The Screen Scribe

Every so often, a show stumbles so hard it forgets what made it special. The Witcher Season 4 doesn’t stumble, it face-plants into a swamp of its own making. Somewhere beneath the rubble of awkward dialogue, cheap design, and bewildering storytelling lies the skeleton of what was once a beloved fantasy epic. But that corpse has long since rotted. What’s left is a hollow, creaking parody of itself, and yes, I watched all of it, and the “Rats” spin-off film, which in hindsight feels like self-punishment.

The season picks up after Geralt’s recasting and the fallout of the previous finale. Liam Hemsworth steps into the boots of Henry Cavill, inheriting a role already heavy with expectation and fan resentment. Political chaos still swirls across the Continent. Ciri’s journey splinters into multiple threads. Yennefer remains trapped between duty and disillusionment. And somewhere amid it all, a war brews that should feel cataclysmic but somehow feels smaller than a pub brawl. On paper, it’s business as usual for The Witcher, monsters, intrigue, destiny. On screen, it’s a mess.

Let’s start with the obvious: the production. Reports peg the budget north of $220 million, and yet everything looks like a first-year cosplay fair. The costumes lack texture or wear; the wigs look as though they were shipped overnight from a discount app. There’s no sense of place or authenticity. The Witcher once felt tactile, sweat, mud, and chainmail. Now it looks like an expensive theme park. The sets fare no better. Interiors echo like sound stages; exteriors have that strange, sterile flatness that betrays a green screen. The illusion of a living world, the one Cavill fought so hard to preserve, has been smothered beneath layers of artificial gloss.

Then there’s the writing, or more accurately, the absence of it. The show’s narrative cohesion, while already thin, has evaporated entirely. The plot meanders from one location to another with no narrative drive. Characters pontificate about destiny but rarely do anything meaningful. The dialogue swings between stilted exposition and melodramatic nonsense. And the world-building, once complex and morally grey, has been simplified into a shallow pantomime of “good kingdom vs bad kingdom.”

Performance-wise, no one escapes unscathed, though it feels cruel to blame the cast. They’re clearly doing their best with material that would test the patience of saints. Anya Chalotra and Freya Allan try to inject emotion, but they’re acting against cardboard scenery and even flatter character arcs. Liam Hemsworth, to his credit, mostly looks the part in still frames, but the moment he speaks or swings a sword, the illusion collapses. His Geralt lacks the quiet wit and controlled fury Cavill brought. What remains is a kind of Witcher-like statue with a permanent squint and an accent more akin to Thor than Geralt. The fight choreography, once balletic and brutal, is now closer to a comic con sword fight between cosplayers.

It’s not that The Witcher couldn’t have survived Cavill’s departure, franchises evolve all the time. The problem is that this season seems to have learned nothing from what came before. Rather than course-correct, it doubles down on the worst impulses: convoluted plotting, empty spectacle, and tone-deaf writing. The world feels smaller, the stakes lower, and the heart long gone. Even the musical score, once one of the show’s strengths, feels perfunctory now, loud when it should be lyrical, generic when it should soar. There’s no atmosphere, no magic. Just noise.

If I were to search for positives, and I promise, I tried, the best I can offer is that some of the location shoots are pretty. That’s it. That’s the compliment. Everything else collapses under the weight of poor choices and lost faith. Fans have moved on, critics have sharpened their knives, and Netflix seems determined to squeeze one last drop of coin from a corpse that deserves a dignified burial.

By the time the credits roll, followed by that inexplicable Rats spin-off film that feels like a contractual obligation, it’s hard not to feel sympathy for the cast. They look as trapped as the audience. The Witcher once promised grit, myth, and melancholy. Now it delivers boredom, confusion, and the slow death of goodwill. A staggering misfire on every level. Cheap, soulless, and utterly devoid of the spark that made The Witcher worth caring about. Please, Netflix, let this one stay dead.

0.5 / 5 ✨ from the Screen Scribe.

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