It’s Time For Netflix To Cancel ‘The Witcher’ Before It Gets Any Worse

I hate to say it, but the time has come. Netflix needs to put The Witcher out to pasture.

What was once a promising new fantasy series with a rich treasure trove of novels (and games) to draw from for a Game Of Thrones style adaptation has descended into lazy writing, bizarre deviations from the source material, and modern Hollywood’s worst bad habits all wrapped into one.

Season 3 of the dark fantasy show has seen the lowest viewership numbers and the lowest review scores so far, with every episode rated lower than any episode Season 1 or 2. Part of this is almost certainly fan protest over the exit of lead Henry Cavill, who many view as the heart and soul of The Witcher. Cavill’s Geralt will be replaced by Liam Hemsworth. Fans are understandably upset—especially given how truly lackluster Cavill’s final episodes were.

But much of Season 3’s low ratings are simply because it isn’t very good. The writing is confusing and often quite sloppy. Bad, modern dialogue, an often overly-confusing plot, and totally unnecessary changes from the books all conspire to make the third season truly baffling and often quite dull. The fact that they stuck closer to the books in some ways this time around only makes the changes more confusing (like making the small child Radovid a grown man just so he could have sex with Jaskier the bard, who was previously straight).

It often feels like the showrunner and writers are barely even interested in adapting these stories, and just want to create the most generic fantasy ever made. I might be okay with these deviations if the final product was watchable, but it’s not. And I say this as a huge champion of the first season, which I liked a great deal more than many of my fellow critics.

In any case, now is the perfect time to put this show out of its misery. Not only is the star gone, the ongoing writers’ and actors’ strikes mean that no production can move forward. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA unions appear to be a long ways off from any kind of deal with the big studios and producers, and that means new content is about to dry up fast. Netflix could easily pull the plug on this expensive project and blame it on the strikes. Will the company do any soul-searching about why this series has fallen so completely from grace, or are we just doomed to repeat this same problem over and over and over again?

I do feel bad for the other remaining cast members who have poured so much of their lives and hard work into this project. Anya Chalotra, in particular, is terrific as Yennefer. Many talented actors have done great work on this show, working with the scripts they were given. But the show peaked early and has been in steady decline for too long now. Better shows have been cancelled before their time at Netflix.

This one has run its course. I wish things had gone differently, I genuinely do. It saddens me a great deal that we have come to this point. I didn’t expect to write an article like this. I didn’t expect Cavill to leave a project he was once so passionate about. I didn’t expect Netflix and the show’s creators to botch everything so completely. But here we are.

As Geralt says in The Witcher 3’s “Blood & Wine” expansion: “I run into dilemmas all the time. Situations where it’s hard to judge, hard to know what’s right, make a decision. This is not one of them. You disgust me. And deserve to die.”

Kill The Witcher, Netflix. It’s time.