In the shadowed aftermath of Season 3’s upheavals, Geralt steps into a fractured world where old scars demand fresh blood, forging uneasy bonds with a ragtag crew of survivors as they carve through war-torn wilds in desperate pursuit of lost kin. Yennefer, scarred by betrayal and stripped of her once-unyielding magic, claws her way to the helm of a splintering sisterhood. Meanwhile, Ciri, raw and unmoored in a desert’s cruel embrace, falls in with a pack of feral outcasts. As prophecies coil like smoke and ancient pacts unravel, these scattered souls chase fragile threads of reunion, where every shadowed alliance could forge salvation—or summon the end.

The Witcher Review (S1: E1)

As fans of the source material brace themselves for what has long been rumored would be the least Witchery season of The Witcher, and Cavillites continue to seethe in rage at the injustice of Henry’s ignominious expulsion from the franchise, one man is willing to brave the woke-infested waters of what stopped being a passably fun series halfway through the second season.

Well, folks, it ain’t good, but is it as bad as we’d feared? Pretty close.

When the ball is fumbled so often over such a short period of time, it’s challenging to decide where to start. However, what stands out most in this initial embarrassment is how forgettable the last season was and how hard the writers are trying (and failing) to remind the audience with hamfisted, awkward expository dialogue.

Yet it is their bumbling efforts to reignite the audience’s emotional connection to season 3’s blunders that are most comical. If you can remember, the third entry nearly completely sidelined Cavill’s Geralt and gave us a never-ending whinefest from Ciri as the bard lost him self in his new lover’s dark brown eye. Oh, and there was a war and political intrigue and danger, I guess. It was a huge mess, one that no sane person could have felt anything but disdain for. Not exactly the emotional foundation that great stories are built upon.

That the show continues to be an unfocused mess in this episode, with a bloated and forgettable cast telling a disjointed story with no sense of the passage of time or in-world geography, and even the basics —like what the heck is going on —help nothing. However, now that Netflix has returned to the world of… I honestly couldn’t tell you. The question on everyone’s mind is how does Liam Hemsworth compare to Henry Cavill after stepping into the golden contacts and Targaryen wig of Geralt of Rivia? Not well.

Hemsworth is a fine actor who has struggled to find a footing in Hollywood. However, if nothing else, last year’s Land of Bad showed us that he can handle action. But no one, not even Cavill, was ever going to be able to save this dismal show from its arrogant and hateful showrunners and writers. Yet, here we are, and we have to discuss how he did.

The long and the short of it is… not great. At least in this first episode, Hemsworth is a shockingly poor substitute. Not many could do as much with a character who says as little as his predecessor did, but the 35-year-old Aussie just doesn’t have it. He’s blameless for some. As big a nerd as Hanky C. might be, God also chose to bless him with the manliness face in Hollywood in the past forty years—butt chin and all. Liamsworth, on the other hand, who’s not exactly a sideshow freak, has a softer face with a relatively weak chin. There are dozens of roles in which these genetic lottery results wouldn’t make a difference, but not for Geralt. He’s an archetype of masculinity, and being boyishly handsome just doesn’t cut it.

Were Hemsworth’s slimmer physique and softer look the only problem with his take on the character, no doubt the rest of the season would unfold just fine as fans came to accept the differences. Unfortunately, he seems utterly out of his depth with the character, imbuing him with all of the charisma of kelp. In his few short scenes, he seems uncomfortable in the role, like he’s going through the motions. Although that’s not entirely his fault. He is given very little to do. Given the direction the show has been going in since season 2, and the showrunners’ admission that this season will be focused on the female characters, would anyone be surprised if he felt like the afterthought his character has become?

Of course, the saving grace in many a mediocre program such as this is often the action. Not surprisingly, episode one of the fourth season of The Witcher can’t seem to juggle even that single ball. The CGI is atrocious, with rubbery-looking monsters and blood effects ripped straight from 1998’s Blade. Hemsworth also lacks the indefatigable quality that his predecessor brought to fight scenes. There’s a reason that people talked about his arm reloading in Mission: Impossible – Fallout for years. The man knows how to look cool when he fights. Again, Hemsworth is bad. He’s just not as good.

As for the rest of the show, as stated earlier, it’s bloated with an uninteresting cast doing generic fantasy things with motivations that you won’t care about, to achieve goals that you won’t remember. The dialogue and internal logic are some of the worst. There’s a scene in which Yennifer opens a portal into a tavern and someone asks her if she’s a mage. That’s but one example.

I will be shocked if the rest of the season can save The Witcher.

WOKE REPORT

Put a Chick In It. Make Her Gay and Lame

• Apparently, Ciri, who may or may not be a child, even after watching 3 seasons, I couldn’t tell you how old she is, is now a lesbian. She has a one-night tryst with a new character who seems likely to be sticking around for the rest of the season.
  • Yes, I am aware (now) that Ciri is bisexual in the books, though I’ve not read them. However, the show has never given us any indication that she felt this way, not even in the episode in which she indulges herself. The woman who is into her telegraphs her interest a couple of times, but Ciri seems completely oblivious. There’s no banter, no reciprocal flirtation, nothing. Some guy tries to sexually assault her, and the strong, independent woman of color who scares him off beds her immediately afterwards. It was completely shoehorned in and irrelevant to the rest of the episode.
    • I docked the Woke-O-Meter hard for this, even though it’s canon, because the showrunners have zero qualms about shredding canon in every other way that suits them. Heck, they even turned the bard—whose whole deal was being a notorious womanizer—bisexual.
• The episode opens with a random little girl who is super into stories about Geralt and hints that she’ll be an important character in the world.
  • The hero worship for a character, traditionally, boys would like, and the inclusion of yet another potentially powerful female character is why this is woke.
• As the showrunners promised, Geralt has become an afterthought. The season’s main arcs are clearly those of Yennifer and Ciri. *Yawn.*
• There’s a woman, who I assume is a queen or some other royalty, and she is a typical modern female character who substitutes personality for snark and putting down the men around her.

Dark and Choclatey Highway

• Not only are they continuing the gay love story between the bard and the king, but the king’s entire story arc is now pining over his separation from him.

We Are Family

• With the same mental dexterity that they’ve used to run this franchise into the ground, the writers have added the show’s 30th found family subplot. This time, it’s a group of thieves.
  • Family is family, friends are friends. They are not the same thing.

DEI & D

• I didn’t think it was possible to make the diversity in this show feel any more artificial than it already did, but mission accomplished.
  • The female asian archer/new sidekick of Geralt’s is a terrible actress. Total diversity hire.