It’s finally happened, folks - the fourth season of The Witcher, Netflix’s most beleaguered franchise, has dropped, and it’s disappointed pretty much everyone.
Now that the initial wave of outrage has subsided, it’s time for a sober verdict: the show based on Andrzej Sapkowski’s books might as well be put out of its misery. The audience score is a grisly 21% on Rotten Tomatoes. People are hate-watching it out of sunk-cost desperation: the subscription’s paid, the tears flow, but they keep gnawing on the cactus.
And poor Liam Hemsworth, who caught a torrent of fan bile the moment he was announced as Henry Cavill’s replacement, is the least of the problems. If anything, he’s the only one still trying. While the showrunners and a supporting cast that feels more like theme-park animators phone it in, Hemsworth is visibly straining to drag the franchise across the finish line. Taking on the impossible task of outrunning Cavill’s ghost, he’s left hauling a bloated, misshapen, and utterly unengaging narrative that no actor could salvage. The Witcher isn’t entertaining anymore - it’s homework.
The Real Culprit: A Bloated, Unbalanced Production
The core issue isn’t the new Geralt; it’s that the series has grown too heavy for its own bones. What started as a gritty, character-driven fantasy has ballooned into a sprawling mess of subplots, lore dumps, and CGI spectacle that never quite lands. Season 4 feels like a patchwork quilt stitched together in the dark: timelines collapse, motivations blur, and entire episodes vanish into side quests that go nowhere.
The dialogue - once sharp enough to cut - now clunks along like a dull blade. Sapkowski’s prose, rich with irony and moral ambiguity, has been flattened into expository sludge.
Production values, once a selling point, now look frantic rather than ambitious. Fight scenes are edited into strobe-light chaos; the color palette swings between muddy browns and oversaturated neon; and the score recycles the same three motifs until they lose all meaning. It’s not that the budget vanished - it’s that no one seems to know what to do with it. The result is a show that looks expensive but feels cheap.
Hemsworth’s Thankless Task
Let’s give credit where it’s due: Liam Hemsworth is giving it everything he’s got. His Geralt is gruff, physically imposing, and - crucially - present. He nails the low growl, the coiled physicality, even the occasional flash of dry humor. Watch him in the quieter moments: a flicker of exhaustion when Ciri vanishes again, a tightening of the jaw when yet another political schemer drones on. He’s not aping Cavill; he’s carving out his own space. The problem is that the script gives him nothing to work with. Every time he tries to build a scene, the editing yanks the rug out or another subplot crashes through the wall.
The supporting cast doesn’t help. Characters who once had texture now deliver lines like they’re reading from a tourist brochure. Yennefer’s arc is a series of scowls and portals; Triss shows up to remind us she exists; the Nilfgaardian court scenes feel like a community theater production of Game of Thrones. Even the monsters - once a highlight - look like rejected Doom assets.
The Miscalculation at the Top
Here’s the season’s guiding delusion: someone in the writers’ room (or the executive suite) decided that swapping Geralts would be the main event. Let the new guy soak up the headlines; we don’t need to fix the rest. It’s a strategy that might work for a reality show, not a fantasy epic. The result is a season that treats its own story like an afterthought. Plot threads dangle, alliances flip without setup, and the emotional stakes flatline. By the finale, you’re not invested - you’re just relieved it’s over.
You Might Also Like:
- Netflix Shares Plummet After Disappointing Earnings Report
- Is the Stock Market Overheated? Decoding Buffett's Indicator at a Record 225%
- Everyone's Running
Time to Let It Go
The Witcher was never going to outrun the shadow of the games or the books, but it could have carved its own path. Instead, it doubled down on scale at the expense of soul. Liam Hemsworth deserves better than to be the fall guy for a franchise that stopped believing in itself seasons ago. Close the book, Netflix. Let the White Wolf rest. The audience - and the actor stuck carrying the corpse - have suffered enough.
