There has been a Witcher-sized hole in my heart for several years now. Unfortunately, the return of Netflix’s live-action adaptation is unlikely to help fill it. The Witcher season 4 is finally out and bingeable on the streaming service, and almost no one seems to be happy about it.
Liam Hemsworth has debuted as the grizzled monster hunter Geralt of Rivia. Netflix even went ahead and retconned him into old scenes for the recap. Does the Hunger Games star earn his keep after all the drama surrounding Henry Cavill’s seemingly tumultuous exit? Doesn’t sound like it. One of the most glowing things early watchers have to say about Hemsworth is that, while he ain’t great, he’s at least not the worst thing about season 4.
It’s everything else that’s apparently a weird mess. The new episodes, which started streaming on October 30, pick up with a recovering Geralt searching a war-torn countryside for surrogate daughter Ciri who is trying out life with a group of bandits while the mage Yennefer rallies others to her campaign to take down the rogue member of the member of the Brotherhood of Sorcerers named Vilgefortz.
The show was trending in the wrong direction even during its bumpy season 3, which was awkwardly split in half, thus I’m not entirely surprised that season 4 is the Netflix adaptation’s most poorly reviewed yet. It’s currently sitting at a positive rating of just 58 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Fan sentiment is even worse, with a user rating in the teens. “The problem isn’t that the show has a new lead actor; it’s that it continues to be a bloated mess,” writes Andrew Webster at The Verge. “No amount of imaginative swordplay or inventive creature design can prevent the sense that The Witcher is now what all sword and sorcery epics fear becoming: pure bilge,” wrote Nick Hilton at The Independent.
The problems go beyond Hemsworth, though. “The tone remains wildly uneven, lurching as it does between steeple-fingered Game of Thrones-y glumness and those early-90s Saturday afternoon series in which an uncommunicative hunk wanders between small communities, rescuing imperiled innocents from baddies while learning about the true meaning of friendship,” wrote Sarah Dempster at The Guardian. Solving that contradiction was what The Witcher 3 video game did so well, and what the show has failed at more and more with each successive season.
Not everyone’s so down on The Witcher‘s return. IGN‘s Matt Fowler called it “incomplete” but congratulated it on “more successes than missteps,” while Paste Magazine‘s Lacy Baugher called it “wildly satisfying” as a spin-off about the tormented mage Yennefer, played by the excellent Anya Chalotra. But many fans aren’t having it. “Don’t mind Hemsworth as Geralt,” conceded one Rotten Tomatoes user. “It’s tough being second and he’s notable different to Cavill. The real issue with season 4 is the direction. It’s corndog crap. Witches on brooms, swearing birds, priests that burn children being aided by the crew of the Black Pearl, it’s just nonsense.”
Beyond these eight new episodes, a season 5 is still supposedly in the works. After that? It sounds like Netflix is ready to call it. “By the time we wrap Season 5 fully, it will have been nine years of my life,” showrunner Lauren Schmidt-Hissrich told Dexerto. “I think there are so many more stories to be told in The Witcher universe, truly. But I also think you have to step back and accept gracefully, what is the end of this story that we’ve been telling?”
At least by then, CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 4 will probably be out. It will similarly be moving from one lead to another, focusing on Ciri instead of Geralt. Hopefully, that transition goes much smoother.
