-Official Trailer)
It was blander than white paint, it was a Frankenstein monster of different, outdated, and overused fantasy tropes pasted together for 4 or so hours of television, there was absolutely nothing related to the Witcher lore aside from the name “witcher” attached to the project, the CGI and visual effects were shockingly outdated, the acting was woeful, and the script was obnoxious self-aggrandizing to the writers.
The people behind that abomination deserve to get fired, and Netflix should remove the show from their servers immediately. That’s how bad it was.
So, it’s clear to see how this latest season of The Witcher has had such low fan receptiveness.
The Season 3 teaser trailer has 3M views and 70k likes, which would be great under normal circumstances.
But said number only point out the apathy Witcher fans have for the Netflix show as the Season 2 teaser trailer, which aired (July 9th, 2021) far earlier in the Season 2 release cycle (December 17th, 2021) than the Season 3 one (April 25th, 2023) in the cycle (June 23rd, 2023), had nearly 9M views (8.7M to be exact) and just under 330k likes (329k to be exact).
Do you see how uninterested people are with The Witcher story?
And, with Henry Cavil set to leave the show after this season, I don’t know how the viewership numbers get any better when Liam Hemsworth, the younger and far less recognizable brother of Thor actor Chris Hemsworth, takes over the mantel as Geralt of Rivia.
Perhaps I’ll be proven wrong, but with the show now completely veered away from the novels and Henry Cavil done with Geralt after this season, I think The Witcher show will go down with a pathetic, hollow, lackluster whimper.
Images Source: Featured Image: (Netflix) (The Witcher: Season 3 | Official Teaser | Netflix – YouTube)
In Text Image 1: (Netflix) (The Witcher: Season 3 | Official Teaser | Netflix – YouTube)
