The outcries against Henry Cavill’s cast as the eponymous Witcher of the same-name show can only be overshadowed by the series’ subsequent success, at least when it comes to their first and second Season. The actor’s announced departure from the series was also met with strong emotions by the fandom, which is now reflected in The Witcher Season 3 ratings on Netflix, which have surely aided in the new revelation that The Witcher is less popular than The Lincoln Lawyer.
The Lincoln Lawyer is currently Netflix’s most-watched series, with The Witcher coming in third place.
According to Variety, Season 3 of The Witcher fell to third place on the charts after previously jumping to No. 1 on the charts with the second half of the third Season’s release. Furthermore, the rating charts reveal that The Lincoln Lawyer Season 2 is currently ranking first on Netflix, followed by Heartstopper Season 2.
It’s not hard to imagine a legal drama taking over The Witcher, but having a beloved gaming adaptation outperformed by a coming-of-age romantic comedy-drama such as Heartstopper really speaks about the depths to which The Witcher has sunk.
The lack of stellar rating is best noted in the final two episodes of Season 3 of The Witcher on Netflix, as they’re actually the lowest-rated episodes of the entire series. It’s also worth noting that the entire Season has an abysmal rating, as it has eight out of eight of the lowest-rated episodes in the entire series.
This means that every episode in the entire Season 3 is rated lower than anything else in Season 1 and Season 2 of The Witcher. Furthermore, Rotten Tomatoes ranking for Season 3 are just 22v percent, versus 89 percent for the first Season.
So why is The Witcher performing so poorly on Netflix? Well, the same reason why the fandom didn’t like the Halo adaptation and the several adaptations of gaming media—writing.
Actor Henry Cavill, an avid gamer himself, has expressed his concerns about the direction in which the series is deviating from the books, with show writers taking more and more creative liberties. Those concerns had grown into full-blown disagreements by the time Season 2 was in post-production, and Cavill announced his departure from the role after creative differences with the writers.
Every episode in the entire Season 3 is rated lower than anything else in Season 1 and Season 2 of The Witcher.
Cavill portrayed the role of Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher Season 3, which has recently concluded along with his tenure as the eponymous character, much to the fandom’s discontent. To be entirely fair, The Witcher fandom was openly against his portrayal before Season 1, but his knowledge of the source material (he’s a fan of both the games and the books) and the writers’ adherence to the source material has captivated the audience. Those two factors, the only factors that made The Witcher Show into what it was, are now gone.
There’s an obvious difference between what The Witcher audience wants and what the show writers believe the audience wants—and it’s not the same thing. Sure, adapting an active act of gaming into a passive act of watching media is hard enough, but if they pulled it off for the first two Seasons on Netflix, why ruin it? Well, it would seem that Henry Cavill jumped ship at the appropriate time.
It’s not hard to imagine a legal drama taking over The Witcher, but having a beloved gaming adaptation outperformed by a coming-of-age romantic comedy-drama such as Heartstopper really speaks about the depths to which The Witcher has sunk.
Fortunately enough, the actor found a new project to work on—a Warhammer 40k adaptation. That’s one fandom nobody wants to disappoint; the owner of the IP maintains strict control over all adaptations of their intellectual properties, and Amazon has granted Cavill all the creative freedoms he needs to make the project as faithful to the source material as possible. So, while we are sad that we won’t see Cavill in Netflix’s The Witcher, we can’t wait to see him in Warhammer 40k.
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