The Witcher season 1 was fun, but watching it aga five years later does carry with it a certain few harsh realities. Based on the famous Witcher video game and Andrzej Sapkowski’s books, season 1 was a hit on Netflix, but it garnered mixed reviews and a varied fan response. While The Witcher season 3 is just as confusing as previous seasons in many ways, it also ties up numerous long-standing storylines and feels gratifying and visually epic. However, the show still had some work to do back in season 1.
As The Witcher nears season 4, it will be looking back on its previous outings, as will fans, evaluating past successes and mistakes. The show has huge pressure to perform in the coming years with a new actor stepping into the role of Geralt of Rivia (now Liam Hemsworth after Henry Cavill). As the main character of The Witcher, Geralt’s importance can’t be understated. As The Witcher season 4 is prepared for release, it is a good time to rewatch the show from the start and work out what parts of it didn’t age so well, providing a refreshed perspective with which to approach the new season.
10
The Witcher Was Cut Short From Its Original 7 Seasons
The Witcher TV Show Was Going To Be Longer
The Witcher TV show as created by Lauren Schmidt Hissrich was originally meant to be seven seasons long, meaning some storylines will inevitably come across as a bit rushed in the end. Now it is clear that the show will only run for five seasons, its original plan presents itself as a bit of a harsh reality when season 1 enjoys the slow burn of multiple relationships. The show will now be hard-pressed as it is to wrap up everything with only two seasons remaining.
Related
The upcoming videogame The Witcher 4 made a big change that the Netflix Witcher show should definitely learn from and apply in season 4.
While The Witcher was originally presented as a seven-season show, a couple more seasons would still do it some good. The first season may have ultimately been wasting precious screen time with certain gradual arcs. The Witcher season 1 got quite favorable reviews, but season 2 was not as popular with critics. Meanwhile, The Witcher: Blood Origin wasn’t overly positively received and season 3 was even less of a hit in terms of viewership, despite having made a few improvements. As such, the flagship series was unfortunately shorted.
9
The Witcher’s Tone And Objective Is Inconsistent
The Witcher TV Show Can’t Seem To Decide Its Reason For Existing
The Witcher season 1 had a lot of appeal for a wide audience but occasionally feels disjointed in terms of its tone. The Witcher is funny and sad, like many good fantasies, but the show never quite found a way to connect the two as well as other examples. The books that the show is based on are quite elegiac and tragic; the show captured this throughout Yennefer’s (Anya Chalotra) arc, in particular. However, this isn’t so evident in other parts of the narrative.
Jaskier’s (Joey Batey) scenes with Geralt are often hilarious, providing the show with some welcome comic relief. But the fact that there are few moments of profundity in this storyline to compare to Yennefer’s arc sometimes makes it seem as if the show lacks depth overall. Slightly more consistency in tone would have made The Witcher seem more coherent, but as it was, it looked like it was committed to being neither quite comedy, tragedy, nor tragicomic.
8
The Witcher: Blood Origin Was An Amusing But Strange Addition To The Franchise
The Witcher Received A Random Add-On In The Form Of Blood Origins
Another harsh reality of rewatching the first season of The Witcher is how it falls in line with The Witcher: Blood Origin. The Witcher carried a gleam of newness and exciting possibility in its first season, but by season 3, it was diminished, to a certain extent. This bears in mind the series’ reduced length and lower reviews. Additionally, The Witcher: Blood Origin was a somewhat strange evolution of the franchise, and its lackluster debut showed how far off the novelty of Netflix’s show was.
The Witcher: Blood Origins is set over a thousand years before the events of The Witcher.
The Witcher: Blood Origin failed to pull the name of the franchise back up after flagging reviews in season 2, despite being the series’ first spinoff. It definitely had its own charm, despite differing from The Witcher in mood and style. The Witcher: Blood Origin is a really fun watch, but doesn’t add to the story of the main show or resolve any of its problems. This was mostly fair, as that wasn’t its purpose; yet it remains a somewhat jarring but amusing add-on.
7
The Witcher’s Dialogue Can Be Atrocious
The Witcher TV Show Doesn’t Always Nail The Script
The Witcher season 1 has some great one-liners but also some equally terrible dialogue. The Witcher has a fairly large team of screenwriters and this could have contributed to a lack of cohesion. There are moments of comedy gold when it comes to Jaskier, but these moments of comedy aren’t reflected in each episode and the overall character progression can come across as quite clunky, as expressed in the conversations.
Related
Netflix’s The Witcher: 15 Best Quotes On The Show
Netflix’s The Witcher has some great characters and memorable lines. Here are the best.
The writing is also sometimes quite on the nose; the script would deliberately try to express its primary themes, rather than naturally embodying them through character dialogue. Season 1’s script sometimes seems a little like a rushed, commercial attempt at creating a thematically weighty story, rather than the naturalistic character study it could have been. Real meaning would have come through better via believable dialogue and subtext.
6
Character Development Is Totally Inconsistent In The Witcher
Lots Of Character Choices In The Witcher Don’t Make Sense
The Witcher season 1 has a lot of positives, but consistent character development isn’t one of them. Geralt is introduced as a gruff, silent type and doesn’t grow much throughout the first season. This is actually fine because Cavill’s characterization is flawless from the start. However, the show could have provided a bigger emotional hook going into season 2 if there appeared to be an incomplete change brewing in Geralt.
Likewise, many other characters make decisions that aren’t entirely consistent with their assigned purpose or personality. Tissaia (MyAnna Buring), for example, falls somewhere between an evil abuser and a kind mentor. However, the two are at odds. The audience never got a chance to properly revile her as a villain, just as it couldn’t respect her fully as a hero. Yennefer idolizing Tissaia seems odd considering she turned some of her students into eels, which never happens in the books.
5
Yennefer’s Trauma Doesn’t Effect Her That Much
The Second Version Of Yennefer Doesn’t Entirely Reflect Her History
Yennefer of Vengerberg seemed destined for tragedy at the start of season 1, but her growth doesn’t entirely follow that logic. Anya Chalotra is one of the actors confirmed to be returning for The Witcher season 4, so her Yennefer will continue to be key to the show. Therefore, in season 1, it was important that she got off to the right start. However, Yennefer’s transition from farmhand to sorceress is somewhat stunted.
Netflix released a 2021 animated Witcher spinoff movie called The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf.
Yennefer was abused as a young disabled woman before being bought by Tissaia. Her arc is hugely empowering, including her relationship with Istredd. However, after her transformation, the script seems to forget her difficult past. Yennefer should have shown more signs of trauma during her rise to power, which would have made her far more believable, resonant, and empowering persona.
4
The Witcher Season 1 Is Often Confusing
The Witcher Flicks Through Varied Plotlines
The Witcher season 1 skips through varying subplots and timelines as if they were many channels on the radio, creating confusion for many viewers. The show was based on short stories by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, allowing for a certain level of serialization. However, the show also ties together its episodes with wider themes, generating the need for heavy invention in order for them all to line up in a way the audience can (with some difficulty) understand.
And this doesn’t always work. It was necessary to bring the show’s varying storylines together with overarching themes and a narrative, but this narrative is sometimes empty. It isn’t guided by the profound nature of Sapkowski’s books and the screenwriters never quite managed to make it feel overwhelmingly important. Ironically, The Witcher season 1 would have benefited from sticking to one timeline with perhaps the occasional flashback to hone its message.
3
The Witcher Is Far From Faithful To Andrzej Sapkowski’s Books
The Witcher TV Show Refers To The Game And The Books
Every season of The Witcher suffers from diverging heavily from its source material, but season 1 definitely launched the show in this direction. The Netflix series for TV couldn’t follow the books exactly as they are even more disjointed than the show, but some changes felt gratuitous. For instance, Tissaia turning students into eels. The show also followed the game to a certain extent, confusing the plot further.
Characters like Cahir (Eamon Farren) and Fringilla (Mimî M Khayisa) are almost unrecognizable, despite having a certain logic internal to the show. This made season 1 difficult for some book and video game fans to watch. It was this unfaithfulness that may have ultimately led Henry Cavill to quit the show, creating a situation nobody wanted. The relative unfaithfulness of The Witcher season 1 os probably one of its harshest realities.
2
Ciri Can Act Spoiled In The Witcher
Ciri’s Character Wasn’t Done Well Enough
Characteristic of The Witcher’s character weaknesses, Ciri isn’t the best-written character from the show, despite being the main character of Sapkowski’s book series. It is a shame that Ciri didn’t get better lines, as she could have been a huge driver of feminist themes for the adaptions. On the other hand, Ciri is an incredible protagonist in the books and games. She is flawed, individual, and seeking to break free from a system trying to control her.
In the TV show, Ciri comes across as far weaker and more helpless. She seems like the royal princess that she officially is, without the quiet fight that she has in her in the source material. Ciri’s argumentative nature comes across as more spoiled in the TV show, reducing one of the best elements of the original story. Ciri grows and becomes more interesting and less annoying as the show goes on, but her petulance is still a harsh reality of season 1.
1
Henry Cavill Won’t Get To Finish Geralt’s Arc In The Witcher
Henry Cavill Was The Perfect Geralt Of Rivia
The harshest reality of watching The Witcher season 1 is probably knowing that Henry Cavill won’t finish the show as Geralt of Rivia after his amazing debut. Cavill was the best thing about The Witcher; his casting was perfect, thanks to his natural domineering gravitas, and his departure was incredibly sad. Cavill left because he didn’t feel that the show was going in a direction that he supported, being a big fan of the books and game himself.
Related
Although two of Henry Cavill’s projects since leaving The Witcher haven’t quite worked out, his future movies and TV shows have a lot of potential.
Cavill quitting the show lost it a lot of viewers, as season 2 and 3 viewing figures appear to confirm. His departure probably also contributed to the show being shortened from seven seasons to five. Although this is a sad truth to be aware of while rewatching The Witcher season 1, Liam Hemsworth still stands a chance at making a great Geralt in the last two seasons.
Based on the novels by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski and the video games, The Witcher follows the story of Geralt of Rivia, a monster hunter who struggles to find his place in a world where people often prove more wicked than beasts. “Ciri” Cirilla is the Princess of Cintra, who has magical abilities and whose fate has been linked to Geralt’s. Yennefer of Vengerberg, a sorceress who trains to become a mage before deserting her duties and going solo, is also a main character in the Netflix series. The show’s storylines are intertwined but told throughout different timelines, all of which eventually catch up to Ciri’s, whose timeline of events is the most recent. Set on the Continent where men, monsters, and elves exist together, the characters all have separate journeys, though their destinies bring them into each others’ orbits.
- Release Date
-
December 20, 2019
- Franchise(s)
-
The Witcher
- Cast
-
Tom Canton
, Maciej Musial
, Björn Hlynur Haraldsson
, Anna Shaffer
, MyAnna Buring
, Lars Mikkelsen
, Royce Pierreson
, Eamon Farren
, Wilson Radjou-Pujalte
, Joey Batey
, Jodhi May
, Therica Wilson-Read
, Anya Chalotra
, Mimi Ndiweni
, Henry Cavill
, Freya Allan
, Adam Levy
, Amit Shah
, Liam Hemsworth
, Laurence Fishburne - Seasons
-
3
- Writers
-
Lauren Schmidt Hissrich
- Directors
-
Lauren Schmidt Hissrich
- Showrunner
-
Lauren Schmidt Hissrich
